The Seeker Academy
Posted on Apr 18th, 2007
by 
Bruce
Bruce
I just finished a new novel by L. D. Gussin that I started reading a while ago with the idea that it was going to be a quick read, of course not taking into account everything else going on in my life – work, a new exercise regimen, friends, and the ever-popular X-factor. More than that, however, I hadn’t counted on the density of The Seeker Academy, of the conceptual underpinnings, the relations of the ideas to the characters in the book, and of the internal world of Grace, the middle-aged suburban protagonist of this sojourn in a New Age encampment of workshops for people looking for alternatives to the Western homogeneous monoculture. I kept reflecting as I read about the resonances between Seeker and the Zaadz community. The academy is anything but homogeneous, is an intense experience for many there, and is full of differing opinions about what it is there for, which approaches to spiritual growth and healing are vital or important, what exactly the purpose of living might be. And some people are wounded, it’s not clear where they fit in.
Grace comes to Seeker for a workshop on “Embracing Sadness,” after several months, in which we’re introduced to her helping tend to her niece in a children’s’ hospital struggling with leukemia that finally goes into remission. Intrigued by her experience at the workshop, she decides to stay on for a term working with the unpaid staff at the Academy. As a perk for their free labor, the staff are allowed to participate in workshops and activities when they’re free, and we see Grace getting familiar and coming to grips with the Human Potential Movement, which is outside her prior experience. She’s trying to understand what is really offered by all the different approaches to spiritual growth and healing, and along the way seeing how different people at the Academy, whom she’s trying to categorize, meet what is offered there.
One of the things that I found both challenging and rewarding about the book was the complex interplay of ideas shared by multiple characters often conversing simultaneously. Each person speaks idiosyncratically, and it was sometimes difficult to wean out innuendos and meanings, and to keep up with how Grace is perceiving and processing her experiences of dialogs that the reader is experiencing for the first time with her. I found I really had to slow down and let the scenes come alive, rushing through them wasn’t an option if I wanted to share Grace’s journey. What Grace is living through her brief stay of less than three weeks is the heart of this novel, and I was a little surprised to find how much I was moved and was identifying with her hero’s journey of self-discovery. She is very concerned that she finds herself unable to “believe” in spirituality in a sense deeper than openness to others and honesty with herself. None of the characters we’re introduced to around her seem to have a clear experience of awakening to something truly transcendent of the world of form and time. One in particular, a contemporary to Grace self-named Monk, clearly lives life on a deeper level, and is rigorously making an approach to honesty with himself and others at Seeker. But, in one of the key scenes in the book, a performance art piece he stages near the end of the book, though he cuts through some of the comfortable illusions of Academy life, is unable to arrive at a value deeper for him than reason, presented as a sharing of the perspectives of heart and mind, but mediated by what doesn’t seem clear.
None-the-less, Grace’s stay at the Seeker Academy is marked by a continuous poignancy as she reiterates her determination to respond to what she strongly intuits is something of great value it offers her, possibly something that can bring a meaning to her life that she wistfully senses has become lost in the routines of a suburbia which from the perspective of some of the characters is the dread enemy of authentic living. As she goes through her work routines, shared time with other staff, exploration of the grounds, moments of introspection, the qualities of her life quest shine forth. She needs somehow to internalize what she’s experiencing, make it real enough that it has a chance of taking root in her life when she returns to her life as a wife, mother and middle-school drama teacher. She doesn’t know if or how she can succeed in this, and I found her uncertainty, earnestness and hope deeply resonant and affecting.
L. D. Gussin's blog for the novel is at: http://theseekeracademy.com/
Grace comes to Seeker for a workshop on “Embracing Sadness,” after several months, in which we’re introduced to her helping tend to her niece in a children’s’ hospital struggling with leukemia that finally goes into remission. Intrigued by her experience at the workshop, she decides to stay on for a term working with the unpaid staff at the Academy. As a perk for their free labor, the staff are allowed to participate in workshops and activities when they’re free, and we see Grace getting familiar and coming to grips with the Human Potential Movement, which is outside her prior experience. She’s trying to understand what is really offered by all the different approaches to spiritual growth and healing, and along the way seeing how different people at the Academy, whom she’s trying to categorize, meet what is offered there.
One of the things that I found both challenging and rewarding about the book was the complex interplay of ideas shared by multiple characters often conversing simultaneously. Each person speaks idiosyncratically, and it was sometimes difficult to wean out innuendos and meanings, and to keep up with how Grace is perceiving and processing her experiences of dialogs that the reader is experiencing for the first time with her. I found I really had to slow down and let the scenes come alive, rushing through them wasn’t an option if I wanted to share Grace’s journey. What Grace is living through her brief stay of less than three weeks is the heart of this novel, and I was a little surprised to find how much I was moved and was identifying with her hero’s journey of self-discovery. She is very concerned that she finds herself unable to “believe” in spirituality in a sense deeper than openness to others and honesty with herself. None of the characters we’re introduced to around her seem to have a clear experience of awakening to something truly transcendent of the world of form and time. One in particular, a contemporary to Grace self-named Monk, clearly lives life on a deeper level, and is rigorously making an approach to honesty with himself and others at Seeker. But, in one of the key scenes in the book, a performance art piece he stages near the end of the book, though he cuts through some of the comfortable illusions of Academy life, is unable to arrive at a value deeper for him than reason, presented as a sharing of the perspectives of heart and mind, but mediated by what doesn’t seem clear.
None-the-less, Grace’s stay at the Seeker Academy is marked by a continuous poignancy as she reiterates her determination to respond to what she strongly intuits is something of great value it offers her, possibly something that can bring a meaning to her life that she wistfully senses has become lost in the routines of a suburbia which from the perspective of some of the characters is the dread enemy of authentic living. As she goes through her work routines, shared time with other staff, exploration of the grounds, moments of introspection, the qualities of her life quest shine forth. She needs somehow to internalize what she’s experiencing, make it real enough that it has a chance of taking root in her life when she returns to her life as a wife, mother and middle-school drama teacher. She doesn’t know if or how she can succeed in this, and I found her uncertainty, earnestness and hope deeply resonant and affecting.
L. D. Gussin's blog for the novel is at: http://theseekeracademy.com/
Access: Public
awakening
April 2008
Bruce,
Thank you for the thoughtful review of my novel.
I think that at a counterculture retreat set in the present time in the developed world, such as The Seeker Academy tries to imitate, a search for “something truely transcendent of the world of form and time” is only one among several quests that people undertake.