Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution

Product Information

In this heartfelt outing, [Rainn Wilson] offers a broad array of spiritual ideas for finding hope in a cynical world….Animated by self-aware humor, this entry doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, and instead offers deceptively simple yet thought-provoking musings to help readers embark on a quest of spiritual self-awareness. This is a pleasure to read.” When talking about his own search for the spiritual, he notes a "transformative" encounter with his onetime acting teacher André Gregory, the director, writer, and actor who plays a version of himself in the 1981 film My Dinner with Andre.

Comedic actor, producer, and writer Rainn Wilson, cofounder of the media company SoulPancake, explores the problem-solving benefits that spirituality gives us to create solutions for an increasingly challenging world. I didn't even know about a faith called Baha'i so all of that was really fun to learn about. I did however study Buddhism for a total of two months in university and can attest to 'craving' (hopefully in the best sense) inner and outer spiritual change.

Overall, I felt this book to be incredibly practical because you can reference it at any time with the glossary and my goldfish brain needs that. I think it serves as a great introduction for youths (or anyone really) curious about spirituality-- what great people throughout history have actually been teaching and demonstrating, love and unity. Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast Re:Thinking In a nutshell, I spent many years in my twenties and thirties on a private, personal spiritual search, which led me to read most of the holy books of the world’s major religions. I’m no scholar or expert by any means, but this quest for the truth compelled me to study the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada and other writings by and about the Buddha. I also read up on many Native American faiths and belief systems and caught up on some basics of Western philosophy. I got deeply reacquainted with the faith of my youth, Baha’i. I prayed and meditated profusely, attended various religious services, and dug deep into many central, profound questions: Is there a God? What happens when we die? Do we have a soul? Why do all these idiots watch The Bachelor?

So… OK to move forward on the old booky-wook? Have a bit of clarity on the personal reasons that led me to create Soul Boom? I'm a "None", religiously. On my most enlightened days I'm "Spiritual but not Religious." More often I'm left-brained, data-driven, and annoyed by the hate that purports to be Christian love. And yet... There is some part of me that longs to believe in the message of this book... Some part that wants to believe that we are all divinely connected and that we have a sacred responsibility to our own selves and to our community and world to create the "kin-dom" of God here on earth. The real problem with this book is it doesn't really teach you anything you don't already know, or convince you of anything you didn't already agree with. Empathy is good, consumerism is bad, people need community, etc. And have you heard that racism and sexism plague human societies around the world?Well, the Beatles met with the Maharishi, Cat Stevens became a Muslim, Shirley MacLaine communed with ancient aliens, a young Steve Jobs studied Buddhism in India, everybody was “kung fu fighting,” and countless young people sought answers along nontraditional spiritual paths. I was on this train in Switzerland traveling with my wife, and there was a headline and it said, actor had a spiritual transformation. I was like, "Oh, fantastic. I love spiritual transformations. Let me read what happened." And then it was like a shaman exercising demons from them. I'm like, "How is this spiritual?" To me, that has nothing to do with spirituality. It's not about ghosts and shamans and demons. So it was important to define our terms. Author Rainn Wilson has presented a lofty goal here... To create a Soul Boom, a spiritual revolution. In fact, he believes that it is absolutely necessary to our survival. Normally I find this type of book to be long on inspiration and short on actionable steps, but Wilson goes farther than most in pointing out changes that must be made and offering alternative ideas that, while idealistic, have actual potential. The “kingdom of heaven” is a condition of the heart—not something that comes “upon the earth” or “after death.”

In an increasingly challenged world, Wilson's "Soul Boom" explores the role spirituality can play, and in his opinion should play, in developing solutions for this complex world. The book reads as part spiritual autobiography and part spiritual manifesto, a weaving together of Wilson's own spiritual beliefs with a broader spectrum exploring a variety of spiritual paths and how they all lead toward solutions to help create the better world that so many of us long for these days. Wilson affirms a generalized version of this basic truth that, if widely adopted by his nonreligious readers, would be progress indeed. His aim is to “advance a conversation about the importance of the divine dimension of existence and how it can influence our lives and our futures, collectively and individually.” This echoes C. S. Lewis’s self-diagnosis that he possessed “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” Lewis called this “joy,” an emotion that Wilson also affirms as the antidote to the world’s cynicism. There is more, though no less, to this world than what our senses apprehend. And isn’t that the reason so many people watch TV? Binge-watch our favorite shows on repeat? No matter what the milieu—a police station, a spaceship, a Scranton paper company—we long to spend time with those fictional, loving, flawed, funny families. Perhaps a little bit more than we long to be in our own. It's not that there's no humor to be found in "Soul Boom." There's most definitely humor to be found here, however, "Soul Boom" for the most part gives us the other side of Rainn Wilson - a more contemplative fellow, devoted family man, and longtime spiritual human being raised in and still following the Baháʼí faith and fiercely devoted to climate issues. Rainn unfortunately never warns the reader that not all paths are good. The individual must test and see if it is a good path.Soul Boom begins with the premise that the purpose of faith is two fold- to grow and evolve in our inner selves, and to create a more open and just world. Wilson delves into a wide range of eastern and western faiths for wisdom and to note the commonalities of all faiths. Based on those commonalities, he toys with creating a new, more perfect faith, one that he admits is remarkably similar to his own Baha'i faith.