Alexandra’s New Book: Into Great Freedom: A Novella

Not Being Able—Not Yet—To Be Alone With Myself In A Room

Why is it that most people the world over don’t meditate at all, let alone on a regular basis? In other words, why would sitting in silence be so terrifying or, in any case, so unattractive to so many?

For a number of years, this (or some version like it) has been one of my perplexing questions. A few years ago, ChatGPT confirmed (not sycophantly) my rough intuition when I asked it about the number of people who meditate on a long-term basis. It replied that perhaps less than 1% of people worldwide can be said to be engaged in a longitudinal practice that we might term “meditation,” “contemplation,” or “silent prayer.”

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Now why is this?

Why, for instance, do more people find dialogue intriguing yet meditation almost dangerous? Why is conversation more alluring than silence?

A couple of years ago, I wrote a book, The Art of Meditation: How To Get Started and Keep Going, that I subsequently decided to shelve. I hadn’t resolved my question. After that, I wrote posts about “meditation without practice.” I wasn’t happy with this solution either.

And—you may know this already—I penned a Trojan Horse book on meditation, Chop Wood, Carry Water: The Yoga of Work, whose point is to use mundane tasks as the point of departure for a keen examination of the mind. On this construal, work serves as the impetus for what I would happily term “meditation.” Still, something was wanting.

The too short answer to my perplexing question is that meditation in the early days is, as my wife Alexandra put it to me, “like punishment, like torture.” She once told our Zen teacher that she positively hated meditating.

What led her to love meditation? What is it that made this fundamental change in attitude possible?

Getting to the Trailhead

If we’re not yet ready to meditate or to embark on a spiritual quest, how are we to find our beginning? We need stepping stones even before we’ll be able to even get to the trailhead.

It’s here that Alexandra’s first book Into Great Freedom: A Novella makes sense to me. The novella, ostensibly about inner purification, sets about narrating that zone that’s north of talk therapy and south of, say, the investigation of a koan. The mind is to be progressively purified so that the ultimate spiritual quest can finally begin.

There’s no way you can miss the resemblance between the protagonist, allegorically referred to as the Seeker, and you and me. The Seeker scatters her attention, dissipates her energy, feels alienated from other New Yorkers, and can scarcely make it through the day without experiencing overwhelm. Like us, she’s all over the place. Like us, she feels something stirring within. And like Mr. Stallone, she has, with the help of certain guides, to rouse the courage to turn within.

Précis

The novella, the book description reads, follows a woman whose compulsive furniture-rearranging masks a deeper unrest: a hunger for freedom that neither therapy nor half-hearted meditation could ever touch.

A fall through a subway grate sends her into an underground passage and out into a strange landscape, where a series of animal teachers—Red Snake, Fiery Tiger, White Swan, and Barn Owl, each carrying the same enigmatic voice—guide her through four ancient keys to liberation, one for each obstacle: the body, its energy, the mind, and the witness behind all three.

Tested by a collapsing tunnel, a live volcano, a tumultuous sea, and a blind mountain descent, she arrives at last at the threshold of the freedom she’s been seeking all along.

More than an adventure story, this book is a spiritual quest. It’s for anyone who wants to embark on a spiritual path but can’t get started; who wants to ease her suffering but doesn’t know how; and who longs for something more from life but doesn’t know what.

Learn More

You can read a 10-page sample of the book on Amazon or Alexandra’s personal essay which served as the springboard for the book.