Ladies and Gentlemen!: Daring to Live What the Soul Already Knows

Lori A. Dunn is an ESL teacher, instructional designer, and freelance
writer in New Westminster.

John Heney is a self-styled “spiritual mechanic,” which is “a
person who lives and works and walks and talks in the soup of vibration
we live in.” The “soup of vibration” is the energy that surrounds
us, flowing in and out of us in waves of positive and negative force.
Heney’s point is that we can control those waves of energy, ensuring
that the positive ones prevail. His is a principles-based philosophy,
which he describes as “[p]rinciples of fun, ease, joy, readiness to
learn, and a philosophy of learning that is uplifting, refreshing and
forever young.”

This book is a sequel of sorts, written to “spell out the
principles” he related in the telling of his own story in The Thunder
Within (1999). In Ladies and Gentlemen!, Heney uses case studies from
his practice to illustrate his ideas. His breezy prose is sometimes
overly cutesy. (“This story will greatly benefit people from Iceland,
so go fetch one.”) On the other hand, this writing style will draw in
some readers, especially people looking for an innocuous, emotional, and
slightly religious self-help book that peppers its chattiness with ample
questions to encourage interactive self-reflection.