Review of “Awaken to Your Truth” by Joanna Alexopoulos

Score: 87/100 (8.7 out of 10)

Awaken to Your Truth is a New Age spirituality and metaphysical self-help book by Joanna Alexaopoulos. That's a unique combination of sub-genres!

Key themes include overcoming societal conditioning, rejecting ego-driven mindsets, and embracing unity and compassion.

Awaken to Your Truth takes a spiritual, almost mystical approach to self-help and personal growth. The book conveys the author's personal journey and emphasizes awakening to one's "divine truth" through messages reportedly channeled from ascended beings who are called “guides, angels, and guardians.” Specifically, the author claims to convey messages from God (“Divinity”) via patron spiritual guides whom the author calls Emmanuel and Jacob. The names Emmanuel and Jacob reflect Judeo-Christian origins with Emmanuel being an alternative name of the Messiah/Jesus and Jacob being the original name of Israel, a patriarch of the Jewish people.

However, perhaps the thing that bothered us the most about this book (well, beside its repetitiveness and idealism) is that it seems to ground itself in a Torah/biblical tradition yet is distinctly and distinguishable deviant from it. In other words, it always sounds like the narrative is using these well-established beliefs and traditions to push a personal agenda that, while mostly good, seems a bit exploitative. We had a similar issue with Magda Revealed by Ursula Werner, a book that seemed to go out of its way to push a hyperfeminist agenda while still using Judeo-Christian characters/figures and events. And before you jump to the conclusion that we're exaggerating, that was a book that was trying to tell us that Mary Magdalene was the Messiah, a sacrilegious premise to 99.99% of people, not to mention indefensible in terms of existing evidence and facts.

Thankfully, Awaken to Your Truth isn't nearly as sacrilegious. In fact, you could make the argument that it's not religious at all. It's more so spiritual, concerned with the metaphysical well-being of the person and the world.

Let's get back to what we were saying about the Judeo-Christian basis for a second...
You can't have it both ways. If you're going to ground your argument on Judeo-Christian events and figures like Emmanuel and Jacob, you can't then completely change what those figures explicitly said or believed in. For example—and this is a somewhat big one—the author (who, again, is claiming to convey a message from God) constantly refers to humanity as a “species.” Specifically, they keep saying “your species.” Why is this problematic?

Well, it's because man was created in the image of God. Plain and simple.
So, if God created man in his own image, why would he continuously refer to them like they're aliens? Why would he keep saying “your species” is like this or “your species” should do that?

The answer is simple: he wouldn't.
He would refer to them as “people”--”you people,” “my people,” “your people.”

What we're trying to get across is: if the author's intention was to try to say they are speaking for God, this doesn't sound like God to us. Far from it. This sounds like the author speaking in third-person or in the abstract and trying to sound profound. This sounds like the narrator cosplaying as a superior alien being talking to inferior alien beings. We found that bizarre and hard to buy into. So, plausibility went out the window for us.

Quite often, we have books come our way that are about things like mindfulness, positive thinking, yoga meditation, and balancing chakras/qi/chi/energies. This is more up that alley.

And you'll either jive with that or you won't.

There is an audience for this kind of book. It is incredibly positive, hopeful, optimistic, and—most of all—idealistic. The author constantly talks about things like unity, harmony, and oneness. They constantly call for things like peace, truth, and light. The thing is, these buzz words sound really great. Several of these passages sound really great. However, what are we realistically supposed to do with them? Meditate on them? Recite them like mantras?

The main issue we have is that a lot of this just doesn't seem practical. For example, what are you supposed to do with the following passages?

“Speak to yourselves with kindness and know your thoughts and words are the power that is driven by Divine light frequency. This will heal you.”

So, are you saying we're supposed to use positive self-talk? Cause that could work. But all that “Divine light frequency” stuff just sounds like superfluous, flowery drivel. It's not actionable, that's what we're saying.

“Say YES to growth. Say YES to inner power. Say YES to truth.”

Ok... that's like saying, “good is good, continue to choose good and not bad because bad is bad.” That's almost like saying, “wrong is wrong.” Of course wrong is wrong. Preschoolers know that.

“The morality that you have lost will once again be found. All your creations that lack morality will be wiped away as they will no longer be accepted.”

… Huh?... What?... Are you saying that the good people are gonna live and the bad people are gonna die and pay for their crimes? Well, that's... comforting, at least.

It might sound profound to some people, but to us—having read numerous self-help and spiritual books—a lot of this sounds like mumbo-jumbo.

Does that mean that the book is irredeemable or all bad? Absolutely not.

There are things about this book that we appreciated. For example, it invites readers to seek constant self-improvement and to realize their full potential.

How can they do that? Who the heck knows.
But it's a great pep talk! And it might be the kick in the butt that some people need to start believing in themselves and their potential.

Also, the book puts forth this tantalizing idea that the universe provides an almost infinite amount of energy and potential to us. In other words, when you're feeling down and out, you'd be surprised how much more there is for you to do and for you to become.

This made us think about stories in which people survived seemingly unsurvivable situations like being stuck in the cold mountains for weeks, lifting boulders or cars off of loved ones, etc. We kinda wished the author had used examples like that in the book. However, at least it got us thinking.

This book also constantly reminds us that human beings are social creatures who work better together than alone. We exist to help each other to thrive and reach new heights:

“See yourselves as part of a whole ... a ball of energy vibrating together.”

Check it out on Amazon!