Cameron's preachiness has finally overpowered her good sense

Julia Cameron's quasi-New-Agey faith in God didn't detract too much from her earlier works, which were also full of practical principles and exercises, but as she ages she seems to be retreating ever further into her more mystical or superstitious beliefs, and in this book it was finally too much for me to get past it.

In Safe Journey, Cameron shares her own story of overcoming her fear of flying in the hopes of helping others do the same. Unfortunately, the cure she prescribes may actually be the root of the problem.

She describes how, in the days and hours leading up to a flight, she tries to rely on faith, putting herself and her safety in God's hands. At one point, sitting in the airport waiting to board her flight and looking around at the other passengers, she notices a young mother with a baby and feels comforted. "Surely God wouldn't let a plane crash with a baby on board!" she thinks.

Reality check: as safe as flying is today, on the rare occasions that planes do crash, it has nothing to do with whether there are any babies on board. If you're really operating on the premise that everything that happens is in God's hands, well, then God lets babies die all the time. And so if Cameron's feeling of safety on an airplane is dependent on maintaining the belief that God is actually personally holding the plane aloft at every moment throughout the flight, it's no wonder she's a nervous wreck! There must always be a part of her mind just waiting for God to smite her, or just to stop extending His (it must be admitted rather arbitrary) protection, as He sometimes does.

Cameron does manage to convey a couple of pieces of good advice in spite of herself, but even in these cases she nearly ruins it by insisting on pointlessly and against all logic attributing it back to her utterly inane notion of God. For instance, at one point a friend who can see she's worried about a flight still days away advises her to simply postpone worrying---that is, to give herself permission to worry about it later, so she can focus on other things in the meantime. And each time the worry recurs, she simply puts it off again, and again, until the flight is actually underway and it's too late to worry about it! This is actually a brilliant and psychologically astute strategy that could work wonders for many people, as it does for Cameron herself as she tells it---but then instead of giving her friend due credit, she chalks it up to since it worked so well, it must have been God helping her and just using her friend as a tool. Uh...what?

If you think all that makes perfect sense, then you will probably enjoy this book. If, on the other hand, it leaves you exasperated or at least scratching your head, you would probably do better sticking with The Artist's Way or even The Prosperous Heart.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1N4SY947K9TCC ( )