In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

. "The flesh wants to fight you. So no wonder spiritual freedom is found simply by refusing to fight. The ego wants to fight; it thrives off attention of any kind; it finds power even through self-hatred. To look in the mirror with your human eyes and tell the human with its own human mouth that you hate it, or hate any part of it, empowers the ego and steals your inner peace." This is what got me the most in the entire read! Because I have had to restle my flesh for a long time. Unbeknownst to me that the solution to this problem was simply surrendering and refusing to fight. Thank you for this slap up the head and the realistic check!

This book really does help you get things back into perspective so that you can stop mentally torturing yourself. This a great reminder to control your personal narratives and labels that run around your head. I read this at just the right time as I was falling back into the "ill be happy when" mindset. My favorite line in the whole book was something I wrote down. "The body and the ego will never be satiated". This book improves all the way through to the end. Well worth the read.

Unlike other reviewers, I found this book by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes aka Scott Hughes of Online Bookclub, to contain very few substantiated facts. The author expects the reader to accept his assertions that we are all one, connected to each other. The repetitive nature of his writing, in particular reference to the poverty of children, grated continuously. If you like, want or need to read books that are inspirational and give meaning to life, then there are plenty out there that are better than In It Together.

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes is a book that encourages the readers to discern the "real you" by stripping away those categories that we and society place upon us. That underlying “spirit” or the “real you” is the past, present, and future you united. Each and every one of us can free our spirit and unconditional love within us, and Hughes’ provides the tools to do that through eleven practical suggestions. The author does not espouse that once you have discovered your true self, the day-in and day-out of your struggles will magically disappear. Quite the opposite, but you will have inner peace as you journey through life. While reading the book, there were a lot of “aha” moments that resonated with me. Man, I am hard on myself sometimes. There was one portion that really stood out to me. “I do not control the cards I am dealt, so I will choose to unconditionally accept the cards I am dealt. If I play the cards the best they can be played, I consider myself a winner spiritually even if I did not win the game according to chips.” I am working on my final for one of my Master’s classes, and typically, my finals make me highly anxious even though I’m always prepared. This time, however, I remember the quote above, and surprisingly, that anxiousness is nowhere to be found. The only negative about this book was the repetitive nature of the first few chapters. It was a struggle to get through them because it went on and on, rehashing the same thing over and over again. The rest of the material was spot on if those first few chapters were condensed. I also disagreed with Hughes’ assertion that there is no true evil, but I did keep an open mind while reading the author’s thoughts on the subject. It is ok to agree to disagree, and the author even states this in the book. This book is a solid 4 out of 5 stars. It is very well written, with no errors, and flows really well. If it were not for the constant repetitiveness in the first few chapters, this would be 5 stars. Overall, this is a great book. This book is not the same rehash as many preachy self-help books on the market. I recommend it to anyone who needs inspiration with an easy practical application for your journey.

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All If you've ever struggled with issues of low self-esteem, or if you feel unsettled and searching for happiness in your life, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All may help you to make peace with yourself. Author Eckhart Aurelius Hughes aims to help you transform your outlook and understanding of who you are and how you relate to the world around you. In It Together examines issues of morality and purpose, challenging many core assumptions shared by most of us regarding who our true selves are and how we coexist with others. My first thought upon getting into the meat of the book, after the exposition in the earlier chapters, was that the book is a dissertation on the serenity prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Most of us have grown up being told that we have to struggle to overcome obstacles to achieve true satisfaction. One of the book's key themes is that we humans should get over having to fight to achieve what we want. According to the author, “Even though it can initially seem counterintuitive, it can also ultimately be revealed as very intuitive: To find peace, simply stop fighting. It is as infinitely easy as it is utterly guaranteed to work.” (p. 109). The concepts may be difficult to accept, given the societal indoctrination most of us have experienced in our lives, but there's something liberating in making a conscious decision to accept one's self regardless of self-perceived failings. Perfection is an unachievable ideal; embracing your imperfections can be liberating. There are two negative aspects to this book: first, the author uses some terms, both English and Latin, that may be unfamiliar to many readers without explaining their meanings. For example, the author uses “solipsism” and its derivatives in several chapters, but I'd wager many readers have no clue what the term means (I have a decent vocabulary, and I knew I'd heard the word before, but I had to look it up to be sure I had the correct interpretation). And in the early chapters, there is a fair amount of redundancy that detracts from the central points that the author otherwise so skillfully makes. I struggled with whether to give this book a four- or five-star rating (due to the early redundancies and obscure unexplained terminology), but ultimately the later chapters were so profoundly inspiring that I concluded it deserves five stars. I'd recommend this book to any older teen or adult who wants to challenge basic assumptions about themselves and the world around them and to learn new techniques to get closer to a lasting inner peace.