Mystics, Spirit Collective, and Enlightenment

Three book chapters from exciting writers found in one publication, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters.

Anything with the word mystic in the title will pull me in to read it. Jack and the medieval mystics Chapter 1 was no exception. The author, Ruth Smith, wrote Gold of Pleasure: A Novel of Christina of Markyate which Goodreads readers have scored a 5 out of 5. After I read the first chapter I wanted to know what else she had written.

You’ll want to read her first chapter and all the following ones to find out what student Jack does next.

I locked up my bike and then made for Starbucks. The glass was so darkly tinted that without going in, it was difficult to see whether the girl with the purple hair was there or not. I pushed open the door and sauntered past the line of waiting customers. One guy gave me a look but I took no notice.

In Calling Our Spirits Home: Gateways to Full Consciousness Carla Woody explores the Spirit Collective. She explores the age-old opposing views of nature or nurture. Are we born preprogrammed or do we learn as we grow? This immediately makes me think of irreligion (16%) or the invisible deity in which most of the world believes (Wikipedia doesn’t provide a total percentage for this).

As I read further into Carla’s preface, tears prickled my eyes and my cheeks flushed. By the end of the page, I was snotty-nosed and in tears and determined to read the following chapters. Bookmarked in my Enlightenment list. How will you feel when you read it?

I am and have been a Pilgrim, Seeker, Initiate, Priestess — just as you are and have been. None of us have shed these separate frames. We only step into them again at different places in the circles of our lives and take them deeper with each replay of our particular venue.

How did I miss bringing this one to your attention? I spotted it in May! I’d like to present the work of Azadehruh Alam, Part One: Message in Time.

The foreword intrigued me with the mention of a warrior and a philosopher. Then the main character goes on to wake up in her childhood bedroom at her parents’ house. Her head is sore. What happened to her? Why is she there? She’s searching for something but what?

The world, with its hierarchies of power in a variety of spheres, may have devalued and disregarded her, labeled her as a mere slip of a caramel-coloured girl. But, anyone who’d bothered to look a bit deeper, would have seen that from an early age, she had the heart of a warrior and the mind of a philosopher.

Please join me next week for more book chapters.

Karen Madej is a freelance writer. She writes about injustices in her publication, Transformation Pending. Pens editorials for ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, and Technology Hits on the Medium platform. And creates fictional stories published by Vocal.