num_pages: 288
description: In this and intimate memoir an acclaimed journalist reflects on her childhood in the heartland growing up in an increasingly isolated meditation community in the 1980s and 90sa fascinating disturbing look at a fringe culture and its true believers.When Claire Hoffman is five-years-old her mother informs her and her seven-year-old brother Stacey that they are going to heavenIowato live in Maharishis national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claires mother Transcendental Meditationthe Maharishis method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible lifewas a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment .At first this secluded utopia offers warmth and support and makes these outsiders feel calm secure and connected to the world. Claire attends the Maharishi school where her meditations were graded and she and her class learned Maharishi's principals for living. But as Claire and Stacey mature their adolescent skepticism kicks in drawing them away from the community and into delinquency and drugs. Eventually Claire moves to California with her father and breaks from Maharishi completely. A decade later after making a name for herself in journalism and starting a family she begins to feel exhausted by cynicism and anxiety. She finds herself longing for the sparkle filled belief fueled Utopian days in Iowa meditating around the clock. So she returns to her hometown in pursuit of TMs highest form of meditation  levitation. This journey will transform ideas about her childhood family and spirituality. Greetings from Utopia Park takes us deep into this complex unusual world illuminating its joys and comforts and its disturbing problems. While there is no utopia on earth Hoffman reveals there are noble goals worth striving for: believing in belief inner peace and a firm understanding that there is a larger fabric of the universe to which we all belong.
language: English
title: Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood
publisher: Harper