Schmitz, Art Historian Barbara (Universitat Basel, Switzerland)

Path of Lightning Schmitz, Art Historian Barbara (Universitat Basel, Switzerland)

Author and poet Barbara Schmitz offers a heartful, funny, and deeply moving "spiritual autobiography" that brings the reader along on each stage of her fervent inner quest for mystical experience. Beginning with a Catholic girlhood in Nebraska, she graduates to an unlikely apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg at the Naropa Institute; a dedicated transcendental meditation practice; and finally to thirty years of joys and struggles with a Sufi teacher (Shahabuddin Less) with whom she travels to Bali, Turkey, India, Kashmir, and the Holy Land. Incisive as lightning-the meaning of her Sufi name, Vajra-her questions and yearning are our own, and she doesn't let God, her teacher, or herself off the hook.