cover image Who Do You Think You Are?: The Healing Power of Your Sacred Self

Who Do You Think You Are?: The Healing Power of Your Sacred Self

Carlos Warter. Bantam Books, $23.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-553-10494-3

""For many of us on earth, the primary task is to remember how well we really are,"" writes Warter (Recovery of the Sacred). In an engagingly clear style, Warter calls on various religious sources and experiences in order to address the issues of personal identity and how it influences people and their surroundings. Warter claims that many of us, living out ""nafs""--the Sufi word for false, temporary identities--lose connection with our spiritual ""essence,"" our true identity. Nafs include all kinds of outer and inner ways people think of themselves: as mother, father, worker, boss, beauty, doctor, addict, enabler, victim; Warter says that there are even cultural nafs, such as of science and progress. Recovering the sacred self or essence, according to Warter, whose outlook has been shaped by his years as a student of the Sufi teacher Indries Shah, among other spiritual teachers, involves learning not to lose ourselves in our many temporary and partial nafs, not to mistake our parts for the whole. Using a pyramid metaphor of the earth level and upward through 3rd, 4th and 5th dimensional levels, Warter urges us to adopt the ""interdimensional viewpoint"" of essence, reconnecting with ""the open energies of the fourth and fifth dimension,"" energies that are to be found in compassion and empathy, respectively. This elevation to a higher perspective is Warter's method for healing virtually all human ills. Defining health as ""wholeness rooted in realizing essential identity,"" in this intriguing, well-written book Warter teaches ""choosing the path of heart"" rather than of head, ""surrendering to heaven and earth"" and using the ""healing energies of core values."" (Mar.)