Durian Lover

A quenching work for a thirsting soul

Reviewed: 07-30-24

This book is the culmination of over 4 decades of living and sharing the ancient ways in contemporary times.

We live in a time now where many or maybe even most humans don’t believe in a soul, yet since time immemorial all cultures believed in the soul or in many souls, a thread or web that connected us to place, to ancestors, to the gods, spirits, our own souls, the dreaming and even the cosmos.

Like the movie Jurassic park, Edward Tick, pun not originally intended, Ed brings back the gods and the sacred by digging into the wounds where the gods can still be found.

This book inspired a pilgrimage and I look ahead to see what magic is afoot.

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The reason for “the gong” through the whole work.

Reviewed: 11-24-23

This audio book should start with a statement that reads. “Due to the nature of one idea or passage finishing and another new idea beginning, there will be a “gong sound” to denote the change.

This can be accomplished easily in print with some form of demarcation, but there is no mention or the presence of a gong, why it’s there or that it’s not some editorial error. It took me some time to figure this out on my own. Maybe this was Hyde taking an attribute out of his trickster book to leave us wondering the whole time, why in the heck there is a gong. But with so many poorly done audiobooks, I was left thinking that the audiobook got a hack job in editing. It would have been FAR more enjoyable to be let in on the reason for the Gong.

I enjoy Lewis Hyde’s work, I have read “The Gift” “The Trickster” and now this audio book.

For a book on memory I imagine that there is nothing else like it. It is not a typical book, it isn’t written continuously and in a specific direction, it circumambulates in as many ways as it can find around memory and the purpose, function, reason, telos for forgetting.

It leaves you knowing that you have forgotten most everything that you have ever known or experienced, most of this book, and we too, will be forgotten, and maybe remembered again, who knows. It’s a great mystery after all.

I can’t imagine the book being more impactful for what its aim was.

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1 person found this helpful

Fantastic book and narration

Reviewed: 06-29-22

Very unique and erudite. What an adventure. Well worth the time. It’s rare to find such good writing and narration from an author.

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Absolutely remarkable, profound, novel and erudite!

Reviewed: 06-09-22

I listen to a lot of audio books, one per week or more. It’s rare to find something so original, well researched, written and narrated. I lack the statistical understanding to grasp the full significance of the correlations Dr. Tarnas implicates, however if it is even remotely as true and uncanny as he elaborates, and elaborates he does, then this is nothing short of revolutionary.

From the most subjective, the psyche to the most objective and infinitely expanding, the cosmos, the symbols and archetypes appear to be alive as well living a life both through us and containing us.

Applause

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Overly simple and a real insult to the human soul.

Reviewed: 09-23-21

I am quite surprised by the positive reviews I’d this book. I listened to the book in its entirely in one day, basically like binge watching a cliffhanger series on Netflix waiting to see when it gets to the actual resolution. It does eventually get there, in fact I can give you a spoiler alert now. Date people with secure attachment. That’s it.

Trauma doesn’t lead to anything according this this book. Child abuse, neglect, all of that, well, it might have screwed you up, but now, your on your own. Everyone should avoid you like the plague. It’s no excuse that you’re struggling, you are just ruined, and if someone finds this book, there are methods for how they can leave you and find someone with secure attachment.

Really, that is it. Find someone with secure attachment. And how to leave someone if they have avoidant attachment. Anxious attachment can be helped but only if they are dating someone with secure attachment.

I cannot stress enough that this is how basic the book is.

Attachment styles:

Secure: 50% of the people, and is what you want.

Avoidant: 25% (Run)

Anxious: 22%? (Find a secure attachment partner)

Anxious and Avoidant 1-3%: no mention of what to do. I am guessing Run, or brand them with a scarlet letter of some kind for the rest of the secure dating pool.

It’s not a book on healing, it’s a book on judging who has secure attachment patterns and to avoid those that don’t.

Thoroughly unimpressed.

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Packed full of the wisdom that comes from being present with much death.

Reviewed: 08-10-21

I have not been with many dying people. The ones that have been with, didn’t go well, they were filled with terror in their eyes and a feeling of annihilation. Seeing that has left me with a deep fear of those last moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years.

Levine claims that it is our life that we fear as much as it is our death. That in the lack of grieving our hearts harden and we are cut off from life and we project that what comes after bears that same feeling towards us.

I am surprised I had not heard of Levine sooner.

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Russell Brand has come a long way

Reviewed: 05-10-21

I really love how RB can bring comedy tastefully to heart wrenching subjects. I found him to be more humble than I had originally thought.

I was surprised to find out that he didn’t dumb down the book. He has an extensive vocabulary and is even poetic at times. He even found three uses for the word synecdoche, which I think is a record for me.

In other words, I liked the book and finished it in one listen.

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A Lucid Dream Sorceress! Words can’t describe my gratitude.

Reviewed: 03-08-21

Clare’s work in Lucid Dreaming is the best I’ve found. I own and have read about a dozen books on the subject and I must say that simply listening to her audiobooks cause me to become lucid in my dreams.

I became lucid 3 nights in a row, which was a record for me as prior to her work I struggled getting lucid and had many limiting beliefs that made me believe that lucidity was difficult.

Although I would prefer the book be narrated by Clare as I find her cadence and voice radiant with lucidity when speaking on these topics, the narrator that they have used is wonderful.

If I was stranded on a desert island it would be one of Clare’s books I would bring with me. The book would give me the keys to escape the island whenever I wished.

This is the closest thing to magic that I’ve experienced, words can’t express my gratitude. This work is healing and soul nourishing.

There is so much hear, as this is a portal to your own sovereignty of consciousness.

If you haven’t experienced a lucid dream yet, this is the only book you need, and “you can and will lucid dream.”

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8 people found this helpful

Debatably the most transformational book for me

Reviewed: 11-15-20

Coming to Charle’s work has been something of a mythical and synchronistic journey, wrought with unusual chance encounters and it hasn’t stopped yet.

I have listened to this book twice and read it once. The story of possibility that it paints to what it means to be human and what possibility lies ahead is the most hopeful and intelligent view I have yet heard.

He has expanded on the work of any thinkers both erudite and shamanistic. He has gone into his own soul and the words seem to pour out on to the page from that place.

I really wish he would have narrated it himself. Aside from that this work is a masterpiece. I often read a book or more per week on the subjects of philosophy, psychology, mysticism, esotericism, ecology, communication, dream work, history and economics and I must say that this book weaves through all these areas in a beautiful and refreshing way.

To finalize this review I can only say, “Charles, I hope you’re right.”

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2 people found this helpful

Memes and Propaganda Creating a Reality that is Trump

Reviewed: 07-11-20

Chaos Magick is what we are seeing reflected back in social media, confusion and a grasping for certainty that attaches one’s “I” to a conspiracy that attempts to bring us back to coherence.

Gary Lachman reveals the hidden, or esoteric will that is at work among the strategists and political leaders of both the United States and Russia. The esoteric and occult roots of both Trump’s and Putin’s strategists/propagandists should be alarming to listeners of this audio book.

It appears that Trump is the simulacrum who has jumped from “reality tv” to the “world stage” and like the creature from stranger things will draw any energy he can to himself to proclaim himself as winner of the most powerful game on earth. This appears to be what is happening.

This is not a book on “Donald Trump,” the man. This book is about the ideas and philosophy that would nominate a Trump, an apocalyptic revealing of where “post modernism” in the west is today.

Gary Lachman’s best narrator thus far.

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