The Wishing Year. (book review)

I am currently reading this book -

http://www.amazon.com/Wishing-Year-Memoir-Fulfilled-Desire/dp/B002SB8PJC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297192627&sr=8-1

- and it's just so great, that I can't stop thinking about or talking about it.

Basically, it is the true story of a woman who decided to spend a year "wishing", or using "the law of attraction" to get what she wanted out of life. Her desires are to buy a home, find spiritual peace/fulfillment, and a romantic partner. Each chapter encompasses a month, so you can follow her on this journey.

I am not even halfway through this book yet, but I am finding it uplifting, hopeful, and thought-provoking. I relate to the author on many levels... she is uncomfortable with the idea of wishing for material things, and a believer of "God helps those who help themselves." I feel the same way - sure, I'd love a new dining room table, and my wardrobe could use a serious makeover. I think of these things in passing, and I even daydream a little. But would I ever pray "Lord, please give me some new clothes and an antique round pedestal table with two explanding leaves"? No way. I pray for others, for spiritual things and healing for the many imperfections in myself, but never for material things.

What I find fascinating about the author, and see in myself (though she has not touched on it yet and I am not sure if she will), is that she doesn't seem to feel deserving of her desires. She has massive guilt for things she has done in her past (which she didn't even begin to talk about until the 4th chapter). Boy, can I relate to that. She mentions at one point that if you look at the root meaning for the word "remorse", it basically means "to bite again." How true is that, that we continue to let things eat at/bite at us when we "choose" to carry so much remorse around with us? Of course, this might be an easier thing to let go of  if the whole world wasn't so darn judgemental... maybe I should wish for that? ;)

Anyway, I could go on about this forever, but I wanted to share two paragraphs from the book that really "spoke" to me:

"You just have to shift the paradigm," Carole has told me more than once, and I hear her voice now as I drive through the gaudy green and yellow hills. "How can you receive the blessing of abundance when your mind is closed like a fist?"

Wow. It's amazing, really, how deft her question is. How neatly it replaces one worldview with another - so that what, for centuries, might simply have been called "greed" becomes "receiving the blessing of abundance." And what, for centuries, might have been seen as the virtue of self-restraint begins to look more like the absence of gratitude.

I hope you will read this book and love it as much as I do so far!