Book Review: SOUL OVER MATTER by Zhi Gang Sha and Adam Markel

Soul Over Matter: Ancient and Modern Wisdom and Practical Techniques to Create Unlimited Abundance by Zhi Gang Sha

My rating: 4 of 5 stars





Scroll down for my full review, but first, here is more information from the publisher:

Soul Over Matter: Ancient and Modern Wisdom and Practical Techniques to Create Unlimited Abundance 

By Dr. & Master Zhi Gang Sha and Adam Markel
Published by BenBella Books
Hardcover: 168 pages
July 12, 2016; $24.95 US/$32.50 CAN
9781942952589


Description:

Combine ancient Eastern and modern Western wisdom, mix in proven techniques from both a CEO and a legendary soul healer, and you get Soul Over Matter. Designed for readers at every level of economic experience, this book gives you a unique and powerful path to financial abundance.

Adam Markel, bestselling author, attorney and CEO of New Peaks, North America’s largest personal and business development company, shares inspiring life lessons and strategies to create abundance. World-renowned miracle soul healer, Dr. & Master Zhi Gang Sha reveals sacred and practical wisdom, including universal laws that everyone can apply to create abundance in every aspect of life: personal finances, business, relationships and more.

Destined to be the Think and Grow Rich of the 21st century, Soul Over Matter shares practical wisdom and easy-to-implement, proven techniques. In addition, Master Sha, who is a Tao master teacher of one-stroke calligraphy for transformational healing, provides two new calligraphies that carry extraordinary power to remove blockages to achieving lasting abundance. With these simple techniques, you’ll learn how to focus on your unique challenges and conquer them.

Soul Over Matter is the first financial advice book to focus on the role of soul in creating abundance. Whereas other books have hinted at the importance of connecting to universal laws to create abundance, Soul Over Matter is the first book to deliver the techniques to do so.
Discover how Soul Over Matter can change your relationship with money.

Authors:

Dr. & Master Zhi Gang Sha is a world-renowned master healer and spiritual teacher. He is the founder of Soul Mind Body Medicine™. Trained as a conventional medical doctor in China and a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine in China and Canada, Master Sha is the founder of the Institute of Soul Healing and Enlightenment™ and the Love Peace Harmony Foundation™, and a grandmaster of many ancient disciplines, including tai chi, qigong, kung fu, feng shui, and the I Ching.

Adam Markel is a bestselling author and CEO of New Peaks, one of the world’s largest integrative personal and business development companies. He is also an attorney and the author of the bestselling book Pivot: The Art & Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life. Adam has presented to more than 100,000 people around the world on how to live more balanced, healthy, and prosperous lives. Additionally, he’s been featured in Fox News, Entrepreneur, USA Today, The New York Observer, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

MY REVIEW:

I was so excited to receive this book. I love non-fiction books that mesh eastern and western philosophies, and I was especially interested in this book because my husband and I are currently reevaluating our financial situation and looking for ways to improve it.

Imagine my disappointment when I read this line: “The root cause for financial lack is one’s negative personal karma and negative ancestral karma from all lifetimes” (page 36).

Wait. What?

“If you lack physical money, you do not have much good virtue [good karma] deposited in your Heaven’s virtue bank account” (page 45). Hmm. I couldn’t agree that Heaven intentionally withheld money from me. Unless, we had different definitions of Heaven. As I read, I felt myself getting defensive, and that famous Shakespeare quote popped into my head: “The lady doth protest too much.” And I had to pause. Maybe I was getting defensive, because I didn’t want to give validity to what I was reading. I didn’t want to think Heaven withheld monetary blessings from me.

Furthermore, I thought I knew what karma was and had strived to create positive karma in my life. But this book stated over, and over, and over again that “According to ancient wisdom, positive virtue [good karma] determines how much financial flourishing … a person enjoys” (page 110). This troubled me. I immediately started comparing myself to others who have a ton of money and asking myself, do they seriously have better karma than I do? But then I read more in the book, and imagine my surprise when I read that bad karma is created by “criticizing, condemning, judging, complaining … jealousy” (page 42). Oh. My. I was screwed.

So I continued reading, hoping to learn techniques to clear my bad karma. I’ve always been a fan of positive thinking, and I was excited to learn ways to improve myself. But rather than simply explaining the techniques, the middle of this book became repetitive and detail oriented. Instead of giving the reader the information only in English, the author gave the Chinese words and then translated them word by word and then finally strung the words into a sentence in English. I found myself skimming ahead, skipping the microscopic translations, to get to the full sentence in English. Maybe the chants were supposed to be done in Chinese because those specific vocal sounds created a specific vibration, but then that also made me stop to wonder, why couldn’t it work in English? If these were universal truths, shouldn’t the concept surpass language? I struggled with the ideas of chanting Chinese phrases and tracing specific pieces of calligraphy to improve my financial situation. Maybe I’m not enlightened enough to grasp the concept. (Probably, and I certainly mean no disrespect to the authors and their personal beliefs.)

While there were things that I disagreed with in the text, I loved finding the simple truths in this book that broke through all barriers. When something is true, it’s true everywhere.

Here are a few of the beautiful, simple truths I found in this book:

“One of the primary principles of both mind over matter and soul over matter is that you must have a “why” in what you do that benefits others. The more you serve others, the more you are likely to receive” (page 6).

“If our thoughts of scarcity and, as a result, our words of scarcity are habitual, then scarcity itself is also habitual” (page 10).

“The greatest danger when things go wrong isn’t the thing going wrong, but your judgment of yourself in the situation. … But the cause, the response, the behavior, the resolution—they all matter less than how you treat yourself in their wake … you take failure personally … that perception is also what slows you down. It stops you from trying something new. From taking risks. From doing things that are intuitive. That failure phobia stops you from taking a moment to listen to that inner voice, the whisper of your soul, saying Try something different” (page 18-19).

“Ultimately, the purpose of the physical journey is to serve the soul journey. This is the greatest wisdom that many spiritual seekers are searching for” (page 122).

“When you narrow your focus to only the obstacles and not the opportunities, there’s nowhere else to go but where you’re already headed … you have to be willing to look away from the obstacle. You need to have the presence of mind—the mindfulness—to direct your energy away from the negative, toward where or what it is that you want” (page 132).

Overall, I highly recommend this book. Regardless of whether you believe in karma and reincarnation, or not, if you are open-minded, you will appreciate the universal truths found in this book. It was very well written, eye opening, and thought provoking.

[My thanks to FSB Associates for sending me a free copy for review. This did not influence my opinion at all.]




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