Once again, I found another rare book in one of my favorite used bookshops. The Fabric of Self, Meditations on Vanity and Love by John McAfee. It contains reflections on Awareness, Meditation, Love, Listening, Joy, Guru, Healing... In the first few pages, the authors states, "...As the world appears to me, original thought springs, not from the individual, but from the moving totality of life. As such, I claim no ownership of any part of this book. You are free to copy, alter, excerpt, or claim authorship of whatever follows."
Rightly so, as McAfee (yes, the founder of the anti-virus software...) has apparently "retired" from yoga and has gone through his own journey, as life would have it. He no longer practices, it seems and in one of the articles about him, he says he “wouldn’t suggest that you or anyone else bother reading” the four books he's written on Yoga (Beyond the Siddhis: Supernatural Powers and the Sutras of Patanjali and The Fabric of Self). I haven't seen the other three but I will be on the look out when I hound the bookshops...
The Fabric of Self, though, is a pleasant find and is worthy of reprinting. Truth and Wisdom are constant, afterall, no matter what happens to the medium. And anyway, John McAfee is currently on a search for antibiotics and female viagra in the jungles of Belize...
Here's the first reflection on Awareness.
Awareness is the fundamental force of change for the self. When we become aware, deeply and completely, of the attachments, prejudices, arrogance, bitterness, fears, and all the other vanities that make up our daily existence, then true change is realized.
For more interesting articles on John Mc Afee:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/fantasy-island.html
http://www.tomclynes.com/files/Featme.aero.pdf
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