The Lighted Path: A Journey of Transformation and Transcendence - Softcover

Gotlieb, Risha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425154564 ISBN 13: 9780425154564

Publisher: Berkley Trade, 1996

Synopsis

A medicine woman draws on the prophecies of diverse cultures--ranging from Native American to Tibetan--to demonstrate how the world has entered an evolutionary period of spiritual renewal in which the enlightened ones bring a message of peace, caring, and harmony that illuminates the path of human destiny. Original.

About this title

About the Author

Risha Henrique is a freelance journalist and author who has written for numerous publications, including The Toronto Star and Modern Woman. She resides with her husband just outside of Toronto where she can be close to her two loves, nature and animals. She occasionally gives lectures on themes relating to self-empowerment. At the present time, she is working on the children's version of The Lighted Path.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 14: I took several steps and decided to stop. I turned toward the sea and watched the waves shatter upon the black rocks. All of a sudden I felt the presence of something so sacred that I had to avert my eyes. It was a palpable sensation and it compelled me to come close to the ground. As I lay down, my body crumpled involuntarily. The environment around me faded away. With my face in the sand, I found myself being lifted as though in the palm of a huge hand. I was trembling-I could feel gentle tremors in my body. The sea and the sky and the mountain were fused. I was surrounded by whirlwinds of sea and sky and mountain until I was indistinguishable from them. I was being lifted higher and higher, far from any sense of composure or thought. An energy was bursting inside me, unlike anything I had ever experienced. How can I describe it?

I felt as though I were astride a magnificent white stallion galloping through a forest, with shafts of golden sunlight from above breaking through the thick green canopy. I could feel the vibration of the stallion in my body and the wind across my face. The shafts of light were dancing all around me, glistening like diamonds. The horse moved upward, thrusting its body into the air, riding the shafts of light and breaking through the canopy into pure white light. My excitement intensified by the moment as I became one with this magical horse. The thundering hooves pounding the ground reverberated through my body; its heaving breath was in union with mine. I was a part of the horse; we were as one, flying among the clouds in total freedom and exhilaration, rising higher and higher, riding beams of white light.

All of my past burdens disappeared; I was free of the weight I had been carrying around, the weight of expectations continually added to by everyone, including myself, as though I had been dragging around a heavy suitcase. I tossed it away with one easy gesture. I could do anything and be anything! I was not moving toward a particular point or away from it, yet I experienced both movement and stillness, past and future, all in one instant. I was outside of time, free of all the paraphernalia I had been carrying as if it had never existed.

I started to weep because of the intensity of what I was feeling. It was like being bathed with the waters of pure energy, and the experience was almost too much for me. It was so intense that for a moment I felt as though I might drown in it. This experience has changed me. I would never be the same again. I truly felt alive and connected; my separate "identity" did not exist or had blended in with a much larger whole.

Afterward I realized that the potential for awakening is within us and can happen in an instant. It became clear to me that we need this feeling of ecstasy in our lives. Nothing-not food, not sexual pleasure, and not wealth-can give us such a high on life as even a mere moment of spiritual bliss. Without it we will never feel complete and whole."

Edition details

• Publisher: Berkley Trade
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0425154564
• ISBN 13: 9780425154564
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 249