One Day My Soul Just Opened Up: 40 Days and 40 Nights Toward Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth [Hardcover]

I don't know about anybody else, but when I look inside myself, I see that despite my best intentions and genuine desire to be "good," I often act in ways that trouble my own conscience. Ms. Vanzant's assertion that this stems from the fact that I have not yet really embraced my God-ness leaves me troubled, empty, and confused.

At least she's honest. Deep into the book she takes her "your truth is your truth" philosophy (complete moral relativism) to its frightening but logical conclusion when she (essentially) defends Adolph Hitler. She never says what he did was RIGHT, but that judging him as wrong is not a productive use of our energy. I happen to believe that one of the most productive things we can ever do with our energy is to condemn genocidal maniacs. If we can't stand up and call that wrong, then what on earth IS wrong?

According to Ms. Vanzant, that simply depends on what you decide. I don't want to live in a world like that, and am convinced such a world would be far from Ms. Vanzant's utopian dreams. The very possibility that Hitler did what was right for him is exactly why that concerns me. Hitler has been almost univerally condemned and this is because there is something in most people that recognizes evil at this level and calls it what it is. Ms. Vanzant would have us believe our world would be a better place if we discarded even this basic recognition of moral bankruptcy.

There has to be another answer, for this book's answer contradicts itself at every turn. I already have the things I pray for? Then why do I bother to pray for them at all? I act badly sometimes but am really divine? Then the meaning of divinity has been perverted beyond recognition. Who cares if we're all divine if we act in such ways?

What would the world look like if everyone in the world bought this book and lived their lives in accordance with it? It would be a world where most people hold hands around the fire and sing Kum-Ba-Ya, while the Hitlers and good old everyday wrong-doers of our world run around doing what THEY think is right, since the book gives complete license for "whatever you feel is right" behaviors. It disregards the likelihood that often our thoughts and feelings are a terrible gauge of what kinds of behaviors are and are not beneficial to us and others. Ms. Vanzant's solution to evil in the world seems to be to overlook it, convincing us it's not productive to call it what it is.

The fact is that it doesn't really matter if one's soul "opens up." The question is what is one's soul opened up to? If you are looking for a book that will tell you what you want to hear about spirituality (that you are a god, that there's nothing essentially wrong with humanity, that evil comes only from lack of enlightenment, that everything that you need to be fulfilled is already inside of you, etc.), then this is the book for you. But if you're looking for a book that deals realistically with the problem of evil, with human nature, and with what it means to grapple with both a human and a spiritual nature, then don't give this book a second look.

I believe Ms. Vanzant's book is an insult to the reality, the severity, and the complexity of the human condition.