BOOK REVIEW: Enlightenment is Sexy™ by Valerie Gangas
As her mother passed away, Valerie Gangas sunk into such debilitating depression that she was planning to end her life. Luckily, a chance encounter with a compassionate stranger led Valerie to learn Transcendental Meditation.
After the first twenty minutes of meditating, Valerie opened her eyes and realized that everything she had ever thought she knew was wrong.
The peace and joy that followed completely reshaped her life.
In her book Enlightenment is Sexy™ Valerie recounts her journey and the lessons she has learned along the way. She writes, “I am no guru or a spiritual know-it-all. I’m just a regular girl who had an amazing experience… and then it continued. I don’t know everything but what I do know I have shared with you.”
That’s what makes the book so significant.
Every woman’s guide to a magical life
Valerie speaks to her contemporaries in their language and about their lives. Her experiences – in relationships, at school, at work – are something any modern gal can relate to.
Valerie’s awakening is no other-worldly affair forever out of our mortal reach. Instead, her new perspective on things is carved out right in the center of the everyday life as we all know it.
The path that Valerie lays out is therefore not an escape route. It’s not about retreating to a cave to get away from it all – it’s about stepping right in the middle of life and finding joy and bliss in it AS IT IS.
This does not mean that Valerie will not invite and encourage her readers to make any changes, from cleaning up one’s closet to carefully examining the people who surround you. Yet these alterations rest on a shift in understanding and experiencing the same old life we are all living.
Following the flow
Ultimately, Valerie inspires her readers to live with courage which rests on a sense of unity, direction and purpose without clinging on to the illusion of control. Her formula is really simple: By deepening your sense of the flow of the universe, you can experience the magic of life and not be caught up in fossilized concepts of what must be in order for you to be happy.
Then, all amazing things start to happen.
Valerie begins her book with an account of how her spiritual doors got blown wide open. In the following chapters, she guides her readers with her life story to examine the aspects of our lives that can spiral us to perpetual misery – the illusion of control, settling in love, trying to fit in, fixating on end results, getting trapped in thinking and holding on to grief.
Instead of these unhealthy ways of relating to life, Valerie offers her positive plan. She encourages the readers to trust the universe, get rid of things and people that bring you down, follow your gut, plan and make things happen in cooperation with life’s flow, meditate, forgive, allow emotions to come and go, learn from personal experiences, and pray.
The book which booms through intimacy and whisper
Valerie’s writing in Enlightenment is Sexy™ is so direct and sincere it feels like a one-of-one intimate conversation with an old friend. She pours it all out, straight from her heart.
“I felt like you would just get it,” Valerie explains why she wrote the book.
“That’s why you would be drawn to this book – that river of truth running through all of us. If you listen, it will whisper in your ear.”
As a manifestation of Valerie’s sincerity and inner power, her book is bound to enlighten and inspire everyone who takes it up and opens its pages.
"The book which booms through intimacy and whisper"