In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed?
Lesser shares tales of ordinary people who have risen from the ashes of illness, divorce, loss of a job or a loved one—stronger, wiser, and more in touch with their purpose and passion. Lesser is a brilliantly gifted writer. Broken Open is personal, pragmatic, and enlightening.
Kitchen Table Wisdom , the book is gentle in tone without falling into sentimentality an clear without being dogmatic or simplistic. Reminiscent of Rachel Naomi Remen's books e.
Kitchen Table Wisdom , the book is gentle in tone without falling into sentimentality an clear without being dogmatic or simplistic.
For lack of a better term, I shall title it love. And it endures. These poems are traces and markings through continuous topographies—streets, shores, bodies. They offer an experience of language underway, of jumping into the midst. Their shifts and discontinuities open up spaces through the immediate, memory, the personal, the difficulties of being situated or identified. Many of them are shards, borrowings and reshapings of forms, overheard dialogue and writings and art by others, signs and relics of the concrete world, tensions in a moment, the overturning of the ordinary like a leaf, and the resistance of playing at edges.
Jones uses the soundtracks of modern lives—weather and television, music and journeys—as she negotiates difficult harbours and debatable terrains with perhaps more tenderness than previously in these times which seem broken and open. The poems are also voicings of a self under pressure, or close to breaking into the open, imagined, uncertain. They juggle a distrust of too many explanations and a wanting to know, to investigate through word magic and formal strategies. More than ever, locations and displacements interest this poet, the incompleteness of all journeys, gaps and mistakes, where gaps are not empty, where absence is presence.
Some of the writing is sparser and more open, the meditative lyricism is tempered with a humorous scepticism and argument, the poems more intuitive. Longer sequences and serial poems blend the topical and musical with a subtlety of feeling, an ear for taut lineation strung together on a thread of three or four presiding images.
What if life, beneath the surface, were composed of a series of transitions with the potential to break open our hearts? And what if our broken-open hearts could ease our approach to living? Return to Book Page.
Preview — Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser. In the more than twenty-five years since she co-founded Omega Institute - now the world's largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth -Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition. In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers t In the more than twenty-five years since she co-founded Omega Institute - now the world's largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth -Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition.
In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed?
Lesser shares tales of ordinary people who have risen from the ashes of illness, divorce, loss of a job or a loved one - stronger, wiser, and more in touch with their purpose and passion. And she draws on the world's great spiritual and psychological traditions to support us as we too learn to break open and blossom into who we were meant to be.
Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. Published June 14th by Villard first published May 4th More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Broken Open , please sign up. Jeanette just started. See 2 questions about Broken Open…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details.
More filters. Sort order. Shelves: self-help-spiritual. Oh my God!!! This book changed my life!!! Hell it MAY have saved it. I was homeless in New York and going through a really rough time in my life and this book was constantly by my side as my companion, my friend, my pillow sometimes , my hope, my inspiration and maybe even my savior. I cannot say enough about it. Maybe it was just me and my extrordinary circumstances that made this book such an amazing thing for me but i definitely think it was more than that.
I am not the same person i was bef Oh my God!!! I am not the same person i was before reading it. In a a very good way. I feel i am a better person for having read it and really 'hearing' its 'message' if you will.
View all 3 comments. Mar 20, Thomas rated it liked it Shelves: nonfiction. An alright self-help book about how we can use difficult times to grow. Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute known for spiritual retreat and personal growth, shares her own story of loss as well as the journeys of those she has encountered through her work. She mixes theory with memoir with metaphor to address difficult experiences and the potential pockets of revitalization these types of trials can bring.
I wanted a little more definition from this book. While Lesser took a nuanc An alright self-help book about how we can use difficult times to grow. While Lesser took a nuanced approach to her storytelling, I found myself glossing over certain sections of Broken Open because of their circularity.
I would have gotten more wisdom from this book if Lesser had connected more of her themes together in a concrete way. And while I agree that certain meanings and feelings transcend words, I thought Broken Open veered into New Age, wish-washy territories at times.
Overall, this book might inspire at least one person, and just one makes it worth it. Not the first book I would recommend to someone going through a tough time, but perhaps I would share it with people who dig self-help books. Of course, I always appreciate the general theme of resilience in times of hardship.
Mar 13, Ruhegeist rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction , well-being. I borrowed this from a friend who tends to be what I consider over the top wacky spiritual. Watching her move through life, easily make friends and enjoy what I so often take for granted is amazing and makes me a little jealous all the while resisting and occasionally mocking. Thankfully this book was believable and down to earth which allowed my over logical mentality to connect to the writing.
Lesser writes beautifully about her experiences not quite as well when making generalities. The quo I borrowed this from a friend who tends to be what I consider over the top wacky spiritual. The quotes and poetry at the beginning of the chapters were part of my favorite bits and inspired a few additional book purchases. I also bought a copy of this book for myself so, now that I have to give it back to my friend, I will always be able to go back to remind myself to breath and be open to change.
Yes, I'm rereading this book. Its quick and positive. Glad I bought my own copy. Jan 09, Julie Weaver rated it it was amazing. If you're wanting to learn how to cope with life's trials, this book is an excellent tool to teach you how to do just that.
Its not so much a self-help book, but more of an instruction manual on how to look at trials in a different perspective, and to graciously welcome life's opportunities to grow and learn instead of resisting them and feeling beaten up by the process.
A book you'll want to refer to often! Highly recommended! Oct 31, Nedra rated it it was amazing. EVERYONE who has gone through a personal crisis whether it be death, depression, divorce or just a simple personal evolution should read this book. And, everyone else should read it too. Elizabeth Lesser speaks to psychological and spiritual awakening in an understandable, lighthearted voice.
Jan 15, Jordan rated it liked it. I realize that this book is out of character with the sorts of things that I normally read. I was led to this book by both a coworker's recommendation and by my personal struggles of this past year. Last March, an old friend of mine committed suicide. A month later, my first real boyfriend broke up with me. Together, these two events have dictated how I feel in my daily experience: when I'm with friends, or on a date with someone new, or even just spending time alone with my thoughts, my mind wi I realize that this book is out of character with the sorts of things that I normally read.
Together, these two events have dictated how I feel in my daily experience: when I'm with friends, or on a date with someone new, or even just spending time alone with my thoughts, my mind will try to lead me back into the despair I felt in losing a friend, and then losing a lover. I often try to tell myself that I don't deserve happiness or love, simply because someone chose not to live, and someone else chose not to love me back.
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