Are you running into the same patterns, stumbling over the same old problems over and over again? Are you finding it impossible to reach your goals while the people around you seem to easily achieve theirs?

 

What if reading pulp fiction could help you stop doing all that? What if reading a mystery novel could transform your life?

 

Novels are written to certain structures. In a good book, the adventure, the external actions, are only the surface level of the story. Beneath the surface, the heroine is forced to confront internal challenges.

 

The heroine will get in her own way. Her misbeliefs and bad habits will trip her up.

 

Unless she is able to overcome her own internal challenges, she won't be able to succeed. Only when she finally addresses her own character flaws can she win the day and save herself.

 

Real life is like this too, because a good novel reflects real human behavior. This is where we can learn and change.

 

I'd been writing mystery novels where the heroines went through their own journeys of transformation. If they could do it, why not me? After all, I'd already gone through many external transformations in my life--switching countries, switching jobs, losing parents.

 

The problem was, I was still me. Life changed on the surface, but I kept bouncing against the same problems and running into the same frustrations. There was a conflict between my external goals and my internal self.

 

It was only in my early fifties, when I began the process of internal transformation, that my life really began to change. Since therapy didn't appeal, I turned to what I knew--the esoteric practices I wrote about in my books.

 

And they worked.

 

Like the hero in one of my mystery novels, when I faced my own character flaws I began to succeed at what I cared about most.

 

I have not transformed into a being of shimmering light. The journey isn't over. I don't think it ever will be. 

The process of transformation isn't a straight line. It's a spiral to the center, and the center is the true self.