Healing Loss: Choose Love Now Book Review

Posted by miracarroll on May 16, 2012 · 50 Comments 

Healing Loss: Choose Love Now Book Review

by Shelagh Cosgrove

from Miracles magazine May-June 2012

Healing Loss is a beautiful book, both in its physical form, and in its rich and very inspiring content. Anyone could benefit from working with it who is healing from perceived loss, however large or small, however recent or deeply embedded in the past. Just to look at the glorious cover image, “One Truth,” of a heart bursting with light, by Daniel B. Holeman, is to experience healing and wonder. And scattered throughout the book are other very beautiful reproductions by this same gifted artist, as well as images by another equally talented one—Francene Hart—that complement the intent of this book so well.

This is also a truly magnificent book for anyone who is a student of A Course in Miracles, for Carroll makes frequent and highly appropriate selections from the Text and Workbook in every chapter. She also makes helpful reference to writers and practitioners in the realm of psychotherapy, spirituality and healing, with powerful passages from the Bible, the Dalai Lama, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and others, applying them to the very specific tasks we each have in the course of working through the stages of grief that bring feelings to the surface and allow healing to take place.

Carroll readily acknowledges that no book will ever replace professional therapy if needed, but this book comes close to that experiential level, I feel. Underlying issues can be safely explored and changes of mind take place. It thus offers an application of healing techniques that no mere words by themselves can accomplish.

The subtitle of the book is Choose Love Now. This is the answer to all suffering, of course, but needs to be seen with reference to real human experiences. A three-word slogan just doesn’t do it. For this, Carroll supplies a very helpful list of 20 “Touchstones,” as she calls them. These are designed specifically with that transformation from suffering to love in mind. Each “touchstone” works very carefully with specific aspects of the process we all must go through, acknowledging the places where we get stuck. These “touchstones” put the reader through a very encouraging yet gentle way to achieve the peace we seek, and certain release from the pain, once forgiveness of self and others is brought into the picture. Our “Oneness” is remembered. There is no separation; ultimately there is no loss. A close look at topics such as “responsibility,” “prayer,” “anger,” “past and future,” “emotional healing work,” “mental healing work,” “balance,” “comfort,” “beauty,” and “trust” are just some of these topics, and are lovingly presented with some of the author’s own struggles with precisely these challenges in her own life.

Finally, a very useful part of the book is in the exercises that follow these chapters, designed to help with not just understanding the concepts but helping the reader to actively work on those “blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence” we are all only too familiar with, whether we are currently in deep grief for a loss or fairly content with our lives at whatever level of awareness seems manageable for the time being.

This book is not just a quick fix. You have to work it. I’m happy to have this reference work of great comfort, beauty and wisdom close to hand, and expect to find new insights into my own catalog of “losses,” and the blessings, after all, they come bearing in their hands.

Shelagh Cosgrove is a student of A Course in Miracles, and grateful to find illumination on the path to wholeness.

 

Miracles Magazine is a bimonthly publication on the topic of A Course in Miracles by Jon Mundy’s Institute for Personal Religion.  www.miraclesmagazine.org

Filed under A Course in Miracles, Emotional Healing, Forgiveness, Healing, Healing Loss, Mastery, Self-Help, Spiritual Healing, Spirituality · Tagged with A Course in Miracles, ACIM, Forgiveness, Healing, Mastery, Self-Help, Spirituality