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Unconditional Bliss *Howard Raphael Cushnir *Quest Books £6.99

This remarkably lucid and plainspoken book, refreshing in its brevity, concerns itself with the principal end of every person: finding real happiness. The crux of his presentation is that our resistance to what is, to the situations and events we confront, keeps us from being happy, and that unconditioned awareness, which fully accepts any present state of affairs without mind-based resistance that either wants it to continue or cease, is the key to unconditioned happiness. To my mind, Cushnir's book is uniquely notable for two reasons. First, instead of speaking of unconditioned awareness as a state of detachment, he speaks of it in terms of a capacity to "accept" conditions as they are, which is fully consistent with acting to change those conditions. While unconditioned awareness is indeed a state of detachment or disidentification from mind, I believe that many people will find it easier to understand when described as "acceptance." This is partly because so many of those largely unfamiliar with spiritual works and practices have preconceived, and often false, ideas about what spiritual detachment is.   Second, unlike other books, he offers a wealth of actual examples of self talk, or inner dialogue, as a way of showing how a person could move closer to accepting situations perceived as adverse. He points out that we must first become aware of inner resistance to a situation, and then pose two key questions of ourselves: (1) What is happening right now? and (2) Can I be with it? Through his use of specific examples to illustrate this line of questioning, Cushnir reveals the nature of acceptance in a way that is especially illuminating.

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