The Christmas Review of My New Novel, The Stone of Giza

First of all: Merry Christmas to all of you and thank you for reading these little blog posts. I appreciate the chance to think with you about things that matter. I'll have a new nugget for you tomorrow on wisdom. But today, I want to share the nice Christmas gift that came for me today with the first review of my new novel. It starts like this:

Imagine a concoction that's part "Raiders of the Lost Ark," part Harry Potter, part Dan Brown, part Hardy Boys Meets Nancy Drew, with a strong dose of philosophy and ethics.

That might give you an idea of "The Stone of Giza," Wilmington author Tom V. Morris' latest novel in his "Walid and the Mysteries of Phi" series.

A self-described public philosopher, Morris is known for such best sellers as "If Aristotle Ran General Motors." "True Success" and "The Art of Achievement." Lately, though, he's been dabbling in fiction. His "Walid" books serve up a mix of boys' adventure yarn—the hero, Walid, is 13, after all—with a philosophical narrative along the lines of Voltaire's "Candide."

For "Stone of Giza," Morris throws his readers in the deep end ...

The long review ends with the words: "Morris supplies a satisfying adventure story that could appeal to a larger audience." 

Thanks, Ben Steelman and Star News!

The book can be found at: http://amzn.to/2gaAQ1S

The Unconscious Mind: From The Golden Palace

In my new book, The Golden Palace, Chapter 16, there's a discussion of the unconscious mind that's been revolutionary for my own recent thinking and work. I'd like to share it here. The setting is a beautiful sitting room in the royal palace in Cairo, Egypt. The year is 1934. King Ali Shabeezar is speaking to his nephew, Walid, and Walid's best friend, Mafulla.

Ali leaned back on the sofa cushion. He said, “Something just occurred to me. Have you boys ever heard of the unconscious mind?”

“Not really,” Mafulla said, “I mean, I know my mind’s unconscious when I sleep, and sometimes in class.”

“Maybe I’ve heard the expression once,” Walid said, as he smiled at his friend.

“Well, there are many things stored in our minds, like information learned in the past, of which we’re not at this moment consciously aware. It’s in our minds for retrieval, but is not now conscious. There are also habits and dispositions that exist in the mind beyond our introspective self-awareness. You can consciously gaze within and not see them. And this is true of many other things that we take in about the world around us but that remain beneath the sweep of full awareness. We have huge resources in the unconscious mind that are not always quickly or easily available to consciousness.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that, but this makes sense,” Walid said.

“What’s most important to realize is the perhaps initially surprising truth that the unconscious mind represents the vast majority of our mental possessions and abilities. Our conscious experience is like the very top few stones of the Great Pyramid. The rest of our mental ability is like the remainder of that huge structure, except that, in reality, the difference in the size and scope of those mental areas is much, much bigger.”

“I’d never really thought about that, Your Majesty,” Mafulla said. The king nodded and continued.

“Many things go on in our minds that we never consciously realize. There are patterns and indications picked up by deep processes of recognition within us that may or may not enter our explicit thoughts. But we can train ourselves to be more open to this deeper part of our mental activity. We can get to a point where we allow those otherwise hidden thoughts and hints to flow upward. That way, we become aware of much more than most people ever realize. Inventors do this. So do all great explorers and artists and scholars, and athletes. The most innovative scientists are very good at it. The best warriors like Masoon rely on it. Creativity in any walk of life requires it.”

Walid spoke up. “That’s connected to what we were talking about so much in the desert—the power of our minds.”

“Correct. And, Mafulla, in case you and Walid haven’t spoken of this, he and I talked much about the mind on our trip across the desert. Most people live in a terribly constricted and reduced circle of being. They’re in self-imposed exile from the best that life has for them. They can’t make the right decisions or even see the true possibilities that our world offers unless they access this deeper level of the mind. Exiles from their own greatness, they choose unhealthy relationships, pursue the wrong paths, and generally end up living in various levels of either misery, or emotional deadness. They exist on the most basic level as human beings, but they’re not fully alive.”

The king went on, as he looked over at Walid. “I’ve talked with you a great deal about the power of the mind. But it’s not just that our normal conscious awareness can be powerful. In fact, if it’s cut off from the deeper sources of thought and feeling, it will not be powerful at all. Only when we allow the deep parts of our minds and hearts to percolate upward into consciousness, and also directly touch our actions, can we tap into our true power. And only when conscious thought resonates with these deeper resources will it have its proper impact.”

He sat for a moment in silence, then said, “We have to get beyond the superficial chatter of our normal consciousness. We need to access all that’s available to us beneath the clutter, beyond the chattering voices and distractions of normal thought.” The king smiled. “We need to experience what I like to call the thought beyond thought. That’s where the deep power is.”

“How can we do this?” Walid asked.

“We calm our conscious minds. We relax our bodies and release whatever ordinary thoughts or feelings might be impinging on us. We then become open to allow deeper insights to appear. And they’re always near us, available to us, if we’ll just notice them and take them in. We’ll talk more about this in days to come, but for now, learn to listen carefully to any small thoughts that might seem to play about beneath the surface of your normal consciousness. When one appears, invite it to linger and develop in your mind.”

“This is what you do, Your Majesty?” Mafulla asked.

“Yes, it is. All the time. I want you boys to do this as well, to be sensitive to your inklings and feelings about the situations that develop around us. Never just dismiss these hints that sometimes fleetingly appear from the realm of the unconscious mind. Pay attention to them. They’re worthy of your notice. And then tell each other and me. That way, we can work together powerfully to resist and restrain those who have given in to the downward pull of evil. And that way, we can also make some very good and creative things happen.”

“Ok,” Walid said. “This sounds really important.”

“It is.”

“We’ll try to do exactly as you say.”

“Sure thing, Your Majesty,” Mafulla answered.

“As you seek to tap into your deeper potential, you’ll progressively grow in your ability to do so. It’s like any skilled behavior.”

“I’m sure you’re a master at it, Your Majesty,” Mafulla said.

“It’s very natural for me, and has been for many years. Just remember this. What we can know goes far beyond what most people suppose. And what we can do is just as vast.”

The Joy of the Deeper Mind at Work

Joy awaits us all. When we work with the ordinary levels of our mind, everything's harder that it could be. When we clear away the clutter and get beyond the chatter of the normal conscious mind, joyous magic can happen.

I recently posted on social media that I had, a few days ago, finished the final major editing of the eight books that now exist in a series of novels that I've been working on for five years, since February 2011. It's the first experience of writing where I wasn't working hard in my conscious mind to think and compose. It was all a gift of the deeper mind, a layer of mentality or soul, if you will, that we all have, but that we don't often enough draw on, day to day.

These books and the stories they convey came to me, as I've said before, like a movie in my head, a translucent screening of an action and adventure story far beyond anything I could ever have created out of my ordinary operating resources. In fact, when I first started reading the manuscripts out loud to my wife, she interrupted to say, "Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" It was all that different from my nineteen previous books, all non-fiction.

One reviewer of the prologue to the series, The Oasis Within, suggested that a series of conversations between people crossing the desert wasn't that big a stretch for me, and not that far out of my comfort zone as a philosopher who is always talking about life wisdom. And he was right. But there are all these little details and plot points in Oasis that I never would have thought to develop. And there's a reason that The Oasis Within is a prologue to the new series and not a numbered volume of it. It's mostly great conversations. It prepares one of the characters for the action that's to come. And it prepared me for it, as well. But a younger reader, or a reader who just loves action can start with Book One of the series, Walid and the Mysteries of Phi, the book that's now recently out by the title The Golden Palace, which is full of action, adventure, mystery, and intrigue and brings us philosophy in an entirely new key. And all the other books are like that one in this regard, too. It's like slowly walking up to a door, and opening it, and what's inside takes you completely by surprise and launches you into an adventure that just won't stop.

Early in the process, when I learned to calm my conscious mind and just relax and release, the magic would happen. With the deeper mind at work, you feel more like a receptacle, or a conduit. I've mentioned here before, I think, Elizabeth Gilbert's new book Big Magic, where she tells several stories about this remarkable kind of creative experience. It's joyous and practically effortless in its level of self-perceived exertion. How often can we say of our job, paradoxically, that "It's the hardest I've ever worked" and "It's the easiest thing I've ever done" and "It's been pure joy" all at the same time?

This is a hallmark of the deeper mind at work. There is amazing persistence of accomplishment and a sense of ease, and an overflowing of joy to match. The joy is wondrous, deep and high, wide and focused, inner and outer somehow at the same time. It animates everything else you do. It's remarkable, and it's maybe meant to be our most natural state—when we've peeled away all else, all the accretions of consciousness and contrary emotion, when we get down, deep to our most fundamental resource, one that's both natural and transformative at the same time.

I heartily recommend working from your deeper mind and experiencing the joy that's there awaiting you. I'm hoping that another book will also come to me the same way. After a million and two thousand and five hundred and more words, I feel like I'm just getting started. And isn't that the way our work should feel?

A Sunday Reflection on Religion and Faith

I've been away from blogging for a couple of months. I first took a break in honor of the holidays. And then I got busy editing my new series of novels for a quicker than normal schedule of publication. I hope you've already seen the prologue to the series, the book The Oasis Within. It's been out for a few months. And just this week, the first numbered volume in the series Walid and the Mysteries of Phi, The Golden Palace, appeared on Amazon. In two or three months, I hope to have volume two out as well, The Stone of Giza. 

I'm almost done in my editing of the eight books I've already written for the series. And today, Sunday, I want to share a passage I just edited. Even though the books are set mainly in Egypt, certain things happen in faraway places, like Tunisia, or Berlin, or New York City. This passage comes from a story line in numbered Book Seven, The Ancient Scroll. The setting is New York City in 1935 at a Methodist Church. The minister, Bob Archdale, is working on a sermon. We get a chance to see into his head and heart as he makes notes. I hope you enjoy this passage.

Bob at the moment was in his office preparing his sermon for the next morning. He was planning to talk on the nature of faith and how it’s more about perception and values and commitment than just belief. He had decided to use as his biblical text the famous meeting at night between Jesus and the Jewish Rabbinical leader Nicodemus, as reported in the Gospel of John, chapter three. At a time when most of the religious establishment either disliked or feared Jesus, this prominent teacher had gone to see him at night, when, presumably his visit would not be public knowledge. He approached the controversial figure and actually said, “Teacher, some of us know that you were sent by God, because no one could do the things you do without divine support.” And then Jesus, rather than acknowledging the scholar’s rare open-minded reasoning and remarkable belief, says something instead that can be very puzzling on more than one level. His words in response were: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus is of course perplexed and says, “How can anyone return to the womb and be born a second time?” And then Jesus answers in such a way as to indicate that his entire ministry and mission aren’t primarily about reasoning and belief, but personal transformation into what’s really a new life, with new perceptions, values, and commitments.

Bob knew that, at almost any time, many of the people in his church were showing up, week-to-week, to make a deal with God. They would believe whatever they needed to believe, and do whatever they needed to do, in order to gain divine favor and everlasting life. Some were likely just hedging their bets and maybe living out the famous Agnostic’s Prayer: “Oh God, if there is a God, please save my soul, if there is a soul.” They were there in an effort to perhaps improve their lot and maybe defeat death. But God wanted them there to defeat spiritual blindness and deafness and idolatry and selfishness. He wanted to see them born anew, raised from the death of alienation and separation and selfishness to a new life of union with him and each other. He wanted an eternal life for them now, which was more about quality than it was about quantity. 

He really wanted to get this point across to everyone who showed up for the service. The faith they were being called to embrace is about new life, new values, and new commitments lived all day, every day. He wanted them to understand that when the insistent felt needs of the untutored ego can be released, its real needs can be met. And then, we can experience the genuine power of humility, compassion, and deep faith. The reverend was hoping to get all this across in a persuasive and illuminating way, so that at least many of the members of his congregation could perhaps see the issues of faith in a new and richer light.

When people approach religion for what they can get out of it, they ironically make it nearly impossible to get the most out of it. It becomes a tool—an instrument the ego is merely using to enhance its own interests, whether those interests are healthy or not. That’s why we’ve had so much war and violence and oppression in the name of religion throughout history. These things have nothing to do with true spirituality, but are perversions or deformations of what faith and the quest of the spirit are supposed to be all about. We often come across people pursuing their own greed, with their own ambitions, and superstitiously seeking to assuage their worst fears under a false patina of religious language, ritual, and sentiment. And this wasn’t just a danger for other times and places, Archdale knew, but it’s a temptation for any of us unless we can come to a true understanding of spiritual things.

Some Good We Can Do Together

I'm hoping you'll join me to make something good happen.

The New Book

Ever since I left Notre Dame in 1995 to pursue the unusual job of being a public philosopher, I've wanted to write a book full of ideas that had been transformative for me and that would also be genuinely life changing for readers. After 19 nonfiction books, I think I've finally managed to do so at a new level with the new novel, The Oasis Within. 

It arrived as the biggest surprise of my life, and as the doorway to - so far - seven other much longer novels that are also now completely written and just awaiting a final edit and publication. The Oasis Within is a prologue to this series of longer books. My granddaughter christened the big series "Walid and the Mysteries of Phi," featuring the name of the main character and a Greek letter that in this context names both a mathematical ratio and a secret society that's unlike any group of people ever written about, and that's profoundly relevant to how we understand our own lives. I've learned more about life and its possibilities from the characters in these stories than I ever would have thought possible. I've also come to love the characters as if they were real: and in a way, they are.

You've most likely heard me tell the story. The first scene came to me uninvited, as a strikingly unusual, vivid daydream one morning in February of 2011. An old man and a boy were sitting in the sand under a palm tree, talking. They were in the desert in Egypt. It was the summer of 1934. I ran upstairs to my study to write quickly what I was seeing and hearing. I continued to transcribe this mental movie for four and a half years, never consciously devising a scene or plot twist or character. I just watched it all unfurl and did my best to describe what I saw and heard.

A Fellowship of the Mind

There's a concept in The Oasis Within that's become especially important to me - the idea that there can be a "Fellowship of the Mind" in our world, a loose collection of people who are fully open to discovering who they most deeply are, and what they can truly do with their talents and energies – kindred souls who help each other learn to see deeper patterns in events and to draw on otherwise neglected powers for creative accomplishment that can make a difference for their own lives and in their broader communities. I have an audacious hope that if this book gets into the right hands, all the stories in it and the subsequent series may help bring readers together into such a fellowship that can be uniquely powerful. 

Our world is full of tangled problems that no one seems capable of solving, and of intransigent politics that rarely appear to rise above the level of schoolyard taunts. We need something superior to what we're already doing. And in a time when more people than ever are telling me they want their lives to really matter, we all need the right ideas and inspiration for the best path forward. 

My Proposal

Here's what I've realized and now want to act on: You, dear reader, know many people I'll likely never meet. You have a sphere of influence that I could never duplicate. If you've read The Oasis Within already and it's touched you, or even if you haven't yet, but are willing to, and you then find it so resonant that you're moved to go even farther and use it to touch the lives of the people around you, I have a proposal.

I want to get this new book into the hands of as many good people as I can. I don't care about Amazon rankings or bestseller lists or author royalties at this stage. I just want this book to have the impact it's capable of having. And the challenge is now mine, since to get it into the world, I've left the realm of established publishers and have "gone rogue" and created my own imprint for all these books. They were too "different" for the literary agents I've worked with in the past. They couldn't be put into an easy genre box for mainstream publication. Or so I was told. And I knew I wouldn’t change them from being what they are. I believe in them exactly as they’ve come to me. So, I've launched my own publishing initiative, in such a way that allows me to offer you a proposal.

If you can commit this month to buying at least 25 copies of The Oasis Within to give to friends, family, and associates, I can provide them for you at a cost of $7 a book, including shipping, for the beautiful paperback that retails for $14.99. Anyone who orders 50 or more at this price will also get, as a gift from me, the first long novel in the subsequent series, a book called The Golden Palace, which will be fully edited and ready before the New Year. Some friends who’ve ordered 25, 35, 50, 65, 100, or even 200 copies of the book to give away as gifts within their own circles sparked this idea. They were excited to pass the book on to their clients or friends, or to others they come into contact with in the course of their daily lives.

What You Can Do

Here's what you can do, if you'd like to partner up with me in this way. By sending an email to TomVMorris(at)aol(Dotcom), let me know how many copies you'd like to order to give to others. It could be 25 or any number above that. Include in your email your best mailing address. I'll place the order for you right away and have the books shipped directly from the printer to you. I'll then email you an invoice that you can pay by check. If your order includes copies for a book club, let me know and I'll make myself available for a short email of Q&A for the members, or even a brief Skype time with them. I've never done anything like this before. But I think the time is right.

During the holidays, you'll likely be giving presents to people you care about and who make your life better. I hope you'll join me in spreading philosophy by giving The Oasis Within to some of those people, inviting them into a fellowship of the mind and heart that can enhance their lives and perhaps even the world around them a little more than would otherwise be possible.

It felt as if the characters of these books chose me to bring them and their lessons into the world. If you can help me share them in your own part of the world, it would be great. If you've already ordered lots of copies, or in case that's not possible right now, or even if you're just not at all moved to join me in this way with such an endeavor, I hope you'll simply help the books find their mission in the world by mentioning them to others. There's a lot of work for them to do in our time.

Thanks so much for considering this distinctive form of partnership!