In "Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing," readers are asked to reject their religious beliefs.Hitting on the same core market as Tolle, Chopra, and even Dr. Phil, Myss has garned support for her wildly accepted books by pointing out how broken we all are.
We are broken, aren't we? We are tired. We've endured a tough economy, the Asian tsunami, divorce, 9-11, and lots of personal struggles we never tell anyone. That is what Myss wants to address. But she does it the wrong way. Seven steps seem easy enough to fix our mistakes, hurts, our loneliness and our rejections.
According to Myss, the math runs a little like this:
A Hindu practice + a Christian practice + a Jewish practice, mixed just so = healing and inner strength. She doesn't stop there. She adds Buddhism whenever she can.
Now, Christians who follow the Bible know this is against the rules. In fact, Jews who who read the same Scripture in Deutoronomy know this is against the rules. Why does this matter in a book review? Because categorically, Myss' asserts that Judeo-Christian theology lies when it says, "put no other god before me," and what Jews and Christians believe is wrong. "Anatomy of the Spirit" is all about syncretism, and Myss fails when she thinks spiritually grounded people will accept this.
Mixing Gods is a bad idea, but Myss presents it as a possibility. Not acknowledged is that a Jew and Christian must both reject a key Scripture to do so. Moses was pretty ticked when he came back with the Ten Commandments and saw what the Jews were doing with the gold idol. That's what Myss is asking Catholic, Jewish and Protestant readers to do: build a new god from nearby resources.
Dr. Phil has more to say than Myss when it comes to healing. He doesn't mask his ideas with a false spirituality. Instead, he just tells the reader to fess up where we've messed up, and to get over the pain others have caused us. He tells us to move on, and start doing what we should be doing. Myss, however, muddies it with watered-down mistaken theology.
More depth and truth can be found in "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things" by Robert Fulghum. Fulgrum breaks it down into a more honest language.
Anthony Trendl
