Title: White Hot Truth: Clarity For Keeping It Real On Your Spiritual Path From One Seeker To Another
Author: Danielle LaPorte
Publisher: Virtuonica (May 16, 2017)
Hardcover: 264 pages
Genre: Self Help, Spiritual, Mental Health, Personal Development
This book has come to me during a period where I've been way more quiet than ever before. Have I been seeking some inner knowledge? Not really. I've been on auto-pilot, again. I don’t think I’m alone in this common trap. However, I’m not thrilled that I fall into over and over again. Learning my lesson? I'm not too sure. It's not necessarily about me (but that is for another post), but it is about me. I've been giving myself the space I need right now to be of service where I need to be. In caregiver mode - but let's be clear there is a fine line between being a good caregiver and falling into martyrdom. The latter I am not, but that is not to say that sometimes I don't recognize my efforts (or want to wallow in that feeling for a while). In this quiet period, I've started to feel less clarity, especially around purpose.
Lately I've chimed a mantra that I suspect has been out of tune. The mantra is "This isn't about me". "This isn't about me, this isn't about me, this isn't about me." Let me be clear. I'm figuring out I have that slightly wrong. Yes, there are things that aren't about me. I need that boundary. I can be overly empathic and take things on way too personally. To respect those I love and care for, I also must separate my experience from theirs. And, there it is. That acceptance that I too have my own experience (truth) that is separate from those around me, and that I can, and I should acknowledge that. In that acceptance I find the real truth.
Clarity isn't so cut and dry. It's feels unbearable at times. Uncomfortable. Clarity is that knowing. Once you know, you know that you have always. Known.
Clarity creates the freedom to seek your truth. Clarity is the power of acknowledgement. Clarity is the chains of not turning your cheek any more. Clarity has no excuses. Clarity is light and heavy. Clarity is both dark and golden. Hiding under the covers and coming out for air. Clarity is the tunnel vision, eye on the prize, dancing in wonder. It’s forgetting the pains that it took to get to your truth. Because you're here.
White Hot Truth explores the conflicts between spiritual aspiration and our compulsion to improve. From an author I love who is named one of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100, Danielle LaPorte.
Danielle asks a much needed question. Has your self-help become self-criticism?
She reminds seekers to fully own their wisdom by having a good laugh (and maybe a good cry) at all the ways we’ve been trying to improve on our self-improvement.
Does the book deliver?
Danielle had me at Chapter 1: The Church of Self Improvement, When Worship Feels Like Work. Look, I'm thirty something and I'll admit I've had my fill of all the self help I could read, hear, sit through the past few years. I mean it’s so hot right now. I closed it all out for a period. Tired. I needed some space.
Part of me wishes I found this self improvement world when I was in my twenties. The whole, if I knew then what I know now rings in my ears from time to time.
The affirmative "Hot Truth" arrived through the soulful voice of LaPorte in the very first chapter. I'm listening.
You think you need an architect, but you are already a temple. - WHT | Danielle Laporte
This book encouraged me to explore my own path of self-improvement all the way through to my continued devotion. I was reminded that I am the best at trusting myself, that I don’t need permission to slow down, and it offers the fist bump to keep going.
If you haven't yet, read it. I dare you to explore this, and if you too are a seeker. Continue to seek.
I recommend this book. Visit www.daniellelaporte.com for more info on purchase and so much more (ahem - bookclub, speaking tour, more, more, more.)
