review
The Red Book by Sera Beak (Publisher Kosmos 2011) is a spiritual lighter for smart, tough and sexy women. A guide for young women who want to live more consciously and take their first shaky steps on the spiritual path. Spirituality is different for everyone and the book offers ample inspiration to kindle your own divine fire.
Sera Beak
Sera Beak was educated at Harvard University to research mysticism and comparative religion. In the past 14 years she traveled around the world to study spirituality and had many encounters with impressive people, such as the Dalai Lama.
Sera Beak has its own English website: www.serabeak.com
The definition of spirituality
Spirituality, in the broadest sense, has to do with matters pertaining to the mind. The word is used in many ways and can have to do with religious or supernatural powers, but the emphasis is on the personal, inner experience.
The Red Book
For a moment I thought about the title “The Red Book” of the “Red Book of Mao”, which contained the do’s and don’ts for his Chinese subjects. But this “Red Book” is rather a book of Tao. Although this does not do justice to the content of the book, because it is an introduction to spirituality in the broadest sense.
No, it is like this. The title “The Red Book” is inspired by the fact that at the age of 26 the writer received a writing book with a red cover from her older sister. It became a kind of scrapbook with idiosyncratic prayers and collages. The famous Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist CG Jung (founder of Analytical Psychology) also had a “Red Book” (Liber Novus), a book with a red leather cover, in which he portrayed his visions.
Initially, the Red Book is about removing all existing knowledge of religions and the divine from your head and then getting to know the divine from within in order to enter into a brand new relationship. To get there, you can start praying in an unconventional way; just write down what you feel like Sera Beak did in her notebook with the red cover.
Don’t gulp down a spiritual buffet
The style in which the book is written is light and direct to the woman, but the content is based on a solid foundation. It is very popular in our time to be spiritual. The film Eat, Pray, Love, for example, has created extra crowds in Bali: not holidaymakers, but guru visitors. It is true, of course you have to start somewhere and anything you grasp can also be educational in itself. But the offer within the spiritual world is so great that you can no longer see the forest for the trees. That is why Beak warns against “not gobbling up the spiritual buffet”. She explains that the Red Book is a book about creative spirituality and that you can “mix your own spiritual fittings”. You have to walk a happy medium: not too much diversity, but not too little either. Spirituality is all about balance.
A book with which you can go in all directions
It is most profitable to work through the book all the way from front to back. That is no problem at all, because the book is nicely written and contains not only good advice for finding your own spiritual path, but also all kinds of information within the contiguous text, but often also in frames. And that means that you can also randomly open the book to read something interesting and who knows what will serve you well at that moment.
Inspiration
The book is very inspiring, not only to help you in your quest for the divine, but also because you will become acquainted with all kinds of schools, religions, gods and goddesses, of which you may not have heard of. For example the powerful Hindu goddess Kali. In fact everyone learns something from this book, even if only to be open to completely different insights. Luckily, for those who got the hang of it, Beak has added a huge laundry list of resources to the book. She says that today books are the most popular way to discover a particular spiritual belief. More than bite-sized courses or workshops. And she’s right because in books you can discover things firsthand for yourself.