MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW: ALL STORMS PASS: THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS 2 - FIRE AND RAIN

Congrats, Author/Life Coach Luke Benoit for garnering this awesome Midwest Book Review! 

If anyone ever told you that you were anything less than wonderful—they lied. 

                         —ALL STORMS PASS: RAIN AND FIRE 

 

Life Coach Luke Benoit has followed up his book, ALL STORMS PASS: THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS with a second book in the series: RAIN AND FIRE. Warning: This is not a book for the faint of heart in need of recovery from trauma. It’s a two-fisted, take-no-prisoners approach to coping with mental, emotional, and psychosomatic traumatic challenges.

This book offers ways to soothe the suffering and liberate them, if they are willing to face their demons.

As with the first book, Benoit presents verses he calls “anti-meditations” (which are the same as meditations, only different). RAIN AND FIRE continues to riff on therapeutic themes of recovery, addiction, self-help, and personal spirituality. A former psychotherapist with extensive 12-Step Recovery knowhow, Benoit proposes that these anti-meditations may occasionally serve as puzzles—jumping off places for discussion, self-assessment, or prayer.

As a philosopher and poet, Benoit strikes a balance between his own truths and universal truths. Yes, he went through the Valley of the Shadow, but he points out that his experiences are not unique. The question ultimately is not necessarily how can we avoid trauma, but how can we flourish in spite of it?

RAIN AND FIRE’S hybrid of searing poetry, confessional naked rage and heartfelt love is tempered with popup humor that keeps the reader smiling through tears while turning pages. Instead of titles, the meditations have subject-oriented headlines such as:

“When will it be success and how will I know it when it gets here?”

“Today, I will admit that sometimes BEING STUCK IS A CHOICE”

“Today, I will accept that LIFE is not an ALFRED HITCHCOCK MOVIE”

“There comes a time when no matter where you've been and no matter what you've been through, you have to MOVE FORWARD anyway”

And my personal favorite:

I will WALK MY DOG -
no matter what else is
going on.

Even Benoit’s Dedication starts out with a smile:

For my Auntie Cia,
my Mom and Dad
and the Tall Dark Stranger
I thought might bury me
in the basement.

In a poignant, highly personal passage, the author reveals that after writing the first book, he suffered a physical and mental breakdown that was eventually diagnosed as severe vertigo—a health crisis that ended his progress for a time, except in the arena of healing, which eventually did happen. 

Benoit does not attempt to offer readers magical solutions received from On High, but supplies aid as a fellow traveler who has come many times to a crossroads that asks him to choose between Light and Darkness, and he continues to choose Light.

I highly recommend this book to advocates of 12-Step Recovery and those who wish to learn more about it; seekers of recovery from trauma or life itself; spiritual seekers; and poetry lovers.

Title: ALL STORMS PASS: THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS 2 – RAIN AND FIRE
Author: Luke Benoit
Publisher: Luke Benoit
Publication Date: May 27, 2021
Language: English
Paperback: 346 pages $17.95
978-0692222119
Available on Amazon

REVIEW: ALL STORMS PASS: THE ANTI-MEDITATIONS ("Keeps Recovery Real")

Title:                           ALL STORMS PASS: The Anti-Meditations
Author:                     Luke Benoit

Date published:     2012 by CreateSpace

ISBN-10:                    0615520138
ISBN-13:                    978-0615520131

Author’s Web Site:  All Storms Pass

Available on Amazon: Amazon: All Storms Pass

 "If anyone ever told you that you were less than wonderful...
They lied."

--All Storms Pass: The Anti-Meditations by Luke Benoit

I love this book. It fell into my life during a rocky time of self-doubt, anxiety and regrets, and I started dog-earing pages five minutes into my first reading. The title "All Storms Pass" is fitting since the book's brief passages (written in non-rhyming poetry format) focus on the transitory nature of life. At a whopping 635 pages, an alternate title might have been "The Big Book of Self-Esteem."

Benoit urges readers to share these "anti-meditations" with others to stimulate dialogue and promote healing. They function as the jumping off place for discussion rather than the end of it. "They beg for personal interpretation," says Benoit on the back cover, while acknowledging that "All of them require introspective rumination."

This is such a personal book and at the same most of us can relate to the struggle to gain peace and balance in our lives. Life Coach/Therapist Benoit has obviously suffered and continues to wage war against internal forces that threaten his peace of mind. This honest approach makes the book riveting.

Reading this book is like reading someone's life-journal, and as you gather the bits of wisdom, you realize you're looking in a mirror. What Luke Benoit has suffered and transcended one day at a time, each of his readers can suffer and transcend one page at a time, right along with him.

It is a brave masterpiece.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: LUKE BENOIT - "ALL STORMS PASS NOT FOR STUPID"

Title:                              ALL STORMS PASS: The Anti-Meditations

Author:                          Luke Benoit
Date published:            2012 by CreateSpace

ISBN-10:                         0615520138
ISBN-13:                         978-0615520131

Author’s Web Site:       All Storms Pass

Available on Amazon:  Amazon: All Storms Pass

SUMMARY: Author and Life Coach Luke Benoit knows from personal experience what it feels like to rise up from the ashes like the mythical Phoenix, and lives to help others do the same. His book has helped me in my own dark times.

all storms pass

 and happiness will always be a decision

even when I feel like I can’t make it.

 I can learn to stay out of my own way

no matter what has happened to me

or where I’ve come from

or what I’ve done or not done

in the past.

 and I can let the good inside me

take and carry me

and let that shape be

revealed

to me

    - All Storms Pass:  The Anti-Meditations by Luke Benoit

“You’re not going to get this book if you’re stupid,” said author and Life Coach Luke Benoit during a chat about his new book All Storms Pass: The Anti-Meditations. “You’re just not.”

I would love that on a t-shirt. Hope they come out soon.

Taken out of context, this statement may sound a tad arrogant, but what author hasn’t thought that about their book and kept it private? In context, Benoit was saying different people will get different things out of his book and some may never get it. The way he said it is typical of his straight-from-the-heart / take-it-or-leave-it style that forms the spine of All Storms Pass which opens with this “Statement of Self-Esteem”:

 “If anyone ever told you that you were less than wonderful…they lied.”

Okay, so what about Hitler? Shouldn’t he have listened to people who said he was less than wonderful? But this proves Benoit’s point. The stout-hearted narcissistic sociopaths (aka “stupids”) of this world will never seek wisdom, humility and healthy self-esteem. You won’t find them searching their souls in a 12-Step or hiring therapists or “life coaches.”

Benoit has alchemized tried-and-true “recovery” maxims, pop culture sayings and lyrics, and a dollop of his own raw honesty to create a series of healing “poems” that move the reader and stimulate contemplation. On the back cover, he acknowledges the book's similarities with classic meditation books such as Melody Beattie’s The Language of Letting Go, but advises his meditations are “very different.”

All Storms Pass has only been out a few weeks, and is already gaining popularity as it garners great reviews, including one Midwesterner who admitted Fear of Californian Superficiality before actually reading it and finding resonance.

I also reviewed the book favorably, so it was a pleasure to be able to pick Luke Benoit’s brain about the book’s process and publication. Before we launch into the interview, Benoit expresses happy exhaustion: “It’s like having a baby!”

Q:  Are you from the West Coast originally?

A:   I was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Prep School educated. Escaped at 18 to be as far away from every part of my life as possible. I came to Los Angeles to go to USC Film School and study screenwriting. But as the B-52's said, "Remember, wherever you go there you are..."

Q:  Where do you live now?

A:   Orange County, California.

Q:  Tell me about the Anti-Meditations.

A:   They are called the Anti-Meditations because they are very different from meditations that you would read in traditional meditation books.  A lot of them are dark or challenging, and some of them are like poems.  But they're never simple and they don't necessarily give you a simple answer or tool for a "one day at a time" solution.  Because sometimes I think life just isn't like that.

Q:  How did you come to write this book?

A:   Well,  All Storms Pass is me.  It just came out of me.  It has my personality.

I had a lot of different trainings in Recovery and the 12-Step Program, and in mental health and personal therapy and reading and reading and lots and lots of work on myself. I suppose it sounds big-headed but it just truly a reflection of who I am.