Inner Guide Meditation: A Spiritual Technology for the 21st Century

Rating:
Summary: Innovative yet limiting
Review: If you are interested in personal development this is definitely a book to buy and read but get ready. The author draws heavily from Jungian and Western esoteric philosophy. The main premise is to find your inner guide through the steps outlined in the book and work through various archetype/tarot images in becoming more conscious. The system makes quite a bit of sense and I got interesting results from its practice when I tried it out. This is all well and good plus the author has some very interesting insights into working with the Shadow, shamanism, tarot and astrological correspondences, kundalini arousal, etc... My main problem with the book is that the first half states "think for yourself" and utilize your inner guidance without relying on others yet the second half is literally filled to the brim with Steinbrecher's somewhat absurd statements on a variety of issues. This does not mean that Steinbrecher does not have some interesting and important things to say but to me it completely diminishes the entire purpose of the inner guide meditation which is a completely personal path of development. Some examples of this is the book is his ridiculous statements on sexuality and personal development. He has a bizarre approach to psycho-spiritual development with sexual energies stating things like "a priest or priestess must be virgin, celibate, metasexual or practice coitus interruptus..", "only men and women not earthed through physical union with the opposite sex can be true priests and priestesses" and almost an anti-heterosexual stance toward sex. This may be a victory for the gay and lesbian community since in his system you can have homosexual sex but if you have heterosexual sex you lose access to the Alien functions (special abilities). He also states that his system is completely safe if his guidelines are followed to the letter or an "initiated" D.O.M.E. trainer guides you for a price. Israel Regardie talks about a woman in The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magick who followed this system and was completely deluded by her inner guides. I was further disappointed when I actually contacted his organization D.O.M.E. and got some of their materials. Steinbecher spouts out his "deep" insight on a variety of issues ranging from diet to not listening to music on compact disks because it causes disease in a hierophant-like style. Again, another potentially good system of self-development gone wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Like The Method
Review: OK - I'll admit it - even though I wouldn't use everything from this book verbatim and for my own personal use and in my hypnotherapy practice I have adapted some of the techniques from this book - I still find the book a worthwhile reading.

The following exerpt may give you an idea - a gist of this book:

"The following is a lovely example of transforming outer experiences by working with inner archetypes. The process engages "active imagination" and its purpose is to transform one's negative unconscious projections.

The example involves the assistance of an Inner Guide (you may as well just ask the unconscious/superconscious to bring up the appropriate image or just let it surface into your awareness).

Say, for instance, that your neighbor is trying to poison your dog. Ask your Guide to take you to or bring you the image of that neighbor as you know him to be in the outer world. Then give that image permission to take its true form as it lives in you. Say that it turns into Dracula. The Dracula image is a picture of the energy in your that projects out from you onto your neighbor and gets him to try to poison your dog.

Call on the Transformational Energies (these may be energies represented just as Light and Love, or angels, planetary forces, Tarot cards, etc.). If you are familiar with the Tarot cards, you can pick the images/energies of Sun, Fool and High Priestess.

Ask them to send their love into the figure (Dracula) to heal and transform it so that it reaches its highest possible form in you at this time. After they do this, say that the Dracula figure has turned into a King. Dracula and the King are the same energy, the King being its higher, more conscious form.

Ask the King what you have to do new in thought, action or behavior (having nothing to do with your neighbor), so that the energy the King represents in you will remain constant and not sink back into unconsciousness and its Dracula form.

When you have received this information, give the King energy form permission to enter your body. Feel what part of your body this energy lives in and where it radiates from. If the transformation is successful and you have really changed this part of yourself, the neighbor will either change dramatically or go out of your life immediately. Because you have changed your role needs and no longer need a dog poisoner in your reality, the neighbor's choices are to change as a role player for you or leave your reality.

Never work with images of known people from the outer world in the inner world. It tends to sustain rather than release negative unconscious projections. Always ask the image of the known outer world person that your Inner Guided brings you to take its true form AS IT LIVES AS AN ENERGY WITHIN YOU. This insures that you are, in fact, working on an aspect of yourself.

You can go to images of everyone you know and ask each of these outer world figures to take its true form as it lives in you. Here you will get the images of what you are projecting on each of them. It's both fascinating and revealing to do this and to discover just what we are projecting on those people we love best or least."

Rating:
Summary: It All Comes Together Here
Review: This book provides a journey into the self that can truly provide the kind of self knowledge that can set you free. The author is an astrologer. I have had my chart done many times and I always came away depressed about aspects in my chart that seemed to doom my life to struggles that I could not win. The author has worked out ways to deal effectively with the things that are a challenge to the individual. I had a marvelous experience with one of the meditation exercises when only a few pages into the book. This solved a health problem that I had for some time. This book has techniques that work for a person such as myself who have been into metaphysics for years and years, or people that are relatively new to meditation. The people I gave the book to said that it was the first book that worked for them right away. This is not a book just to read, it has techniques than, when practiced, are life changing.