Quest: The Spiritual Path to Success

Various new age pop-spiritual authors dispense advice about how to "relinquish fear," "lead a more flowing life" and "adopt the abundance mentality" to the accompaniment of a soothing musical soundtrack and spacey stock footage shots of natural scenes. Depending on your level of tolerance, you will find yourself either "embracing the mystery that is you" (warning: I nearly fell off the couch on the first try) or wondering whether this tape was made for the profits of the self appointed 'prophets'. Featured here are interviews with Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul), and Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul), among others. While some of their insights resonate with basic truths, other bits of advice are more ponderous. At one point in the tape, Stephen Covey says "the more you can get centered upon principles that never change, you can change your response to everything else which can't change." Okay. I think I get it. And how about these: "Out of nothing, came something, which created everything," "you create energy, you get matter," and "we move forward in order to go back again." Hmmm. Interesting. Let's hope I don't get behind him in traffic. If the popularity of the books these authors have published is any indication, this tape will be sure to please a large segment of the beat generation who are now lawyers and therefore will be the only humans on earth to whom some of it makes sense. Recommended, with unresolved negative emotions which I can get beyond if I try (also called "reservations"). Aud: H, C, P. (R. Ray)