After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path [Paperback]

After the Ecstasy is generously sprinkled with the actual words, sometimes half a page or a page long, of people who have been meditating 15, 30, even 40 years. You'll find out what brought them to the meditative path to begin with, and what they've learned along the way. It's fascinating.

There are lots of good anecdotes in this book; interesting and illuminating anecdotes (most of them are true stories). In many Buddhist and Zen books, you read the same stories again and again in different books, but here you find fresh stories, some ancient, some modern, and all very good.

Jack Kornfield is first and foremost a meditation teacher, so woven throughout the book is plenty of good coaching. The meditative path is difficult, and good teaching is vital. I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, so I've specialized in knowing the difference between teachings that help and those that are merely interesting. In After the Ecstasy, you'll find interesting reading material AND coaching that will truly help you in your practice.

I haven't re-read or revisited it, but it's wisdom stays with me. I'm concerned with my thinning hair, have troubled relations with friends, am pulled into politics at work. My apartment is a mess, my finances aren't in much better shape, I don't go out as much as I would like, I'm not making art as much as I would like. I get angry, tired, frustrated, upset, bored, all within the course of a day.

There's a book out there "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A book that changes lives." I read it despite it's silly name and silly cover. It didn't do much to change my life.

Then there's "After the Ectacy the Laundry." Has it changed my life? No, it hasn't either.

I can almost see you, the reader of this review saying "It didn't change your life? And you're still giving it 5 stars?" and in that, I see myself a just a year ago.

Our society makes too much of escaping the every day: The Laundry, the chores, work, commuting, cooking, cleaning, strained relationships with parents, family, and friends, guilt, anger, frustration, fear, and worry. We seek to escape these things into the magical world of unlimited money and advanced spirituality.

Advertising is based almost entirely on this aspect of our lives. "Buy my product and your life will change" each commercial seems to say. Buy a book by Dan Millman to become a Peaceful Warrior. Buy a sneaker by Nike and escape into a world of physical perfection and love of challenge. Buy some real estate (or a book on buying real estate by Robert Kiyosaki) and become financially independant. Everyone, every single one of us wants to escape.

The book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn states that the hippies of the 60s were trying to escape, but they couldn't because they couldn't identify the bars of the prison. So then what are the bars of the prison?

I have a phrase that I like to use lately. "Salvation tends to be in the opposite direction of where you're looking." Most people get angry when I say that to them. What do I mean by that? What is the opposite direction of the one they're looking in?

I had a friend named Liza who was very into the spiritual journey. She wanted to escape this world. She thought LSD "showed you the other side, but never let you through" and read books by Carlos Casteneda. She believed that there was an escape, but it required a shift too subtle to grasp.

I agree, the shift is too subtle for most people to grasp. Most seekers never find it because it lies in the opposite direction of seeking. What is the opposite of seeking? Being present. Seeking splits you in two, and that split makes you vulnerable to many, many things. Seeking means that half of you is looking for something. I can almost see it, a neurotic half of you running around the attic of your brain trying to find something you misplaced that, if found, will make you whole again.

Being present, ah, now that's entirely different.

Will being present end anxiety? I doubt it. Will being present pay for your new Jetta? No. Then what does being present do for you?

My girlfriend is seeing a therapist. I barely talk to someone who was at one point my closest friend. I no longer call things "mistakes" I call it "being human." We are all human. The belief that you are somehow flawed is wrong because it implies that there is an "opposite of flawed" that you can be. You are not flawed, you are human.

Many of our problems stem from thinking we are different from other people and that other people are different from us. My girlfriend sees a therapist because she believes she is different from other people, that she is flawed. My ex-best friend and I rarely talk because we each believe the other is different, somehow selfish or manipulative.

After the Ecstacy the Laundry does something no other book I've read has done. It's turned my spiritual journey on it's head. I look now at other spiritual seekers and think "The integration that you seek can only be found if you stop seeking. It is the proverbial goal that prevents you from understanding the journey."

Jack Kornfield's book is amazingly human. It makes no promises and offers no illusions. It says "this oatmeal is oatmeal. your thinning hairline is a thinning hairline. your friday night is your friday night. your job is your job. the politics at your job are politics at your job. your insecurities are your insecurities. your worries are your worries. your ego is your ego."

I wonder, sometimes, where Liza is now. The last time I saw her she told me she was living in a neighborhood that's very trendy right now. She was dressed in the latest underground style. I didn't get a chance to talk to her about her journey, or my own.

There's a phrase that captures the truth of spiritual enlightenment presented in this book. "What is the difference between a Buddhist and a non Buddhist? The non-Buddhist think's there's a difference."

What is the difference between an enlightened person and a non-enlightened person? The non-enlightened person think's that there's an "enlightenment."