By Aaron Anson. $16.95; Balboa Press; 274 pages.
Aaron Anson has a message and he puts it out there relentlessly in his book Mind Your Own Life: Trust your own intelligence to interpret your relationship with God ( whom he often refers to as the Source ) . Do not allow others ( the Church ) to decide for you what this relationship should be. As you might surmise, Anson has had a rocky relationship with organized religion. A gay Black man born and raised Southern Baptist, he has experienced directly the stifling and hurtful atmosphere the Church can often engender toward those who don't fit the mold.
Anson is driven to helping others create their own spiritual path. He is a proponent of the New Thought movement, for which he is a coach. New Thought, according to sacred-texts.com, espouses that "… a higher power pervades all existence, and that individuals can create their own reality via affirmations, meditation and prayer." Anson sees his audience as both those who have shunned the gay community as morally or spiritually inferior ( he wants them to rethink the origin of their biased thinking ) , and secondly, gay teens, who might find inspiring his message to think for themselves and realize they are loved.
Some call Mind Your Own Life a memoir. Anson does sprinkle his message with a few stories from his life but in a way that leaves you wanting more detail. Basically, the book presents his views against the Church, the government, and the spiritual life unexamined. Condensed, it would make a powerful lecture on the public speaking circuit.
I have to admit my bias here. Free thinker as I am, I can buy into his message of figuring out your own relationship with whatever you hold to be a higher power. However, although raised with a Christian-influenced ethic, I have not been exposed to, nor am I comfortable with, Christian rhetoric. Thus, I struggled with many of Anson's pronouncements. For example, "Our goal now should be to—without hesitation—reconnect and submit once again to the Source we once knew."
Anson has a zest for life and a desire to share. While his basic message is a powerful one that no doubt will resonate with many, in my opinion he has not come up with enough different themes/topics to warrant a full book, settling instead for new ways to say the same thing. More detail of his own life story would have helped.
Anson is married and resides with his partner, Oliver, in Washington, D.C. Anson's book is being printed by an arm of Hay House, the hugely successful self-help publishing company.
