Journey to the Heart

April 1, 1996
Beattie, whose "The Language of Letting Go" (1991) was a best-seller, now slices her message into 365 daily aphorisms, or as she calls them, meditations. There's nothing much wrong with this book as volumes of New Age philosophy go, but it doesn't break any new "ground, either. The framework derives from an actual automobile trip that Beattie took across the West with stops at mystical sites such as Sedona, Arizona, and Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. This is no travelogue, however. Neither is it like her previous books, which were, as Beattie testifies, "grounded in pain." The focus here is on discovering a new way to live through joy and hope. The meditations themselves, however, are hardly fresh: "Worrying doesn't help. Our worries are self-punishment, a form of not forgiving ourselves, not loving ourselves, not trusting." Or, "Right now, this moment, things are working out. . ." . Everything is working out, moving forward, evolving." It is only through a certain amount of repetition that Beattie can come up with 365 of these meditations. Perhaps best known for "Codependent No More" (1989), Beattie has added the New Age crowd to her followers. Expect demand where crystals glimmer. ((Reviewed April 1, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)