Review: 22 Paths to Dignity
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 1, 2012
22 Steps to the Light of Your Soul is a joyful books that provides far more than just steps. Its thoughts and revelations are like maps for dealing with the unexpected while walking along even the most certain of paths, while also providing key ideas for truly appreciating the everyday aspects of life with greater depth, compassion and understanding.The book is divided into separate sections based on some of life's essential questions, questions that I have certainly encountered with increasing frequency over the years. Written in a meditative, Q&A; style, the book will appeal to fans of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, to which 22 Steps serves as a great extension and companion to Tolle's work, as well as Wayne Dyer's writing on the Tao. Having read these questions posed to Embrosewyn Tazkuvel, I feel greater certainty in my choices in life so far, the true motivations behind them and the unlimited potential for what is yet to come.One of the basic themes that makes this book so valuable is its concentration on redefining success with respect to issues like parenthood, love and happiness. Tazkuvel talks about how we force ourselves to pursue these worthy goals from a position of falsely constructed outcomes that essentially ruins our focus because focusing on the end instead of the means will always ultimately make the goal obnoxious. There is good guidance in this book on how to be watchful of this habit, recognize it for the obstacle it is and step around it. These ideas are especially precious in the chapter on friendship, which is dear to my heart because I wrote my dissertation on that subject. Tazkuvel sees the friend as someone to be cherished, not squandered, and gently shows us how to focus on the process of friendship rather than any preconceived end, which must by its nature be false (because it hasn't happened yet) and thereby ruinous to everything that is good in the relationship.I learned a great deal from this book and feel that the reach of my self-understanding has been further freed from the grasp of the everyday illusions that keep us down. I recommend it to anyone who is joyfully serious about their spiritual journey.