Title: Be Transcendent to Sustain Happiness: Ethic Philosophical Essays Reduce Miseries and Stresses
Author: Yvon Milien
Publisher: yMilien
ISBN: B0B5XC9P69
Pages: 165
Genre: Philosophy / Self-help
Reviewed by: David Allen

Read Book Review

To judge this book by its ambitious title, this book promises a lot. It delivers.

For years now, readers have been deluged with an avalanche of titles promising deliverance, self-knowledge, happiness, fulfillment. (Self-help books are top of the list when it comes to publishing market share.) So, the first challenge facing those seeking greater wisdom and contentment is simply, Where to begin?

Be Transcendent to Sustain Happiness by Yvon Milien is an excellent place to dive in. With broad strokes and incisive asides, Milien brings a lifetime of learning and experience to bear in this masterful exposition of pathways to authenticity, self-knowledge, and enlightenment. To its greater credit, the book balances awesome insight and theory with practical exercises in mindfulness and meditation. Those who are new to self-study and those who are already familiar with philosophy and metaphysics, will find this journey within to be thorough, extensive, and ultimately liberating.

The tone of the book is conversational, friendly, avuncular, and ultimately honest. Milien’s passion for truth and self-discovery illuminates every page. Citing and summarizing sources from Schopenhauer to Epictetus to Buddhism, Milien gifts readers with a lifetime’s worth of reading and insight.

The distillation is precious and enlightening. Intelligence – and intelligent choices – mediates between matter and spirit. Will and desire are the engines that drive us. Intelligently managed, they bring us higher to the realization of our dreams and purposes. Negligently handled, with an accent on materialism and crassness, they sink us to the depths.

The body, the intellect, and the spirit are the arenas in which we play. The most important pursuits are those of the spirit. Karma – the principle of Eternal Return – is the great arbiter in all these things, a cosmic principle of Cause-and-Effect that matches input with output. The task before each of us is to purposefully and lovingly manage input (our thoughts, perceptions, feelings) in order to get where we want to go. As the initiate and master Hermes Trismegistus put it, As above, so below: the world of manifestation accurately reflects the inner world of thought and purpose. Since we always get what we want (or think we want), it makes sense to carefully craft our desires.

Milien’s commentary on the world situation is equally trenchant, vibrant, telling: Garbage in, garbage out. As a society, we have sacrificed dignity and righteousness in the pursuit of mere baubles. Morality is the sword of Damocles dividing the well-lived life from the shabby, ultimately purposeless one. The good life – characterized by thoughtfulness, mindfulness, kindness, intelligence – is its own reward.

The book is not a collection of aphorisms. Instead, it is a rallying cry for authentic living, for intelligent individual and societal progress toward the light. Devote a couple of hours to this survey of the best life has to offer; the return on your investment could save you literal lifetimes of research and false starts.