We’ve been seeing more and more books like this that don’t teach ways to overcome disappointment, longing, suffering, and heartbreak, but lean into the holiness of pivotal human moments to focus instead on how the pain — for this author it is “your ache” — is a path to spiritual awakening.
See, for instance, Adam Bucko’s book, Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide, which we gave a “Best Book of the Year” award in 2022.
Coby Kozlowski’s book will appeal to anyone who has been told they feel things too deeply. A senior faculty member at Kripalu Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Kozlowski guides readers through their instincts, senses, desires, and emotions, showing how these are good and meant to guide them. She mentions frequently indebtedness to her teacher, Lorin Roche, who authored a book in 2014 called The Radiance Sutras.
The book explains how your ache is not here to be removed but to be acknowledged, allowed, and experienced. “As you embrace the ache, you’ll connect to a deeper truth that you are always whole, even in your longing. This is where the ache reveals itself as an invitation to your inherent holiness, and the holiness of life.” In what the author identifies as the “final stage” of the process, “you’ll come to see the ache as an ally or companion.”
For example, Kozlowski asks: “Now, listen to the ache. Let it speak in breath, in pulse, in sensation. Let the knowing rise. Ask, what does the ache want you to know? What has it been carrying? What is it protecting? What has it never had space to say?”
There is much to praise here, particularly the practical exercises throughout every chapter. The content surrounding these practices is sometimes repetitive and over-generalized, as if perhaps there wasn’t enough material to fill a book, but never mind. The practices are the way in. There are dozens and dozens of them, including questions, journaling exercises, expressive art, guided meditations, pause practices, dance, storytelling, poem-writing, and various forms of conversation.
