If I made mistakes, feel free to correct me, so I can improve my level and see clearly where my weaknesses are.

I wanted to do a book review of “the mastery of love” even if I read it two years ago. First, because since I read it, I tried to apply every advice and teachings that I can. And second, because of course I want to practice my writing skills in English which is not my native language. But when I was writing the review, I started to think about how many personal growths book review and articles are already on the web, a lot. And moreover, how many persons are in favor and highlight the efficiency of personal growths without questioning it even a bit. So, I decided to question all the vibe of personal growth and the actual spirituality quest (that many people are in).

As you may know, recently the interest for the personal growth increased and have been democratized and a lot of people are talking about positivity, energy, mysticism, spirituality, children wounds and how to heal them. It is a good thing to be interested by our inner self and the way to become a better person and improve our relationships with other human beings. However, many people are surfing on the vibe and produce either a bad work by copying other’s works or even worst they give false information, false hopes and their “works” if we can call it like that are only smoke and mirrors for people seeking a cense to their life and trying to find who they are.

In my opinion a lot of Youtubers, books, training courses, conferences…etc about personal growth are very repetitive and are focused only on the surface saying for instance be positive, with positivity comes more positivity, be the actor of your life, find your inner self, don’t mind what people think just do it, don’t put expectations on other persons, live on the present and only on the present. These are incredibly good advice BUT, it is not enough and already said by too many people now, so we all had already heard at least one of these sentences. How to be positive in every moment of your life even the worst? As if being positive can stop every bad moment by attracting only good thing. Sometimes life put obstacles on your way, and you don’t have to be positive every day you just need to take lessons of every EVERYTHING that happen.

Moreover, some people make a confusion between being positive and being happy. You can be positive in a bad situation but at the same time very sad. For example, you just failed at your exam, so you are pretty sad because you studied a lot and now you just failed it. Nevertheless, you can stay positive and take lessons by saying to yourself “ok, I am going to work smarter by reviewing this and this, I failed because of this and this and next time I am going to succeed” using your failure as a step that can get you closer to the success. Because of this confusion some people are just pretending to be happy when in fact they are keeping all their natural emotions and feelings in them; as fear, anger, sadness, jealousy, worry…etc. Pretending to be happy by having a big smile on your face it’s not the same that being genuinely happy or being positive. How to find your inner self? And why? How to not care about what people think? How to determine if people are judging you or just giving you some advice? How to not put expectations on the people we live with and love? All these questions outstanding and maybe more, only because one sentence can’t explain everything and even if you read a book that respond to all these questions maybe it is not the way you need to take to find your inner self and to be truly happy. It is so personal that a general rule can’t be apply to all of us. We all need to find the way that correspond to us, the method that is ours and appropriate it, then change it, then go search elsewhere and finally we can maybe reach our personal goal.

The fact is, you must go deeper and find the true meaning of theses sentences and the way to achieve them and apply them by interpreting correctly corresponding to your personal vision of the life and reality which is difficult without external help. If you don’t have a “guide” during your spiritual journey you take the risk to lose yourself on the way and maybe miss the most important. Sufism is a branch in Islam which is more focused on the spirituality and the esoterism more than exoterism which means: don’t do things only to show your spirituality because it is very personal and doesn’t need to be shown. Also, they think that every human being that is trying to find “the way” need a “Cheikh” (a spiritual guide or master in Arabic). It can be a human but also an animal, a plant or every living being on this earth because you can take a lesson from everything that is around you.

So, as you can see, sentences like “be positive” are not enough to really impact people life in deepness. Moreover, in my opinion it is not by reading some articles and watching a YouTube video that you are going to rise spiritually and change or at least understand all your mental constructions. It is a very long journey and if you really want to know yourself, I think you are going to search on yourself during all your life tracking every behavior, every emotions and reactions to a situation you have and then try to interpret it and understand it—then you can reach a true understanding of your inner self and try to change what you think it’s non profitable for you and your life.

Thank you for reading, this was my opinion and maybe you don’t share the same view so I would be extremely interested to know yours and exchange on that topic. And of course, I don’t have the pretension to say that I am “accomplished” and that I have reach wisdom, I am not all-knowing, and it is an essay. I had certainly made some mistakes on my reasoning so feel free to share your opinion too 😉