Category Busting

The experience of this book launch is teaching me some interesting lessons, and we're only just getting started. One of the biggest challenges involves the labeling of the book, which impacts on where it gets seen, reviewed, filed in bookstores, displayed, etc. Some thoughts.

• It's a Course/ACIM book, maybe, but it's really a Gospel of Thomas book, with introductions that provide the connections to the Course, the Christian tradition, and Gary Renard's work, so as soon as you limit it to the Course, it's stuck in a rut already. I now am starting to see readers who had NO previous background in either the Course or the Thomas Gospel.
• It's a Jesus book, undoubtedly, but the term is apt to be misunderstood, for reasons that should be obvious. They are the same reasons why Pursah in Gary Renard's books uses the term "J" instead of Jesus, namely avoiding the religious stereotypes associated with him, both positive and negative, so he can be appreciated in a new light.
  
• It's a religious book. Of course not, it has nothing to do with religion as the world commonly understands that term, as little as Jesus did. He was only framed for founding a religion by Paul and others who came after him, he had no such interest or intention.
• It's a truth book. Perhaps, but that's not a category anybody knows what to do with never mind how you slice it.
• It's a spiritual book. Well, that's a possibility. Spiritual, not religious as the fashionable phrase goes nowadays. Fine. The way I tend to explain the term is that spiritual for me connotes something that is about my relationship to the Divine, and not about anybody else's rules or concepts, let alonge anything moral or behavioral.
• It is a book that invites a new way of looking at Jesus, resting on the twin traditions of the Thomas Gospel and A Course In Miracles. It has a great picture of Jesus on the cover, which by the way is called "Teach Only Love," and was painted by Sam Augustin -- Personally I like this the best. For the picture, which has a total absence of Christian paraphernalia, and represents Jesus only as a presence of love and light, seems to be inviting people in regardless of any familiarity with either Thomas, or ACIM, or anything else along those lines. It seems to make the book jump in people's arms. Although undoubtedly some are also put off by it, if they have issues with Jesus. Tough luck on them.
• It's a book on non-dualism. A bit of a stretch really, for that is not the topic in any overt way, except that the teachings of the Course, and ultimately of Jesus, clearly are completely non-dualistic.
• It's a contemplative book. For sure. I think that is the whole purpose of the Thomas Gospel, to enter a dialog with Jesus and the thought system he represents, and to invite the reader in to contemplate these ideas for themselves, not to mention to turn around and apply them in their lives.