the wisdom of sundays- book review

I’ve finally finished another book. The world must be ending.

All jokes aside though, The Wisdom Of Sundays was recommended to me by my mother. I had been talking about how I was looking for more things to read that related to spirituality and life. She recommended the audiobook and it wasn’t long until I hit play and immersed myself in a journey of self discovery.

The entire book is organized into ten different chapters:

• Awakening
• Intention
• Mindfulness
• Spiritual GPS
• Ego
• Forgiveness
• Broken Open
• Grace and Gratitude
• Fulfillment
• Love and Connection

Now, this book review is going to be way too long if I go through each chapter individually. And to be honest with you, not every chapter hit me in the same way. Even though I liked all of them collectively, there were only a few that I remember because they connected with me in a different way.

Awakening

The first chapter of Wisdom Of Sundays was one of my favorites. Oprah Winfrey was interviewing Michael Singer, who is the bestselling author of The Untethered Soul. I don’t remember everything from their conversation but I do remember one thing that stuck out to me.

He was talking about how we all have “thorns” which basically means we all have something that’s a sore spot, something we don’t want other people touching. And when someone does, we tend to react emotionally because they touched a nerve.

But is it their fault?

No. Because our thorns are our thorns. If we don’t want to be hurt, if we don’t want to continue to feel that pain or be disturbed by what someone else said, we have to be able to find the strength to push it out of our heart.

People aren’t always going to know what’s a soft spot for you and what isn’t and sometimes they don’t always intend to hurt you. Sometimes it really is just our own issues clouding our judgement.

It stuck out to me because it made me realize how many thorns I truly have. A lot of people have touched on things that still bother me to this day, but it’s something that I need to work on for myself. I know what things push the thorn deeper into me, so to avoid that, I need to face it.

Intention

The second chapter of the Wisdom Of Sunday’s showcased Gary Zukav, the author of The Seat Of The Soul. This is the book I’m currently reading so it was nice to get some insight into one of his more popular concepts, which is intention.

Even though I found the conversation about intention to be enthralling, it was the first thing that stuck out to me from this chapter. Of course I think the idea of intention is important and that it can set the tone for how you live your life. If you’re not sure in your intentions, whether that’s with other people or with yourself, then you run the risk of not being aware or in control of your own destiny.

However, the thing that stuck out to me the most was the concept of powerlessness.

Every insecurity or negative emotion like jealously, anger, etc, all comes from one source: powerlessness. When we feel those things we feel like we are unable to control a situation, control ourselves, and we feel so helpless to stop it. When we lose that sense of power, we find ourselves slipping into the things that lower our frequency. And when people project their own issues onto you, always remember that it’s coming from a place of powerlessness.

Hearing that made me look at the people I’ve dealt with, differently. I’ve had so many people project their own negativity onto me, their own insecurities, but I could never truly understand the reason why. It wasn’t until I heard that, that I finally connected the dots.

I recently had a situation where someone was projecting their own issues onto me by body shaming me and commenting on how I eat. Instead of letting that take root like it did once before, I looked at the place it was coming from and I realized that I didn’t need to take it personally because they were feeling powerless when it came to their own weight and body. That had nothing to do with me. Power is the root of all evil and it’s the one thing that truly governs our world. I recommend reading the section about power in his book. It’s incredibly informative and it’ll explain the concept much better than I can.

Forgiveness

The sixth chapter of The Wisdom Of Sundays was a hard hitter as well. There were two quotes in particular that I still find myself thinking about long after I finished the book.

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. It’s accepting the past for what it was and using this moment and this time to help move yourself forward.”

Forgiveness is something that takes so much strength to accomplish. And it’s usually difficult because we’re unable to let go of the past. We always like to think about what we could’ve done differently, what we could’ve said, or who we should’ve listened to. This process of overthinking is the reason why we’re unable to truly forgive the people who have wronged us or ourselves.

But to give up the hope that the past could’ve been different, is the first step towards real forgiveness. You can’t change the past. Once it happens, it’s over with. There’s no way you can take back what you said or change a decision. You can’t go down a different route. The only thing you can do is use the present moment to evaluate your situation and begin the process of moving forward. Forgiveness isn’t a linear process and it may take years before you’re ready to forgive yourself or someone else, but when you get there, when you understand that you can’t change your experiences, life will be so much better.

“You will forgive because you love yourself so much that you don’t want to keep hurting yourself for whatever happened. Whatever happened is done and cannot be changed. And we have to accept that and keep going with out life.”

This goes in line with the quote from above, but it’s also different. Forgiveness should always be for yourself. You don’t need to forgive because you need to benefit someone else or because others force you to. Forgiveness is personal and it takes time. No one can force you to forgive another person or yourself until you’re ready to do so.

There’s one moment in my life where I had to learn this lesson. I mentioned in a previous post that I had gone through a toxic relationship during high school that left me scarred. He did so much damage to my sense of self that I found it difficult to forgive him. He had completely shattered my trust in other people and I became angry and bitter.

I had so many people tell me that I needed to forgive him and move on. They believed that he should’ve been given the benefit of the doubt and that regardless of what he had done, I should be the bigger person and give him grace. I can’t even explain how much that angered me.

I felt like they had no right to tell me what I should do considering they weren’t in the relationship. They weren’t there when I was crying myself to sleep. They weren’t there when he was calling me a bitch, when he was calling me a man, when he was saying that he would never read my book because it wasn’t of “literary merit” They weren’t there when he was cheating on me behind my back. And they weren’t there when he stalked me for months. But they had the audacity to tell me that I needed to give him “grace”

I didn’t forgive him because other people told me to. I did it because I was tired of hurting myself.

I spent so much time being angry with him that I started losing myself. It consumed me for so long that I missed out on so many opportunities and I almost ruined a relationship because of it.

Eventually I got so tired of feeling that way, that I finally found a way to let it go. The day I forgave him was the day I found freedom. And now I can talk about it without feeling any anger. It was just an experience that changed me, but it didn’t break me. And most days, I’m glad I went through the pain because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be the person I am now. At the time it was hard and the journey to get to where I am was long, but it was worth it in the end.

As for my overall thoughts on this book, I really liked it. It’s one of those books you have to listen to multiple times because there’s so many life lessons that you can gain from it.

Rating: 4/5 ⭐️