The Making of a Mystic – Writing as
a Form of Spiritual Emergence, Paddy Fievet, Ph.D., Cloverhurst
Publications, High Point, NC, 2014, 185pp, $14.95.
The
Making of a Mystic is a personal account of the
author’s journey to spiritual transformation.
For
many years, Paddy Fievet experienced anxiety and panic attacks, which kept her
from freely interacting with the world at large. A panic attack at a conference
led to a chance encounter with an allergy intuitive who used acupressure as a
therapeutic intervention to help relieve her symptoms.
After
that meeting, Fievet began energy medicine therapy with the woman, Maria, to
identify and eliminate the allergies that caused her attacks. Eventually, she
was invited to a seminar at Maria’s house intended to open the participants to
receiving information from God. Fievet explained that she was reluctant to
attend, not just because she wasn’t especially religious at that point in her
life, but because she felt unworthy to accept a message from God.
One
of the exercises involved writing down a question that only the querent would
be able to understand. After writing the question asking why she wasn’t good
enough, Fievet began to receive answers via a form of automatic writing. The
exercise led her to connect to the Divine Inner Self present in everyone and
began to help her to face and heal her feelings of inadequacy.
As
a guide to channeling the inner voice, The
Making of a Mystic is broken into chapters headed to suggest prompts for
writing exercises, which can be incredibly helpful when one doesn’t know where
to start. Fievet shares some of her experiences on her path and often advises
on learning to be still as a way to hearing the inner voice. It also includes a
chapter of verses written while doing her own meditative journaling that lend
some insight into what she saw or heard.
The book was
an interesting account of Fievet’s journey, but in many ways, it was too
personal for me to feel a connection to her experience. Often, I felt as if
there was no way I could ever experience what she had because I wasn’t good enough to receive Divine
messages. I don’t believe it was the author’s intent to create that impression,
but the more I read, the less I felt in touch with what she was writing.
Perhaps
The Making of a Mystic is one of
those books that needs to be read (or re-read) at the time one is most open to
receiving its message, but that doesn’t mean it has no value for the casual
reader. I think the idea of using writing to get in touch with one’s inner self
is a tremendous one. Any path towards transformation, spiritual or otherwise, requires
one to be able to look closely at oneself. The search needs to be an honest
one, so asking a difficult question like ‘why am I not good enough?’ lends
itself to hearing some difficult answers.
If
you feel that you’ve already started down a path of personal enlightenment, I
can recommend this book as a way to enhance whatever methods you are currently
using in your quest, but I would be less likely to suggest it for someone just
beginning their search. While it may speak to someone else in a different way
than it did to me, my concern would be that reading it would stop or delay one
from beginning their own journey.
- H Luan
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