Read: A Blessing in Disguise

A Blessing in Disguise: 39 Life Lessons from Today's Greatest Teachers
By Andrea Joy Cohen
Published by the Penguin Group.

I have the National Library Board to thank for a great collection of books that I can borrow and read. I suppose on the average, I have been reading at least one book per month. A Blessing in Disguise is one of the latest book I have read.

This book in some ways is indeed heart-warming to read. A number of wise contributors shared their personal stories. Many of the personal stories that were shared were about the dark times that the contributors have went through. Interestingly, like the book's title says, many of these challenging period have helped provided the contributors with some form of healing wisdom and/or a deeper understanding of life.

It has helped me make a bit more sense on the darker moments of life with a positive light. I like the way that the book was divided into various sections namely: Overcoming Challenges, Soul Expression, Death and Dying, Life's Everyday Lessons, Spirituality, (Family, Love and Relationships).

If you were to ask me to recall the details of the various life lessons that I have read in this book, I may not recall completely. Anyway, one of the chapters of the book reminded me to live each day fully by choice and not by default. That reminded me of a friend who enlightened me that happiness in a choice.

Another chapter has a rather mysterious story which illustrates a quote by Albert Einstein "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it." It was interesting to read about how we could find answers to the questions that we have been stuck with by finding our soul's voice and letting down our defenses.

Admittedly, the reason why I picked up this book was because I have found out that one of the chapters, To die in one life is to blossom in another was written by Tama J Kieves whose book I had read some time ago. It got me thinking about some of my personal dilemmas: to choose the safe and conventional or the out-of-convention ideas that at times ring in me. I shall remind myself "what feels like dying is probably birthing".

There's quite a lot of wisdom in this book. For now, I shall leave these wisdom to the back-burner and move on to another book.