3 out of 4 stars
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The Unbound Soul: A Visionary Guide to Spiritual Transformation and Enlightenment is a memoir and spiritual guidance book written by Richard L. Haight. In this book, he chronicles his experiences through life that led him to undertake a journey of meditation, exploration of philosophies of consciousness, and transformation. Along with his stories from his life, this book also includes explanations and instructions for how we can apply the same concepts to our lives and transform our consciousness to a higher, more enlightened plane of understanding.
To start off, this book may be a little different to talk about. It's classified as non-fiction, so the usual format of a summary of the plot, explaining characters, and other such details will have to be shelved. Because this is a memoir, it can be tricky to judge or rank how “good” a book is, since the author is talking about their life story – you can't very well judge that like you would a novel.
With that being said, this book is a little misleading in how it's categorized. I began reading with the expectation that the majority of it would be recounting his experiences throughout life and how they connected to his search for enlightenment – or Isness, as he terms it. Instead, only about a quarter of the book is spent retelling moments from his life – and the majority of them from his adulthood. Perhaps it's my personal preference getting in the way, but this is not what I expect when I read memoirs. Usually, I expect the author will also include stories from their childhood, or anecdotes that summarize the character of their parents and/or extended families (which, in turn, show the impact those personalities had on the author throughout THEIR upbringing) or at the very least, for the personal history to be the primary focus of the book. In this book, it feels more as though the author wanted to write a New Age Self-Help book and the first few chapters take the place of a preface to explain why we should read it. It's not bad, per se – just a little disingenuous.
To fully enjoy this book, one should be in a specific mood and mindset. I found that I could not read more than a few sentences when I was tired or stressed – not just because I would fall asleep, but because the part of my mind that was critical and sarcastic about the nature of memoirs and spiritual education books. When tired, I would find myself bitterly sniping out loud at the book, picking apart how not everybody could afford trips to Japan or classes about meditation or what not – none of these are salient points for anyone reading a memoir, considering the author is very rarely using their experiences to claim that EVERYONE should live their life in the same way. Certainly, Mister Haight is not saying attempting to impress his lifestyle onto everyone. Rather, his book reads as a plea for us to change our mindset. Even clear-headed, I do see this as problematic – but no more or less than any other self-help book that co-opts the teachings of varying spiritualities and religions to offer insight to the reader.
To that effect, one would be best served by reading this book with the mindset of wanting to learn. I was a little put off by the bulk of the text being spiritual-informative text (as I said, before, I was expecting it to be mostly memoir) but what is on the page is, in fact, very well informed. Mister Haight has done his homework into both Buddhism and Christian spirituality, and blends the two so well as to speak to virtually all perspectives of religious and spiritual backgrounds. I say that because the Christian segments connect to any background that believes in a personal God (which is to say, a God that exists as a divine being – with a personality, voice, and human characteristics of some sort) and the spirituality that believes in a divine force (which has no character that could be humanized – think like the Force from Star Wars, which derived it's mythology from Buddhist, Shinto, and Zen spirituality) and the effect is a very well-rounded worldview. Provided that you know it's not going to be a proper memoir, this would be a good addition to a college-level class on philosophy or religion. Just be sure to go in, willing to learn.
At the end of reading this book, I found myself feeling that it had been at least a worthwhile month I'd spent with it. I would have preferred a more up-front admission that it would turn out to be more of a spiritual self-help book – hence, I'm inclined to give this book 3 out of 4 stars with the addendum that if the description was edited to be more accurate to the genre, that score would increase. I judge, not because I'm biased to genres, but because descriptions should be informative and when they mislead, it detracts from the experience.
Overall, this was an informed read – just be ready to take notes, in case this material is on the final.
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The Unbound Soul
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