Awakening the Divine Within
The Autobiography of Anne Armstrong and Her Profound Psychic and Kundalini Awakening: Kundalini--A Gateway to Freedom
Anne Armstrong, now in her nineties, has been professionally involved in the fields of esoteric studies, Kundalini and chakra education, transpersonal counseling, intuition development, and positive clairvoyance for more than fifty years. Her husband, Jim Armstrong, a retired rocket engineer, took on the herculean task of writing the couple’s story, and the inspired result is Awakening the Divine Within.
It is a book that needed to be written, if only as a gift of profound empathy to those struggling with their own Kundalini awakening. Awakening the Divine Within has the potential to be one of the most accessible, comprehensive, and life-altering primers available for spiritual seekers.
The book is written in a delightful style that pulls the reader into the Armstrongs’ lives and teachings, as though they were dear friends sharing an incredible story. And, as the Armstrongs are vehement proponents of the concept that every one of us is divinely connected and a piece of God, most readers should feel a palpable and intimate resonance.
Beautifully organized, Awakening the Divine Within includes nine chapters, two appendices, glossary, and bibliography. The Armstrongs’ life stories are seamlessly woven together through accounts of Anne’s tumultuous, traumatic, and finally, victorious spiritual awakening—a tale that segues into one of the most fascinating careers imaginable.
Chapter five, for example, integrates Anne’s experiences as a stepping-stone to helping the reader develop their own intuitive skills, using the format the Armstrongs perfected over decades of leading retreats at the Esalen Institute. Chapter six, offering a seminal treatise on meditation, something both Armstrongs have done for many decades, opens with this statement: “The keystone of spiritual development, and hence intuitive development, is meditation. Every spiritual philosophy worthy of the name has seen meditation as the most important, the most potent spiritual practice that has ever been devised.”
The final third of the book focuses on what the Armstrongs believe is one of the most important things an individual can do to advance spiritually: Work with their chakras to safely develop and release Kundalini energy. The book closes with an appendix of Kundalini exercises, and two transcribed excerpts of Anne’s lectures.
The only missteps in this otherwise exceptional new-age read are an amateurish cover and the lack of a final, perfecting edit.
Reviewed by
Patty Sutherland
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
