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The Astonishing Dream of Job
By Ernie Veccho
© 2012
Visionary Fiction
ISBN: 0985469501
ISBN-13:9780985469504
Institute for Compassionate Living
http://www.institutegforcompassionateliving.com
217 pages, $12.95
The Astonishing Dream of Job is a fictional novel that the author wrote to teach spiritual lessons based his long experience treating trauma patients. It takes place mostly in Israel and focuses on a recently discovered reinterpretation of the biblical Book of Job. The main characters are Lou Costa and his close friend Pieta, but there are many others. They all heard about a lost manuscript that reinterprets Job’s experience not as a real event, but rather as a dream stemming from Job’s reaction to internal stress. This reinterpretation fits right into the author’s expertise. Veccho plotted the story similar to The DaVinci Code, with many adventuresome twists and turns as the main characters track down people who can tell them about the manuscript. They meet many people, Jewish Rabbis, Muslim clerics, black market profiteers, students, professional people, all of whom are aware of the manuscript but want to learn more. The author creates for himself an opportunity to explain his own experience treating those who are suffering with overwhelming trauma and what spiritual insights are helpful to them.
Ernie Vecchio is a trauma psychologist, the founder of The Institute for Compassionate Living. In his twenty-five years of working with severe trauma patients, he has helped thousands of severely traumatized individuals facing unimaginable disabilities: paralysis, amputation, head injuries, etc. He helped them strip away the self-criticism that comes from their wounded ego and recover a truer appreciation of self that is in line with the heart’s desire. In the end, his patients had more meaningful lives and made choices that were purposeful and goal oriented. The subtitle of his book is Understanding the Relationship between Soul, Spirit, Ego & Heart, so the book promises to shed some light on human suffering as well as being an adventure story.
Early in the book, Vecchio, based on his understanding of the Erra Epos, proposes that a severe storm caused the trauma Job experienced thirty-six hundred years ago. He opines that this storm happened because of a natural catastrophe, of nuclear-like magnitude, that spread storm clouds across a very large portion of Iraq and Palestine. The storm caused the death of Job’s family and later caused Job to have sores all over his body. The recently discovered reinterpretation was written around eight hundred years ago by a spiritual writer who understood, as the author does, that The Book of Job is Job’s lament about the trauma Job is experiencing. The manuscript was stolen and lost for around six centuries and has now been recently rediscovered. All the story’s characters are intrigued with this new discovery because it is being discussed internationally on The Internet.
As the novel progresses, the author gives his ideas on human suffering, and frequently cites references to others who understand psychology as he does. He also goes into quite a bit of detail about the contents of the newly discovered manuscript, paraphrasing some thoughts from the text of the manuscript. The main characters, and almost all the minor characters, discuss the manuscript all through the book. And some surprising conclusions come from their discussions. It is about a new understanding of the bible, one that is freed from prior understandings, especially church sponsored interpretations.
Like The DaVince Code, the author brings in a dark side of forces opposed to the publication of the manuscript. All the characters are worried about opposition from biblical literalists, those who think the bible should be taken literally. All the characters frequently voice their concern about biblical literalists, so frequently that I wonder if the author also shares this concern. He may not because he makes reference to Oswald Chambers, a Baptist minister who wrote a commentary on The Book of Job about ninety-five years ago. I checked it on The Internet. Chambers turns out to be a biblical literalist who obviously considers Scripture to be the inspired word of God.
The author also brings in supporting books and media through footnotes. He cites the movie What the Bleep Do We Know produced by 20th Century Fox and the book The Hidden Messages in Water written by Emoto Masura, and many famous names of contemporary and deceased psychologists and spiritual theorists. If you have access to The Internet, you might enjoy your own investigative work checking out all these individuals.
One thing glared out at me in the author’s description of the Book of Job. On page 35, he states that “two deities decide to play roulette with Job’s life. Satan bet God etc.” I don’t think anybody would accept that Satan is a deity like God is. Satan is a created angel who chose to depart from God. I think those who believe scripture would recognize that Satan took the form of a serpent and tempted Eve. God cursed Satan and put enmity between him and the woman, between his seed and the woman’s seed. Actually, I think that’s why human beings suffer. Sin is operating in the world, and we all suffer because of it. I think Job’s suffering teaches us something about our relationship with God. God does allow the innocent to suffer. Job’s friends were wrong in presuming Job must have offended God in some way. In the end God told Job that he is offended by Job’s friends for saying things about God that are not true, and God asked Job to offer a sacrifice on behalf of his friends to ask forgiveness for their falsehood.
I think this novel is well written and adventuresome. The author brought in much historical fact about many cities and cultures as he takes the reader on a tour of Israel chasing down information about the manuscript and about the teachings of the various experts in psychology and spiritual enlightenment that he cited. The main characters travel to Akko, Israel where they meet Zoe Hacket, a transpersonal psychologist, then travel to Gaza City, Palestine where they meet Hadi Zahir, who tells them about the Muslin belief in angels, humans, and genies, then to Safed, Israel where they meet Hadi’s friend Rabbi Karim Marish and later Father Bill Ogden. They also went to Masada and were told how 967 desperate Jewish Zealots died by their own hands rather than succumb to the Romans.
However, I thought it was difficult to follow the various ways the author described the psychology of a sound mind verses a traumatized mind. He uses the basic psychological terms of id, ego, super ego, and the unconscious, but the meanings seem to shift as the novel progresses. And he brings in many other terms like soul, spirit, divine spirit, heart, collective ego, parental ego, human spark, and many others. Here is what I got from his book.
We come into this world with a divine connection, and it is evidenced as the human spark, which is considered the spiritual aspect of being human. Its function, through the human spirit, is to provoke the developing ego into action. Born free-spirited, we have to acquire a sense of right and wrong. While we spend time externally learning the rules, internally there may or may not be a developing ethic. The compass for this ethic is the human heart.
Inside the unconscious, the soul provides us with an objective view of our inner world. Seeing what the soul sees, we witness an interaction between the ego and the human spirit. The ego asks the spirit “Where did you come from?” The spirit answers “I am around and through all that is.” Simply put, the human spirit, by design, is intended to provoke an emotional reaction from the ego.
Ego is a survival mechanism that mediates between our impulses and the demands of the environment. It gets its standards from the culture and is tied to the brain. In contrast, feeling is an immediate reaction to the present moment, and the instrument used for its perception is body and heart. We become untrusting of our feelings and become shifted from feeling beings to emotional beings. Why do we suffer? It is to become conscious. The ego can choose to suffer, or the heart can choose to be free.
The human spirit provokes the ego into action. As a result, self-judgment and self-blame become the cause of our initial suffering and block our growth. If the human spirit were not tenacious, we would never awaken to the importance of our feelings, nor would we spiritually mature. Suffering with ourselves offsets this fate. Suffering for ourselves reinforces the ego’s hold on us as victims. Using our heart’s intelligence as a compass, we can navigate through this conditioning and serve the truth of who we are.
The author mentions the movie The Wizard of Oz. I think almost everyone has seen that movie. I remember my take on that movie when I saw it multiple times in my younger years. Vecchio says it exemplifies his main themes: “We are all looking for our brain, heart, and courage, only to find out in the end we already had it. Compassion is Dorothy, finding its way back home by imaging the choice.”
Trying to piece together all the information author provides, I get the impression that humans have a divine principle within them that they need to channel in the right direction so they develop correctly. If we become subjected to unfair accusations of guilt, even by our own internal judgment (the ego), that is very damaging to us. We all desire to be loved, and if we judge situations from that aspect (from the heart), we can grow as human beings and find the happiness we all crave.
I agree with the author that this psychological yardstick is an effective way to pursue a connection with the Divine, and I applaud the author for the work he has done to alleviate human suffering. As for me, I can choose God as Job chose him. All God wants from me is my obedience and my love; actually, he commands me to love him with all my strength so that my love might approach the love he has for me. Even though he exposes me to suffering, He is still my father, and I can consider myself his child. I don’t think I can find a better relationship with the Divine.
You will find this book challenging.
Maurice A. Williams
http://www.mauriceawilliams.com
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