Review: Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness by Keri Mangis

Author Keri Mangis has created an intriguing memoir interweaving the facts of her earthly life with visits to various spiritual realms with beings that offer not only guidance, but preparation and prediction in Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness: A Memoir of New Beginnings.

Mangis first describes the events of her current incarnation. She was born into a generally normal family, her parents loving but distant. In school she learned to deal with fears and insecurities while showing a great love of books and proving herself to be a prize-winning competitive runner.

With vague plans for college near home, she wound up, on impulse, following a friend to university, successfully pursuing a degree in business, meeting a young man she would marry, and moving several times until she settled down. She traded her aversion to her work environment for the challenges and rewards of stay-at-home motherhood. Needing a self-fulfilling adventure, she plunged wholeheartedly into the study of yoga.

Interspersed are chapters that paint what Mangis depicts as the etheric reality behind the scenes, or as she puts it, beyond “the shifting realities of the Earth Realm.” There she has a spirit name, Serene Voyager, or Sëri, and consults with her guide, Rasa, in a scenario that begins before the author’s earthly birth and continues through her various triumphs and trials as her real life is observed from a spiritual insider’s viewpoint. The author’s emotional companions – Fear, Guilt, Shame, Anger, and Depression – push her in different directions, but she finds can all be rational, useful impulses. Her closest companion is a wolf spirit named Endless Curiosity, or Curiosa for short, a central symbolic force as the author battles with life’s many vicissitudes.

Mangis writes in a wholly readable, thoroughly confident and competent manner, making even the fantasy portions of her book seem plausible, which is no small feat, given the nature of her narrative, giving the book a surprising universality. The reason for this is her everyday problems are very recognizable, so her story is relatable for most everyone, even if her conception of the world behind the veil may not be.

Struggles with illness, workmates, and even her own idealism all have echoes in her conversations and discoveries with Rasa. Throughout, Mangis projects a sense of willingness to try harder, to look deeper, to explore beyond the present and the obvious for answers and comforts, so just as she has had a guide throughout her journey, she makes an inspiring guide through her memoir.

Espousing no particular religion or creed, Mangis avows a general belief in all positive paths, again adding to the book’s relatability, though it will be no doubt more appealing to those on an esoteric path, underpinned by her strongly assertive statements about the power of yoga’s healing power for the mind and body. Though her references to spirit guides and “soul embodiment” may seem flighty on first glance, her focus on real world issues, as well as real world solutions, give the book a grounded sense of possibility.

Unique and inspiring, Mangis’s unconventional memoir is a fascinating journey into the interworking of action, feeling, and higher truth, and one of the stronger entries in the genre of spiritual self-help.