Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution

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If you approach your reading of "Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution" expecting to experience the quirky hilarity of Rainn Wilson's iconic Dwight Schrute character from "The Office," then you're likely to find "Soul Boom" a bit of a disappointment.

In a fun exercise, quotes from “Kung Fu” and from holy texts are presented together, and it is impressively difficult to differentiate; for example, “Peace lies not in the world … but in the man who walks the path” (“Kung Fu”) and “There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind” (Buddha). I really struggled with this one. This is a topic that I'm not all that comfortable with, so I thought who better to make it more palatable than Rainn Wilson? I'm not religious. The correct term would be atheist, but I have a bit of an aversion to that one. The more outspoken atheists are so smug that it's really off-putting to me. I've always had the attitude that you should let people live. Let them believe what they want as long as no one is getting hurt. I would never attempt to talk someone out of their religious beliefs, and I just wish they would show me the same respect and not try to push theirs on me all the time. I believe religion and church can be really beneficial. A sense of community, support and making death a little easier, depending on one's beliefs. That's how I felt going into this book. Now I am angry.Hachette Book Group is a leading book publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the third-largest publisher in the world. Social Media It took me a long, long time and a great deal of therapuetic work to discover the spiritual, emotional, and psychological tools I needed to understand and eventually quell that inner discomfort and chronic imbalance. SOCCER Rusnák, Morris, Frei help Sounders beat Dallas 2-0 in series opener Seattle is unbeaten in its last 10 matches

Wilson brings up many excellent points and is incredibly well informed about the world’s major religions through his Baha’i faith journey. While he strays off on tangents at times, this book feels like the reader is in a conversation with the author. His thoughts on the ideal religion were interesting and his call to action for people to act deeply was spot on. To some, spirituality is completely synonymous with religious practice and “organized religion”: church, God, and so forth. To others, it can mean rituals involving hallucinogens. To many, because the word “spirit” is in it, it means that ghosts are involved. To still others, like the model/celebrity, it can mean exorcisms by Swiss shamans. Thought this was good. If I had read this in high school, before my degree in philosophy and starting my masters in divinity I think this would’ve been very pivotal in my deconstruction. Now, this is another tool (hammer, maybe?) I can give to others who are at the beginning stages of their own deconstruction journey.We need a change of heart, a reframing of all our conceptions and a new orientation of our activities. The inward life of man as well as his outward environment have to be reshaped if human salvation is to be secured.

Wilson] is selling nothing but belief in better, and it’s a really smart book that draws from so many quotes that you know and want to know. And it’s Rainn Wilson in a way you haven’t seen or heard him before, which is talking not about make believe, but about what is all too real.”The God of SoulBoom is distant and elusive—a “Big Guy/Gal/Force/God/Creator thingy,” in Wilson’s words—that mostly just has “our best interests in mind.” Although Wilson’s theism moves beyond a vapid “spirituality” and includes a public, rather than simply private, dimension of faith, it does not do enough to differentiate itself from what sociologist Christian Smith has termed “moralistic therapeutic deism.” In contrast, the God of the Bible is engaged and relational, constantly drawing close to his creation and expressing love, concern, anger, and sacrifice toward humans, who reflect God’s own image. Here I am. Sitting in my office during the early weeks of the COVID-19 quarantine, furiously outlining the book on big spiritual ideas that I’ve been wanting to write for years. “Now’s my chance!” I say to myself (while wearing the same sweatpants I’ve worn for the past six days with the little stain where I wiped my cinnamon-raisin oatmeal on my thigh). Here’s the big opportunity! Hours and hours of free time to vomit forth a potpourri of ideas on all my favorite topics: the journey of the soul, life after death, the Big Guy Upstairs, and the personal and universal spiritual transformation of society! Remember that scene from Seinfeld? Where George’s worlds collide? His then fiancé — the woman George would later accidentally kill with poison envelopes — becoming friends with Elaine? Not a good thing! It’s outrageous. Egregious. Preposterous.

Rainn Wilson… takes a profound, humorous, reflective look at faith and spirituality….[He] is fearless and funny in mining the world’s religious and spiritual traditions…for nuggets of truth and wisdom.” How did the death of your father help you deal with this topic and then write about it so others could read it in this book? Author Rainn Wilson has presented a lofty goal here... To create a Soul Boom, a spiritual revolution. In fact, he believes that it is absolutely necessary to our survival. Normally I find this type of book to be long on inspiration and short on actionable steps, but Wilson goes farther than most in pointing out changes that must be made and offering alternative ideas that, while idealistic, have actual potential.Why does a guy famous for playing a weird, officious nerd on one of America’s most beloved TV comedies (and many other offbeat characters) want to write about the soul, religion, the afterlife, sacredness, and the need for society to undergo a spiritual reimagining? Why is the beet-farming, paper-selling, tangentially Amish man-baby with the giant forehead and short-sleeved mustard shirts writing about the meaning of life? Rainn Wilson is best known for playing a paper salesman named Dwight Schrute on The Office. Most people that I have encountered had no idea how devoutly religious Wilson is to his faith which is the Baha’i Faith founded in the 1800s by a man named Bahá’u’lláh whose claim is to be the fulfillment of all the major world religions. I cried when I read about the change Wilson saw in his students over the course of months practicing more mindful and compassionate behaviours.