Marci Winters, Sweetwater Film Screenwater, Writer, Director and Producer Review of Awake Joy by Katie Davis in Maui Vision Magazine

Book Review by Marci Winters in Maui Vision Magazine, Your Guide to Natural Living, August 2, 2008

Marci Winters is a screenwriter/writer, director, producer whose family film, Sweetwater, has aired on PBS. Sweetwater is endorsed by Kids First!, The Coalition for Quality Children's Media. She is available for script consultations and editing and can be reached at her website www.sweetwaterfilm.com

Twenty years ago, Katie Davis was not a spiritual seeker until one day, this mother of two, spontaneously awakened from ordinary business woman/secondary school educator to Enlightened Being. Without a spiritual practice or teacher, she radically awakened to the reality and truth of who we really are.

Years later, Eckhart Tolle encouraged Davis to write Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlighenment, her thought-provoking guidebook to higher consciousness. Awake Joy is both poetic and comprehensive. The language, abstractions and metaphors are like the filling in a dense, rich, dark chocolate layered cake.

Davis believes that our conditioned intelligence is limited and most of us are essentially sleepwalking through life. We each live in a mental illusion that the mind-made self creates. Because the ego, the conceptual I, has a need to tell stories, our mental images match what we are conditioned to believe. Through self-observation, recognizing that you can be free of ego's push and pull cycles, the opportunity to awakened is unveiled.

To be liberated from the ego, Davis suggests that you accept each moment in your life situation to be as it is. This profound acceptance opens the door and lets the ego out, thus a greater connection with the oneness in life can be experienced. This allows us to become more present and to focus on the way of the Heart.

Various breathing exercises, mantras and meditations are offered at the end of the book. They are extremely easy and a relaxed centered feeling washes through the mind-body after practice, creating a more conscious presence. I experienced a new appreciation for the abundance surrounding me, which felt like the Essence of Enlightenment, when I chanted the Sanskrit mantra, Om Nama Shivaya. It is a divine pleasure to taste Davis' sincere heart filled love that she shares on each page.

Marci Winters is a screenwriter/writer, director, producer whose family film, Sweetwater, has aired on PBS. Sweetwater is endorsed by Kids First!, The Coalition for Quality Children's Media. She is available for script consultations and editing and can be reached at her website www.sweetwaterfilm.com