Product Description

Here is a deeply moving account of a couple's struggle with cancer and their journey to spiritual healing. Grace and Grit is the compelling story of the five-year journey of Ken Wilber and his wife Treya Killam Wilber through Treya's illness, treatment, and, finally, death.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31190 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-06
• Released on: 2001-02-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 504 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ten days after transpersonal psychologist Wilber married Terry Killam in 1983, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. This harrowing account of her losing battle against disease is unusual in several respects. Killam (who changed her first name to Treya) shared her husband's belief in the "perennial philosophy" of the world's wisdom traditions embracing rebirth, enlightenment and the all-pervasiveness of Spirit. Her condition tested their faith simultaneously. Her lengthy, candid journal entries, interwoven with his narrative, form a tremendously moving love story. Killam, who died in 1989, combined orthodox treatment with such alternative therapies as diet, meditation and psychotherapy. Wilber ( The Spectrum of Consciousness ) disputes the imputed New Age view that mind alone causes all physical illness. He intimately participated in his wife's ordeal, and here presents cancer as a healing crisis, an occasion for self-confrontation and growth.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"A tremendously moving love story. Wilber presents cancer as a healing crisis, an occasion for self-confrontation and growth."—Publishers Weekly



"A singular achievement. It succeeds as a story of one cancer patient's experience, as a guidebook for patients and their caretakers, as a love story, as a survey of the world's mystical traditions, as an examination of death and dying, and as an exploration of relationship as a means for spiritual development."—Natural Health

"A deep and searing look at living, dying, loving, death, and resurrection."—M. Scott Peck, M.D.



"A rare book—a love story that brings the perennial wisdom of the ages to life in all the anguish and exaltation that comprise the human condition. Treya Killam Wilber's honesty, vibrancy, and compassion speak through her many journal entries, masterfully woven with Ken's text, to make Grace and Grit a true experience of sacred partnership."—Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.; author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind and Guilt Is the Teacher, Love Is the Lesson

About the Author
Ken Wilber is the author of over twenty books. He is the founder of Integral Institute, a think-tank for studying integral theory and practice, with outreach through local and online communities such as Integral Naked, Integral Education Network, Integral Training, and Integral Spiritual Center.

Customer Reviews

Interesting But a bit to Heady
I enjoyed this book for a short time, but found it too much of a head experience. There is some profound wisdom and insight shared as well as a touching true life story. But I did find it difficult to remain motivated to read it all.

Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

Great book - must read
My father died of cancer a month ago.

He was the great and strong person. I loved him more than anyone.

There were two quotes in the book I loved:

"Because I can no longer ignore death - I pay more attention to life"

" I learnt that love is about letting go, rather than holding on"

This book will change you, if this is what you are looking for.

Understanding Love and Life Through Pain
Wilber writes about his journey, in this life, with his late wife Treya. They met when they both had given up on finding the "right one"....and then Wilber and Treya experienced love and "practised the wound of love" for the 5 years they were together through their ordeals with Treya's malignant breast cancer.

Wilber says "real love shatters you, if you have not been devastated by love, you have not really loved.." Any reader who has ever experienced any form of love would understand what Wilber is talking about. There is, always, pain at the deepest core of ecstasy...the power of real love can shine on and shatter our lives all at the same time.

Wilber brings his personal ideas about consciousness, integral being and lifestyle which he has pioneered over the past 3 decades, which I thought is very natural. His life with Treya was a process where he learnt more about himself, his ideas and consolidated his philosophical views. His work is his purpose, evidently, so I felt it was very appropriate that be brings that up in the book. I feel some readers might find it "too much" if they haven't read any Wilber before or not open to considering certain novel ideas about mind, spirituality, existence and the like.

I thoroughly loved reading this book, it resonated deeply within my experience...tears were utterly inevitable knowing about two people so deeply in love and trying to let go of each other...hats off to Wilber for his unfathomable integrity in describing his struggles when he blamed Treya for all problems in his life after their marriage, when he admitted that he got drunk in Germany and lost control of all his emotions while grieving profoundly for his wife he knew would die, when he was allured, slightly, by the full-bodied German prostitute and completely & openly recognized what was going on, when he so bluntly talked about his own neurotic self and how he transcended it...consciously..

So, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to develop a deeper relationship with their lives, who does NOT believe in true love and is willing to test it, anyone who suffers from an addiction to lust (!), anyone who wants something new in their lives....this book has the power to change lives.