BLOOM READ: A Book Review of Danielle Laporte’s White Hot Truth
As part of our lead up to Bloom 2017, Yogalife Studios' blog will be featuring posts about all things Bloom. Bloom reads (books), Bloom listen (music), and Bloom yoga. Keep an eye for these posts as they will be coming up right away!
Danielle Laporte: Raw, real, spiritual and best of all, Canadian.
Danielle is a celebrated author, inspirational speaker, successful blogger and entrepreneur with a voice that is palatable for those actively seeking a base in spirituality, and spiritual skeptics like myself. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t totally un-spiritual; White Hot Truth wasn’t my first delve into the world of spiritual self-help. My mother was an avid follower of the Oprah book club after all. But I always approached these types of books with a bit of trepidation – how can I relate to people who spend significant portions of their lives talking to shamans, monks, spiritual leaders both famous and unheard of. A few chapters into Danielle’s latest installment eased those paranoia’s almost instantly. It also gets me excited for her visit to our city when Bloom rolls around!
First, let’s establish the facts. Danielle says it herself in this book, that she is not necessarily giving advice on what you (the reader) should do to fix your life – she is merely documenting her experiences with spiritual practices and self-help culture, and her journey through the messier times in her life with the hope that we can relate and apply whatever we can to our own circumstances.
One of the most relatable themes in this book was the idea of spiritual selectivity both within ourselves and within others.
Simply, is what we’re doing to ourselves, and what we’re adopting from others truly serving us or are we being sucked into a New Age vortex of spiritual trends, or as Danielle puts it “spiritual glamour”? Do we help others by truly listening to their issues and provide real support, or do we simply judge those individuals and throw new age jargon their way thinking it’s helping, when actually it’s seizing an opportunity to demonstrate spiritual superiority?
Much like Danielle says in “White Hot Truth” sometimes when we’re going through the rough stuff in our life, we would rather someone say “that really does suck. I’m here if you need” as opposed to throwing a cliché statement like “hardship is but a creation of our mind, so just change the way you think”.
At what point are we using our self-help knowledge to empower others, and when are we actually just being a “New Age Douche” (Danielle’s words, not mine).
This is just one of the themes explored in the books, but one that resonated with me personally. Other stand out chapters are understanding how to set boundaries, knowing when we are losing our power, working towards true self love, and knowing when self criticism is productive versus destructive.
As part of our Bloom prep, give Danielle Laporte’s latest book a read. It’s an engaging, raw and real take on the culture around spiritual self help, and how to navigate through our world and find what works to empower us.