≫ Read Gratis Auspicious Good Fortune One woman inspirational journey from Western disillusionment to Eastern spiritual fulfilment Sumangali Morhall 9781780990361 Books

Auspicious Good Fortune One woman inspirational journey from Western disillusionment to Eastern spiritual fulfilment Sumangali Morhall 9781780990361 Books

Download As PDF : Auspicious Good Fortune One woman inspirational journey from Western disillusionment to Eastern spiritual fulfilment Sumangali Morhall 9781780990361 Books

Auspicious Good Fortune One woman inspirational journey from Western disillusionment to Eastern spiritual fulfilment Sumangali Morhall 9781780990361 Books

I absolutely loved this book from the very beginning to the end. I wish there was another instalment! This book not only looks like a beautiful piece of art, but also is a beautiful piece of art, that will enrich your mind, fulfill your heart and will give you lots of inspiration!!!

Auspicious Good Fortune is a very inspiring and uplifting story of a woman, who didn't feel quite happy with her life, until she discovered what true spirituality is. Sumangali Morhall reveals to a reader her own personal story in such an engaging way that you will just read it at one sitting. When reading the book, I was so absorbed in it, that I would try to steal every minute of my day (and night), to be able to continue with my reading. The author's excellent way of writing is so engaging that I felt like if I myself was living the story. I smiled with the author, I cried with her. And I felt as if I went through the spiritual experiences myself as well. The amazing thing for me was to discover, how one's life can change so much when taking up meditation and becoming student of a spiritual Master.

I'm sure anyone can benefit from this book. I highly recommend this book to everyone, whether you are a spiritual seeker or an atheist. And moreover, if you are not quite happy in your life or if you feel that there must be something more in life that you need to discover, then this book is a must for you!;-)


Tags : Auspicious Good Fortune: One woman's inspirational journey from Western disillusionment to Eastern spiritual fulfilment [Sumangali Morhall] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Has your life ever flashed before you? Sumangali Morhall chased everything Western society taught her to pursue: material wealth,Sumangali Morhall,Auspicious Good Fortune: One woman's inspirational journey from Western disillusionment to Eastern spiritual fulfilment,Mantra Books,1780990367,Personal Memoirs,Biography & Autobiography,Biography & Autobiography Personal Memoirs,Biography & Autobiography: Personal Memoirs,Biography Autobiography,BiographyAutobiography,Christianity - General,Memoirs,ReligionChristianity - General

Auspicious Good Fortune One woman inspirational journey from Western disillusionment to Eastern spiritual fulfilment Sumangali Morhall 9781780990361 Books Reviews

Auspicious Good Fortune is a genuinely inspiring and lofty read about an otherworldly realm -- time spent in the tutelage of the recently belated New York-based spiritual master Sri Chinmoy -- and the author's journey in this world to get there.

At times Sumangali's first person account is reminiscent of the pre-eminent diarist of Eastern spirituality Christopher Isherwood, and when depicting the highs and sometime lows of treading a difficult and definitely far usual path, the candid and also eminently interesting My Guru And His Disciple springs to mind.

So well written and metaphorically masterful is Auspicious Good Fortune, it is as if Emily Dickinson herself has entered the biographical realm, and the author is at her poetic and transcendent and best when discussing her genuinely inspiring experiences with Sri Chinmoy, whom on the basis of this never less than heart-felt account, one can't help but want to know better.

I can admit to only one regret -- that this all-parts endearing first time author has only a single book to her name!
Sumangali Morhall's Auspicious Good Fortune is compelling, inspiring, encouraging, and told with poetic force and delicacy. Exquisite and sweet, unflinching and fascinating, the author's humble and sincere personal offering gathers and brings forward the essence of her experiences, and naturally and strikingly give it face and form. Her telling has a clarity and beauty that reflect the higher Reality that she eventually comes to find on her chosen Path.

Extraordinarily sensitive from childhood, Ms. Morhall frankly proffers the loneliness, suffering and beauty of her life experiences. For the reader these experiences may expand and shift from feeling overwhelmingly solid to suddenly transparent.

Her tender and sacred relationship with her spiritual Master is revealed with the sweetness and wisdom of a pure and sensitive soul who has maintained these qualities even through the turbulence of worldly experience.

This memoir is moving, inspiring and heartening for all spiritual seekers, sensitive observers and lovers of wonderful writing. It is a rare bright glimpse into a world that each person has within themselves to realise.
Great spiritual masters can seem incomprehensible because they are attuned to a reality beyond Plato's Cave. Just as we seldom look directly into bright sunlight (and feel blinded if we do), we don't always dare to approach the supreme Reality directly. We may find it more agreeable to see the sunlight reflected through a lily pond. (Monet made a living garden of his home for this very reason.)

We may find the supreme Reality more charming, more auspicious when we see it reflected through the life of a disciple of a great master. It is in the tradition of Christopher Isherwood and Sister Nivedita that a new and gifted writer, Sumangali Morhall, offers us Auspicious Good Fortune. This delightful memoir makes the life and teachings of a great master, Sri Chinmoy, infinitely more accessible.

Were I to stop there, I would have already enumerated a profound achievement; but Miss Morhall has done more She has created a literary work for our time, replete with an anti-hero for the ages - shy, sensitive, infirm, ever fearing Aloneness, and ever searching for an elusive Home.

From earliest childhood, Emily senses that nothing is Enough to take away the fundamental terror of living, and nothing will perhaps ever be Enough. Yet she tries a great many things, dodging bullies at school, studying to be an artist, singing in a rock band, giving herself over to relationships, testing out the London fast lane, blowing her mind on drugs and alcohol, teaching English in Thailand, and nearly throwing herself from a metal bridge when the pain of Aloneness becomes acute.

In that moment, she discovers that when everything is taken away, Something remains. And so begins her spiritual quest in earnest.

Miss Morhall is a master of chiarascuro technique. Just when we fear that all will remain dark and we're perusing yet another study in unquenchable postmodern angst, she turns the tables on us, unfurling a hidden goodness that was there all along, eclipsed perhaps by circumstance, but presaged by a love of nature and love of kindness.

Her lifeline broken, Miss Morhall really serves up two books in one First she's a Gen-X outcast hunting for clues in a world devoid of meaning; then she's a spiritual seeker, her heart kindled by devotion. It's an eclectic darkness-to-light journey held together by the author's irrepressible spirit. Those not moved to tears will surely smile. How does this malapert elf and paint-spattered magpie arrive at the Life Contemplative?

It begins simply enough when, out of desperation, she starts imagining a serene expanse of white sand where she will meet her spiritual guide. There she sees (or imagines) an Indian man in ochre robes whose smile overflows with sweetness and warmth. For the first time in ages, she drifts into a safe, nightmare-less sleep. She begins meeting with her inner guide daily, but her life continues to run off the rails. Her job as a database manager is merely dress-up; her addictions all end in cul-de-sacs.

Then one day while leafing through a magazine, she notices an ad for a meditation course at Clifton Library. Cringing with shyness, she scrunches into a plastic seat and tries to pretend she's invisible, but is soon lost in music of unearthly beauty. Gradually, she identifies the man in the photograph as the same man she's seen so many times on a white expanse of sand her inner guide. In years to come, she finds that the life of a spiritual seeker is Enough, in fact it is resplendent. She comes to be known by a new name, Sumangali, under which she pens this auspicious book.

We often encounter volumes which deconstruct Eastern spiritual practice from an absurd distance, viewing it through the curved lens of Western materialism or stark apostasy. Auspicious Good Fortune is a milestone because it is authentic - the first from a major publisher to serve up observations from within Sri Chinmoy's "path of the heart" by a faithful devotee. Thus, apart from the sheer enjoyment of reading, it has the merit of being primary source material. It is vibrant and alive in a way that only those accounts written from a deep place of lived truth can be.

Contrary to popular stereotypes, those who embark upon the spiritual quest don't disappear into a cloud of incense. They may fall off the radar screens of those who only measure secular activity, but they remain deeply engaged with the world, and are (in a sense) the same people they've always been, but with an added fillip their vision sometimes shifts to a spiritual dimension which lets them see the familiar world anew.

Miss Morhall casts her glance upon the very things which make up 99% of our daily lives; yet she sees them a bit differently, and makes us see what she sees. We feel all the richer for it. Her honesty, depth of feeling, and inquisitive nature are passports to the heart of all.

How many spiritual books are not just fascinating reads, but also good companions? I sometimes think one could count them on the fingers of one hand. Auspicious Good Fortune proves that one can please the reader without pandering to the common sensibility - no mean feat.

Good spiritual writing can make us have the vision of a saint. Great spiritual writing can make us see a hobo, and feel that he is none other than God Himself. I can unequivocally call Miss Morhall's writing great. She helps us see the golden light between the cracks of shadow (because it was always there). She makes us see real things, and wonder why we never saw them before.

Emily's life is filled with music, and not always gentle, lilting music. It is music of chaos, music of collision - all finally brought into soul-stirring harmony. Few writers would dare to pen a lifeline so broad and etched so deeply in the skin. She is an anti-hero who does the impossible and really changes her life - not into something as banal as "happily ever after," but as meaningful as "usually gratefully trying." She struggles with her own fierce independence, with questions about marriage, and with physical ailments which leave her fatigued despite her inner ebullience. Encouraged by her guide, she stares down her dragon shyness, faces literal fire, and emerges with a new sense of belonging to the world, as one who finds joy in self-giving.

Returning to her childhood home of Old York, she seems to merge into Eternal Time. She feels a renewed sense of filial piety and love. She writes

"Is this even the same life? Am I the same girl who moved Up North a quarter century before? These city walls stood for a millennium, but in the wink of time since my teens are they so changed? Through my open window breezes bring the bells of the Minster, surging like a tide. Strangers smile at me in the road, one, two, three before I realise I was already smiling, and they perhaps politely returning. Was that old cherry tree there in those days too, hurling confetti into a brilliant sky like the mother of some cherished bride? Is that the river inn where once I turned sixteen in a frenzy of loud friends and a cheap euphoria of cider, my feet lolling in the watery green? There are other loud frenzies now, and some look my current age. Is their joy as hollow as my own once was, as fickle as a draught? Are they still wondering Is this all? Is this it? It was not this place that was dull then, it was these eyes that saw it so, and these same eyes that see it perfect now."

She has come full circle, but her journey is not ended. Her inner guide's outer form has passed away, and she must hasten to New York to visit his marble tomb.

Sri Chinmoy needs no introduction to spiritual audiences. (See The Wings of Joy Finding Your Path to Inner Peace.) He was a great man, but also a deeply good man, and this quality of the good which one finds in writers like C.S. Lewis also permeates Miss Morhall's later recollections.

Sri Chinmoy was the man who brought meditation to the UN, running to the Yoga community, humanitarian aid to Angola, and peace to East Timor. He is sometimes called the twentieth century's first global man. Headquartered in New York, he spent much of his time traveling around the world putting on concerts, art exhibits, and poetry readings. He was at heart a mystic, and so his art above all other arts was that of constantly recreating the sacred space around him. For this reason he was beloved by countless fellow spiritual travelers. In 2007 (the final year of his life), he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a consortium which included Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Mikhail Gorbachev.

But Auspicious Good Fortune isn't about the great man Sri Chinmoy; it's about Miss Morhall's own life and how it changed after she first caught a glimpse of him at Heathrow Airport, 1997. It's a story not of religion imposed from without, but of truth discovered from within, with the help of a teacher who shared her love for the poetic side of life.

One is tempted to compare Miss Morhall with Emily Dickinson, whose inner life was rich, and who resisted organized religion in her time because she found more truth in art and nature. By contrast, Miss Morhall - also possessed of a rich inner life - was stirred to look beyond the confines of her garden by a kindred soul who ignited a spark within her. She became a consummate world traveler, one with the ability to make each patch of ground her own by recalling it in the kind of detail that would make a painter weep.

If mystics are sometimes perceived as remote and incomprehensible, perhaps this is because we lack a lens with which to bring them into focus; or perhaps, as Miss Dickinson explained so clearly over a century ago, we need explanation steeped in kindness

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind -

I wonder whether by "slant" Miss Dickinson meant one ought to tell the truth judiciously, as some critics claim. She was (in part) a nature poet (and gardener), so I find myself thinking of the dandelion whose angle is slant - yet it always slants toward the sun, soaking up its rays with a lack of moderation that only poets can aspire to.

If Buddhist writers have long claimed to be fingers pointing to the moon, then like a flower in Monet's garden, Miss Morhall is the bearer of no dull prose, but a song singing of the sun.

Michael Howard
I absolutely loved this book from the very beginning to the end. I wish there was another instalment! This book not only looks like a beautiful piece of art, but also is a beautiful piece of art, that will enrich your mind, fulfill your heart and will give you lots of inspiration!!!

Auspicious Good Fortune is a very inspiring and uplifting story of a woman, who didn't feel quite happy with her life, until she discovered what true spirituality is. Sumangali Morhall reveals to a reader her own personal story in such an engaging way that you will just read it at one sitting. When reading the book, I was so absorbed in it, that I would try to steal every minute of my day (and night), to be able to continue with my reading. The author's excellent way of writing is so engaging that I felt like if I myself was living the story. I smiled with the author, I cried with her. And I felt as if I went through the spiritual experiences myself as well. The amazing thing for me was to discover, how one's life can change so much when taking up meditation and becoming student of a spiritual Master.

I'm sure anyone can benefit from this book. I highly recommend this book to everyone, whether you are a spiritual seeker or an atheist. And moreover, if you are not quite happy in your life or if you feel that there must be something more in life that you need to discover, then this book is a must for you!;-)