This must be one of Spangler’s best books – at least, it’s the best I’ve read so far. It is so exquisitely written and is thus a joy to read.

He covers all the various angles on blessing and gradually approaches the core of its art. He begins by recounting an episode he experienced at the age of twenty, when a woman asked him to give her a blessing. He had no idea how to do so, but knew he couldn’t refuse. He realized already on that occasion that “what was most needed was simple human caring and presence, a wonderfulness of being present to the other”. He understood that “it required nothing more magical or grandiose than meeting her halfway, for a blessing …. is a two-way street: not something someone does for someone else, but something we become together in order that a spirit may flow”.

In this first blessing of his “there was a sense of opening out to a vastness … a sense of something flowing”. The author himself felt blessed by the blessing.

He explains what is and is not a blessing; he distinguishes between blessings and acts of kindness. He comes to the conclusion that a blessing is a “gift given freely”; it carries a feeling of spaciousness.

He also explains the concept of “unobstructedness”. In the unobstructed world synchronicities abound. It is a condition in which “life and spirit flow in an unimpeded way”. The unobstructed world is also found in the “flow state”. In this world there are no barriers between “my heart and yours, my soul and yours, my power and creativity and yours”. It is this state that the author finds to be at the heart of blessing.

There is no single right way to carry out a blessing, no technique.

He divides the process of blessing into four steps: 1) Identification – where you identify yourself as someone capable of giving a blessing 2) Opening – this is opening oneself to the person to be blessed and to spirit, surrender to what wants or needs to happen. Out of this comes a clear sense of what to do. 3) Synthesis – this involves entering the “blessing place”, the state of mind in which one can give a blessing, where we “garb ourselves in the robes of the Blesser”. 4) The actual blessing.

He discusses what he terms “the empersonal spirit” (not to be confused with “impersonal spirit”). This is “the nourishing and transformative spiritual power that radiates from our ordinary, embodied personhood”.

Much of the book consists of wondrous exercises in the art of blessing, exercises which allow us to practice processes of “atonement and reflection”, which will enable us to enter the numinous state which is a precondition of blessing.

I find it exceedingly difficult to do justice to this book, which seems to have been composed not by the ordinary self of the author but by his Higher Self, if not his Soul. This is particularly apparent in the exercises he, or his Higher Self, has created. In all of these you go into your inner world, into your inner theatre, a place of stillness. Some of the exercises involve lighting candles physically, and finally imagining that you yourself are a candle and light yourself. This teaches you how to shift into an appropriate mood of benevolence and compassion, thus enabling you to enter the state required for blessing.

The exercises become more and more inspired and inspiring.

The book concludes with examples of blessings.

This is on the whole an inspired and inspiring book. I recommend it highly, ( )