The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire

The visible, rational world most of us are familiar with is only a small part of life. Beyond that visible world is a sea of possibility that connects us to every other living thing and, thus, to a pool of intelligence that can help us move far beyond anything we could strive for individually in the material world. The paradox is that only surrendering the egoistic self to this broader intelligence gives us the freedom to create our individual destiny. Chopra unfolds his ideas with poetic conciseness and such thematic coherence that paying attention is effortless. Using the ideas will be more difficult, as he says with Dr. Phil clarity, in that only you can pay attention to the signals and create the intention that manifesting your possibilities requires. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

July 21, 2003
Devotees of the bestselling author (The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success), who founded the Chopra Center for Well-Being, will welcome his latest ideas on how to live a more fulfilling life. He employs his familiar combination of scientific theory and new age mysticism to present this guide to harnessing what he calls synchro-destiny. According to Chopra, an important level of human existence consists of the nonlocal or spiritual domain. Drawing on the example of physics's unpredictable quantum leap, when an electron unpredictably jumps from one orbit to another, he maintains that our own lives too are unpredictable, that it is impossible know what direction life will take. However, such randomness in the universe is actually interconnected. Unpredictable coincidences are, the author maintains, important messages that can be used to achieve one's true destiny. This process of synchro-destiny consists of connecting the individual soul to the universal soul through a number of mental exercises, provided here. Although Chopra's theories are expressed in a confusing and repetitive manner, the techniques he advocates may prove interesting to those who enjoy his humanistic, if convoluted, approach to self-help. Among the seven principles for achieving synchro-destiny are the daily practice of meditation, a continued focus on one's deepest desires and the acknowledgment of emotional pain. 15-city author tour.