This book contains the heart of Barry Long's spiritual teaching and offers practical ways to be free of the 'unhappy body', or painful self, which lives inside all of us. It describes the causes and effects of unhappiness in us and the world at large, the meaning of karma and what happens if we take our unhappiness with us when we die. The spiritual process is like 'dying for life'. Barry Long shows us how to face all our difficulties and how to live joyously, according to the law of life. Many readers have compared this book to Eckhart Tolle's bestseller The Power of Now. How to be free of unhappiness in an unhappy world. It can be done! The earth awaits a revolution in consciousness as day by day discontent grows around the world. But unhappiness, accepted as normal, is not a natural part of life. Those willing to rid themselves of unhappiness may go through hell on earth to be free. But in them a new consciousness is born. It dawns with the discovery that only fear dies. This book contains a profound spiritual teaching which it is not at all abstract or remote but directly useful to anyone trying to look for truth in this world.
Barry Long redirects our attention back to the source of all problems - ourselves. He challenges us: Why do we insist on having the right to be unhappy? First we are shown how to deal moment-to-moment with what makes us discontented so that we can practice staying free of it. Then Barry Long examines the roots of unhappiness and how it attaches itself to us from an early age. He describes how this preoccupation with discontent is played out in the world at large, in politics and the media. There is a prophetic section on the unholy alliance of the media and the politicians - written nearly 20 years ago, but the implications of what is said here become more obvious every day. The later essays are about where responsibility lies, and why we must become more responsible for ourselves. There is a chapter about living under the Law of Life, or Karma. And the final essay in the book describes the drama of life from conception to death and beyond, and how we enter the mysteries of living and dying. This knowledge holds the secret of final liberation from the ills of the human condition.
Author Biography
Barry Long (1926-2003) was a writer and spiritual teacher with an original and challenging way of communicating age-old truths. Born and raised in Australia he started out as a junior journalist and became the youngest-ever editor of a Sydney Sunday tabloid, somewhat prophetically called 'Truth'. At that time spiritual truth was far from his mind, but in his early 30s, the ambitious and successful family man began to question all his values. For some years his inner pain and suffering increased. Eventually, in 1965, he fled Australia and went to India. After many adventures, alone in the Himalayas he experienced what he called a 'mystic death', or the realization of immortality. This was the real beginning of his journey towards 'the unfathomable mystery of God or Life and that other divine mystery of true love between man and woman'.
He wrote of his insights and realizations and for thirty years gave talks and seminars in many countries. He inspired and guided many thousands of men and women without wanting to create a big organization or attract personal fame. He was concerned with the individual, not society. He taught that the way to truth and the reality of love is through direct experience, not belief or imagination; and that freedom comes from taking responsibility for one's own life. He was fulfilled by the prospect that one day someone might hear the truth from him and be able to live it. Evidently very many did. His legacy may be seen in their lives and in the work of some of those he inspired, including other teachers, notably Eckhart Tolle.
