Raised in France by a single mother (who, per the author, reveled in manipulation and emotional abuse), at age 19 Ranucci put an ocean between them by moving to New York City. The New Age movement emerging at the time resonated with her own spiritual questions, feelings of interconnectedness, and hope for transformation and self-knowledge. Moving to Mexico in her 30s, \u201conly to find that [her] existential malaise followed [her] wherever [she] went,\u201d the author continued her quest for peace, becoming involved with a spiritual hospital and studying the teachings of Ascended Masters and Theosophy. In this period, the realization that her mother\u2019s behavior was abusive marked a major milestone in her healing journey, though it wasn\u2019t until Ranucci was in her 50s that she truly understood the extent of her mother\u2019s malignant narcissism and its influence on her life. A grueling and transformative pilgrimage to Mount Kailash resulted in several deep insights: Struggle and hardship are not requirements for enlightenment, and while feelings are transient, the author\u2019s sense of peace was a constant. Ultimately, this led to the profound realization that \u201chealing is not always the arrival of answers, but the release of our need for them,\u201d an outlook allowing deep, lifelong wounds to mend. Ranucci\u2019s idea that \u201c\u2018Christ\u2019 could be seen not only as a title belonging to Jesus, but also as a state of divine consciousness gradually coming alive within the human soul\u201d informs a thought-provoking exploration of spiritual commonalities between diverse religions. The author\u2019s eloquent writing shines brightest when recounting interpersonal interactions and conveying internal reflections. Some of the spiritual, religious and philosophical ideas that she references but does not explain, like Buddha consciousness and \u201cI Am\u201d consciousness, may be unfamiliar to general readers; still, the author\u2019s persistence in seeking peace will hearten others on similar journeys.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Raised in France by a single mother (who, per the author, reveled in manipulation and emotional abuse), at age 19 Ranucci put an ocean between them by moving to New York City. The New Age movement emerging at the time resonated with her own spiritual questions, feelings of interconnectedness, and hope for transformation and self-knowledge. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}