Ecstasy is a New Frequency **

This is a book by Chris Griscom, affiliated with something called "The Light Institute." I have mixed feelings about the book.

Let me say, first off, that I would not have bought this book or picked it up on my own. It was loaned to me by my taiji instructor when I asked about auras. The writing style...is annoying. Fuzzy and smug. The fuzziness is somewhat understandable. It's difficult to put some of this stuff in concrete terms. It's the smugness that bothers me. The "I have found something entirely new and everyone needs to see" attitude that permeates so many New Age writings.

Griscom also believes in a kind of reincarnation that I looked into and dismissed. Namely, that souls choose each and every incarnation on their own in order to learn a new lesson. I have no doubt that some souls are advanced enough to do this, but I am equally certain that many more of them are just being flung into the material world with no conscious control. Some souls probably get reabsorbed so that new ones can be created, as well, so to say that every soul has countless past lives is misleading.

Looking past the annoyingly fluffy and smug language, there is some worthwhile information. In my other blog, I described using one of the exercises to stop my family from projecting their emotions into me. I would bet that two years ago, it wouldn't have worked. I wouldn't have had the chi control. I'm not sure it would have worked even a year ago. Yet Griscom casually mentions this exercise without giving any background technique to learn to actually project energy this way. Still, there aren't a lot of exercises mentioned. Mostly the book is a lot of fluffy ideals (I'll reserve judgment on her enlightened dolphins and whales until I have a personal encounter, but I will say I have doubts). Fine, we have an emotional body, astral body, higher mind, higher self, spiritual body. These are not new ideas, and I would like to find a book with a clearer description of them since Griscom gets carried away on her own wavelength.

The thing that was least convincing to me was the idea that this was the 'new' age, that something profound and different was taking place in this very age. The only thing that is 'new' is the degree to which these concepts are taking root in the West. They've been known in the East for thousands of years. I also got a sense that Griscom advocates forcing spiritual development, rather than allowing it. Now, at one point she specifically admonishes against forcing, but a lot of her discriptions seem to imply forcing.

So overall, I'd give this book two stars (**) out of five. A good introduction to the ideas of these astral bodies, etc, but a very biased and fluffy one.