"Each stage of our growth presents an opportunity to release expectation and attachments that block us from sensing the fullness of our own humanity. It is important to acknowledge that the consciousness of our humanity is the common ground through which we share Divine awareness."
                                                                                           Denise Richard
                                                                                 Author of Love & Impasse

                                                      -

Honourable  Mention  - Spiritual Category

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New York Book Festival 2012 - Spiritual Category

Hollywood Book Festival  2012 - Spiritual Category

                 Great Southeast Book Festival 2013 - Spiritual Category               

 Great Southwest Book Festival 2013 - Spiritual Category

 Mention  Los Angeles Book Festival 2013 - Spiritual Category 

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​   In our lives significant transitions will engage a unique quality of experience that discloses the sensitive power of dual reality. As we look to ourselves to know who we are we sometimes feel the impact of our conditioning as it touches the heart of a need for     change. When needs simultaneously involve us in pairs, there is a potential shift, for consciousness will engage

the budding and power of heart.

The condition of youth brings forth a vulnerability and sensitivity that good relationship demands. As a child looks to understand the power of something greater and beyond our magical nature creatively engages the inquiry. In the human world we hope to serve with lightness and hold the true awareness of humility and desire. When this is not available we come to a sense of complexity that isn’t explainable. When our senses are taken to a place of pain and actions are not held in right alignment,

I call  this an impasse.  

Even though it may feel awful, an impasse can inspire us to look in new directions and reconfigure our options. The seed of awakening emerges from a moment of intuiting the possibility of a better way. In this understanding a sense of impasse can lead us to a sense of possibility that life can be experienced differently. At this time nothing is yet clearly articulated or contextually conscious, yet the energetic potential for the seed to grow is present. How the seed grows depends upon the environment. The process here is most often a slow and subtle shift in consciousness and is not necessarily outwardly displayed.

Bowen Island Undercurrent book review
February 27, 2014 12:00 AM

 
The draw toward awakening consciousness is as natural an urge and need as that for water, food, sleep and others you might list. We are not always awake to this urge and may at times create great suffering for ourselves through resistance, generally of an unconscious nature. Once we have a glimmer of this natural urge to awakening, we are at least, if not more comfortable with awakening, far less resistant to it, as our self-concept is now a partner in the process.
The trajectory of increased consciousness is not necessarily without conflict, however, and for some it may be accompanied by a hyper-sensitivity, a depression, an immobilizing physical condition for which no medical remedy can be found, or some other stuck state that prevents "normal" function.

Denise Richard, who has chosen Bowen as her new home, has created a very clear mapping of the process and the impasses that are typical to this journey. Through her book Love and Impasse, she takes a look at seven of the most challenging transitions in spiritual development. Her writing is clear, concise, and even lyrical at times. Moving between objective observation and narratives of real-life examples, a great depth of understanding is revealed. Denise's writing style is easy to read, however, the content, being so deeply experiential rather than strictly theoretical, may require a second or third reading as it did for myself.

Having witnessed Denise's capacity to facilitate someone experiencing such an impasse, I can highly recommend her as a wise counsel and her book as a brilliant overview of the territory. Often just having a bigger picture can comfort us in uncomfortable terrain. Love and Impasse does just that, and the Bowen community is fortunate to have added to itself Denise's compassion and skills.

Richard Best

© Copyright 2015 Bowen Island Undercurrent

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