Comments and reviews of Love, Soul,
& Freedom
“Denise Breton and Christopher Largent turn their keen and mystical gaze to the love poetry of Rumi. The effect is mesmerizing.”
—Marianne Williamson,
“Few authors in our time see as clearly the implications of spirituality for human progress. Another wonderful book from Breton and Largent.”
—Dr. Patrick J. Carnes,
author of Out of the Shadows and Sexual Anorexia
“Love, Soul & Freedom is a delicious pilgrimage through the sweet, fragrant garden of spiritual delights. Through it, we can hear Rumi sing with a music that truly soothes and nourishes the soul.”
—Wayne Muller
“Using Rumi’s uplifting poetry—poetry that so deeply touches the soul—Denise Breton and Christopher Largent have clearly outlined the path into the twenty-first century for today’s spiritual pilgrims. I highly recommend it.”
—Barbara Brennan
and founder of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing
“I salute Denise Breton and Christopher Largent for their visionary and politically daring use of Rumi’s sacred poetry as a catalyst for personal and societal transformation. The ecstatic and spellbinding verse of this Sufi prophet offers a powerful antidote to the soul sickness of our time. Take this terrific book to heart and you’ll feel in your bones the delirious freedom that is the essence of the mystic path.”
—Frederic A. Brussat,
Co-author of Spiritual Literacy
“This fascinating, in-depth treatise directs readers toward a richer understanding of themselves, Sufis, and Rumi’s poetry, and especially valuable, toward finding effective ways to apply this enlightenment to the challenges of daily life. The authors, university-level philosophy teachers with over 20 years of experience, first identify love, soul, and freedom as the three fundamental human needs, then use Sufi mystics as a substantiating example of a culture that supported and achieved unity of those basic principles. Once exposed to Rumi’s lusty poetry, one must marvel at his rare synthesis of divine love and spirited ecstasy, a state which at face value seems so unattainable. Is it? Breton and Largent delve into Rumi’s heart and discover an accessible path through 11 states of being (Companion, Releaser, Alchemist, Visionary, and so on) that finally leads to a twelfth, the ultimate freedom of the “Wise Fool.” This is a substantive work on the process of spiritual transformation.”
—NAPRA ReVIEW
“Denise Breton and Christopher Largent helped us reimagine the marketplace with The Soul of Economies and gave us a vision of a transformed society in The Paradigm Conspiracy. Their keen knowledge of religion, politics, and the power of imagination now flows through this wild and wonderful meditation on the mystic path of Rumi (1201–1273), the Persian Sufi sage and poet. Using the inimitable translations of Rumi by Coleman Barks, the authors offer a powerful antidote to the soul sickness of our time. The dose consists of love (‘Love,’ says Rumi, ‘is the way messengers from the mystery tell us things.’); soul (‘You already have the precious mixture that will make you well. Use it.’); and freedom (‘Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups. They swim the huge fluid freedom.’).
“Rumi is our companion and teacher who points the way to a meaningful life. Breton and Largent ponder cultivating the invisible in oneself, learning the art of letting go, guilding communities in our inner lives, and becoming agents of change.”
—
Values & Visions Reviews Service“‘Love, soul and freedom: these three weave the stories of our lives.’ So begins a new book by two writers who have the audacity to suggest that each of us has the potential to become a mystic.
“That’s the main melody in Love, Soul and Freedom, in which Denise Breton and Chris Largent use the poetry of 13-century Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi to explore the symphonies of the soul. This husband and wife writing team have chosen Rumi because he took a big gulp of God in his 30s after his encounter with a wandering holy man, Shams of Tabriz. From that time, Rumi was no longer a dry, dusty Mideast scholar of the Koran. He was intoxicated with the infinite. In fact, the image of ‘drunkenness’ is one of Rumi’s favorite ways to suggest how he suddenly felt love at play.
There’s a strange frenzy in my head,
of birds flying,
each particle circulating on its own
Is the one I love everywhere?
“Generations ago such a spiritual awareness was the private reserve of a few holy men and women. Now people throughout the world seem open to the hidden realities of the soul. What else would explain, the authors ask, that Rumi is the most popular mystic poet?
“So with the help of Rumi’s luminous images, Breton and Largent have written a meditation on what people can expect when they sense that the Omnipotent and a crew of mind-altering visions have landed in the psyche’s back yard.
“For Breton and Largent, coming to terms with this presence means first coming to terms with the soul. They use the word soul to refer to a guiding center, core or essence. They write: ‘Soul tells us about us—not as others want, expect, or imagine us to be, but as we are in our innermost being. When we go to the depths of sorrow, confusion, or despair, it’s our souls that take us there and see us through. Or if we experience exhilarating joy, it’s our souls that lift us up with a bigger-than-life knowing: So that’s what it all means!
“They believe the soul is the compass for using freedom wisely, for finding true connections that fulfill a desire for love. Without soul, they say, both freedom and love can become addictions.
“Unfortunately, the authors add, many families and social institutions deny the soul. In fact, children are often taught to trade ‘soul’ for the feeling of being loved. A bad trade-off? Breton and Largent think so. But they also say the soul will not always be denied. So it’s possible to know at any moment that ‘every object and being in the universe is a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty.’
“The imagery is Rumi’s, of course. Breton and Largent—whose previous writings include The Paradigm Conspiracy and The Soul of Economies—see such images as Rumi’s record of what it’s like to give birth to an awareness of God. Over and over he asked: ‘How can this great love be inside me?’
“The answers he found were in his words, which is why he recommended to students: ‘Listen to presences inside poems. Let them take you where they will.’ A modern reader is advised to keep alert and stay busy too.
Work in the invisible world
at least as hard
as you do in the visible.
—
Gary Soulsman“Generations,” The News Journal (Wilmington, DE)
“Less than 25 pages into this book, I found myself grinning ear-to-ear and exclaiming to anyone within range, ‘This is a GREAT BOOK!’ Page after page revealed wonderful jewels of insight, both from the extraordinary verse of Jelaluddin Rumi and the masterfully understated eloquence of the text. Since I’ve long been fascinated by the work of Rumi—the famed 13th-century Persian Sufi and mystical poet—any book dealing intelligently with his poetry would have been of interest to me. This one, however, was a moving and enlightening work, as unexpectedly delightful as a sudden cool breeze on a sweltering summer day.
“Breton and Largent are a wife and husband writing team best known for The Paradigm Conspiracy, a ground-breaking work on contemporary consciousness, culture, and consensus reality. With Love, Soul, and Freedom, they turn their keen perceptions toward a vital poetic expression of the Perennial Philosophy. It is an insightful and lovingly crafted commentary on Rumi as well as a joyful celebration of the spiritual life he personified: The Way of the Mystic. With a wonderful economy of words, it expresses the true intention of all mystic poetry by opening up a way of seeing beyond the appearances of this world of forms into the ultimate Reality—which Rumi knew as Allah.
“The definitive Coleman Barks’ translations of Rumi’s poetry are used throughout. Reading these works, it is difficult to conceive of the centuries which have passed since they were penned, or the distance—and seeming dissonance—between our world and that of the sheiks and dervishes. Yet Barks has not ‘contemporized’ these verses so much as he has caught a true sense of their innate immediacy.
“The spiritual truths captured in verse by Rumi are not inscrutably cloaked in an esoteric jargon whose meaning can be discerned only by a chosen few. It is a poetry of the here and now, as simple and direct as a letter from your best friend, a poetry which celebrates the divinity inherent in every facet of life, in every instant of time.
“Around the essential life-themes of ‘love,’ ‘soul,’ and ‘freedom,’ the authors have skillfully interwoven Rumi’s immortal verse with their own penetrating observations, into a wonderful tapestry, delineating the steps along the mystic path. As the title suggests, the interplay between the commentary and the poetry is very much like a dance. Principal themes and ideas are set forth by the authors, then a verse is presented in which they are expressed.
“Many engaging ideas are discussed. Some of them might, at first glance, appear to be the result of too much ‘reading into’ the poet’s words. After all, what could a sheik living in ancient Persia possibly know about holism or paradigm shifts? The surprising answer is: He knew plenty—even if he expressed these concepts with a different vocabulary:
Rumi uses ideas that we now associate with holism or holography. The whole is encoded in each part, just as each dot of holographic film contains the total image or each DNA strand contains information about the entire body. Parts aren’t parts; they’re the whole manifested in specific ways. . . .
This moment this love comes to rest in me,
Many beings in one being.
In one wheat-grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle’s eye, a turning night of stars.
“As the authors note, Rumi’s words are evocative of many ancient and medieval sources. Among them are Plato, both books of the Bible, and, of course, the Holy Qur’an. My personal favorite from among those collected in this book is reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the Pearl of Great Price:
The universal soul touches
An individual soul and gives it
A pearl to hide in the chest.A new Christ lives in you
From that touch, but no one
Can say why or how.Every word I say
Is trying to coax a response
From that.
‘Lord,’ I call out,
And inside my ‘Lord” comes,
‘Here I am,’A ‘Here I am’
that can’t be heard,
But it can be tasted and felt
In every cell of the body.
“That ‘Here I am,’ however we may experience it, is our own innate Divinity sounding the clarion call for the mystic journey. With Love, Soul, and Freedom, Denise Breton and Christopher Largent have given us an exhilarating sense of the infinite dimensions of Spirit which are to be encountered on the way. I know that I will return to this book often, to savor the wisdom and beauty contained in its pages—and I’m certain it will reach the huge readership it so richly deserves.”
Boz Martyn,
Innerchange