From the forward of Spiriutally Incorrect Enlightenment, Jed McKenna

December 19, 2004

Dear Mr. McKenna:

I finished reading your book, "Spiritual Enlightenment, The Damndest Thing" and I am so made, I could chew nails. While you tout your book by its very title as a spiritual book, it is nothing about spirituality and was very disturbing to boot. I wish I'd never read it but believe me, if you write another book, I'll not be buying it.

Do you realize that if people do as you suggest that their lives would be ruined? Maybe you never had anything to lose, but most people do. It's like some fairy tale world you live in, where you think everyone is independently wealthy and are able to come and go without commitment to an employer, to say nothing of family, friends and community. Like you think a mother can leave her children to go off on this spiritual pursuit or wild goose chase, I'd call it. Who would do that? What for? Who would want to? Not realistic, not happening at all.

I have responsibilities to my family, and my community. I do volunteer work at a local shelter and organize food drives for the poor in my community. I am a member of the women's guild of our church. I help my children with their homework, provide good meals and a clean, happy home. They extracurricular activities like dance, soccer, music lessons that enrich their spirit. You expect me to drop everything I value in my life, things that give meaning to my life. It would be flushing everything I have down the toilet. Real lives are at stake here and you talk as though it's nothing more than a stage. Get real. What you call enlightenment, I call a horrendous nightmare.

I can't imagine how or why you say such things. Just to sell books? Even if the things you say are true, who cares? What's so great about Truth? I'd rather have my family and my life where I believe real spirituality is available to each and every one of us through kindness, good will, an open heart and mind. What would you know of that with your nihilism and your void? I think it's rich that someone would write a book about spiritual enlightenment who admits they don't even know what the word spiritual means.

So maybe you will sell a lot of books. I don't know why anyone would accept your version of spirituality. It's the opposite of everything that's good and beautiful about life. It is opposite of love and God and family and yet what's it all for? There's no point. Even you yourself say there's no point. Yet you advocate to your readership that they put all else aside to become, in essence, total failures. The damage I would do to other's lives would be irrevocable, they would hate me and for what? Absolutely nothing.

Judging from all the rosy testimonials in the front of your book, there are people out there who believe you are a great spiritual master. I don't think you have a spiritual bone in your body. I've had the wonderful privilege of being in the presence of individuals who were truly enlightened but you are nothing like them. Put that in the front of your next book so people like me won't waste their time.

*

December 19, 2004

The highlights.... :-)

> Do you realize that if people do as you suggest that their lives

would be ruined?

>

> It would be flushing everything I have down the toilet.

> Real lives are at stake here and you talk as though it's nothing

>more than a stage. Get real.

> I think it's rich that someone would write a book about spiritual

enlightenment who admits they don't even know what the word spiritual

means.

>

I don't know why anyone would accept your version of spirituality.

It's the opposite of everything that's good and beautiful about

life.

I don't think you have a spiritual bone in your body.

*

February 2, 2014

I think everything the letter says is true,AND that's the point the author is trying to make. His books are always emphasizing how enlightenment is a very different process than the fairy tale version where everyone lives happily ever after, and how it's more like a prolonged skinning(yikes!)...