A Bookish Conversation with Alexander King, author of 'Tours and Cures of a Lightsoldier'
In 1995 Alexander
King encountered ‘spiritual healing’ whilst studying medicine and now resides
in London, England working as a healer and masseur helping people to better
health, healing and ‘enlightenment’ in a realistic manner. To date (2015)
Alexander has treated well over 1500 clients, and his work has featured in
several publications including the Sunday Telegraph. In this book he aims to
make his discoveries about Energies and complementary healing tools as
transparent and transformative as possible in order to support others who are
seriously considering their wellbeing and/or are negating the growing minefield
of ‘alternative’ remedies. Alexander enjoys good health and an active social
life despite the many challenges he has faced and surmounted.
His latest book is
the self-help/self-discovery/spirituality book, Tours
and Cures of a Lightsoldier: Surviving the Path to Enlightenment.
For More Information
- Visit Alexander King’s website.
- Connect with Alexander on Facebook and Twitter.
- Find out more about Alexander at Goodreads.
About the Book:
Tours and Cures of a Lightsoldier is a revolution in
the Self-help book world. It shakes up the status-quo, by questioning and
uncovering the illogical, cold-hearted or incomplete in spiritual teachings.
But Alexander King then attempts to find understandings which allow for the
Divine and the basis of Life to be truly loving and intelligent again. Perhaps
to keep ascending on the spiritual
Tours and Cures of a Lightsoldier tells the true story of one person’s
incredible quest for self-discovery, and the answers to why we are here and
what exactly we should be doing with our lives. From an inquisitive childhood,
full of promise and expectation, we follow Alexander down a much murkier path
to the all consuming world of a modern day cult. And then a battle for identity
ensues…
Initially Alexander King, studying for a
medical degree at the time, did just want to learn about Spiritual Healing, but
the Teacher/Guru he found turned out to be the manipulative and sociopathic
kind. A great battle for survival, to de-mask the Guru, and ultimately to de-program
himself again ensued.
From this baptism with fire a stronger, more
grounded Alexander emerged. All was not all well yet though, as after the cult,
a few years of Chronic Fatigue followed. They gave Alexander the chance though
to really test all sorts of spiritual tools and teachings on himself, to see
which could actually stand up to the often so high flying promises they come
with. In recent years Alexander King has worked as a full time masseur and
healer and, through his dealings with many different clients, has learned
even more about energies, and how they appear to work on this planet. In his
practice Alexander King endeavours to help his clients to better health,
healing and ‘enlightenment’ in a realistic manner.
Tours and Cures
of a Lightsoldier starts as
a personals story but finishes as a most unique and encompassing encyclopedia
of esoteric practices and teachings.
Book
Praise:
This is a
fascinating book because we get inside the thoughts of the author, who is
himself a healer. It is a kind of journey we travel with him, as we learn how
he arrived at where he is now, all the pitfalls and all the logical thinking
processes ( yes, this author reasons with logic - his early training was in
medicine). We are taken thorough all the weighing up of facts and
possibilities, and the battles. It is a very frank, honest, and for a book of
this kind of topic - strangely realistic. The author avoids merely restating in
repackaged form material which is covered in other books. What we get instead
is his own unique insights and perspective, and his own application of methods.
Reading this book has led me to modify my own practices, and to substantially
reconsider some of my own views.
There is much to be
applauded in this book, from the courage it takes to follow your dream, to the
bravery of standing up to those who seek to destroy it and to then speak up
about the great untruths that still exist in this world, masquerading as fact.
Take encouragement and guidance from this book and live your truth today!
Barbara
Meklejohn-Free, author of the bestseller The Shaman Within (Moon Books)
For More Information
- Tours and Cures of a Lightsoldier is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
Q: Welcome to The Writer's
Life! Now that your book has been
published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we begin by having you take us at the
beginning? Where did you come up with
the idea to write your book?
Hi there, thanks for having me! Tours and Cures of a Lightsoldier; Surviving
the Path to Enlightenment is a spiritual self-help book. I have been on a
(non-denominational) spiritual path for about 20 years, meditated countless
hours, read many books, been to plenty of seminars, and also worked as a
Spiritual Healer and Masseur for the last 9 years. Initially I even ended up in
a cult. To get out of the cult’s clutches again, I really had to learn to think
for myself, question spiritual authority, teachings, the guru, etc. I
discovered too though that many esoteric and spiritual books can be misleading,
incomplete, or sometimes even wrong (in my humble opinion). For all those
confused teachings flying about, there seems little in constructive critical
thinking to counter this though, at least in published format. Frequently books
are claiming to e.g. have been channeled, or assisted by enlightened spiritual
beings, critique is therefore seen as tantamount to blasphemy. Wrong,
misleading or incomplete teachings, taught to supposedly free the spiritual
seeker, can at best only confuse, and at worst harm though. Over the years I
have been pushed into several uncomfortable corners by esoteric teachings,
before I managed to find the strength, intuition, wisdom and or assertiveness
to discard them, amend them, or transcend them. On top of that so many esoteric
books seem to just copy from each other, simply repackaging confused teachings.
I therefore wrote Tours and Cures of a
Lightsoldier; Surviving the Path to Enlightenment to bring some more
constructive critical thinking into the esoteric community. I also hope that
the solutions and answers I have found might help others in similar situations,
or perhaps even prevent some from running into the same traps in the first
place. Obviously I cannot guarantee that my answers are always correct, I am
but human myself, but I do encourage my readers to not just take my word for
any of my answers, rather to test them, and to think for themselves. This might
all sound like quite serious stuff, but I do try to keep it as light, and as
easy to comprehend as possible. There is many entertaining bits as well, out of
the box thinking, self-help tools, and a bit of an esoteric almanac.
Q: How hard was it to write a
book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make
the journey easier for other writers?
I had been writing the book in my
head for years, the challenge was to sit down and type it up. Also there was a
few more things I still had to understand to round things up, and on the other
hand I needed to test and re-test my understandings for a few years to become
assertive enough to fully stand behind them! In some areas I really go against
the esoteric mainstream, I am kindly stepping on a few toes, and I needed to be
relatively certain that I knew what I was doing. When all those boxes were
ticked, there were still a few energetic resistances to battle, which kept on
blocking me from actually sitting down and writing. One day I had the idea to
just buy a Dictaphone though. From then on, when I had a thought, or often for
a few minutes before going to bed, I just dictated them into the Dictaphone. It
seems that materializing my thoughts in such a manner helped overcome any
resistances, and a few weeks later I finally managed to sit down and start
writing!
Q: Who is your publisher and how
did you find them or did you self-publish?
Once I had finished the first
draft of my book, I found an editor, who is very well connected in esoteric
publishing circles. Kate helped with the editing (which was great help, English
not being my first language), gave some great advice, and eventually helped me
to find my publisher – O Books. Paying her for her services was a great
investment.
Q: Is there anything that
surprised you about getting your first book published?
My main motivation about going
down the publisher route was that I had no idea about how to promote my book
myself. My publisher did a fair amount of initial PR, but they do expect their
authors to add to the PR machine too, especially an unknown first-time author
like me. It is an interesting challenge, loads to learn (O Books does give
support and advice). I blog, mingle quite a bit in spiritual social media
groups, have a virtual book tour in June, and some blog radio interviews coming
up in July…
Q: What other books (if any) are
you working on and when will they be published?
I tried to comprise all my wisdom
into Tours and Cures of a Lightsoldier; Surviving the
Path to Enlightenment. For now my efforts are concentrated on promoting
this book. With all the promotion efforts I do a fair amount of blogging too
though (www.alexander-king.com/blog-1).
Who knows, maybe one day I’ll have enough material to package into another
book?
Q: What’s your favorite place to
hang out online?
Facebook is a great venue to hang
out and promote. It is very varied, I was amazed at the number of (spiritual)
groups/ forums there are. As an empath I found another non-Facebook forum too (http://empathcommunity.eliselebeau.com),
where there is plenty of like minded empaths, and some great discussions and
mutual support going on.
Q: What’s your nightly ritual
before retiring for the night?
I usually need an hour or two of
TV to relax and clam down from the day. Once I retire to my bedroom I usually
have a last look on Facebook, my e-mail, etc., possibly add some last comments,
and then hop off to bed.
Q: Finally, what message (if any)
are you trying to get across with your book?
I think I pretty much answered
that with the questions above already. Spirituality can be great, I would not
want to live without it. Spirituality should help free our minds and make us
more life-capable though, not add more shackles to our being. In my experience
it is therefore healthy to think for ourselves. Spiritual teachers, gurus, authors
can suggest answers, tools and solutions, but it is up to us to vet them and
see which we want to accept, where we keep searching, or where to find our own
answers. I hope Tours and Cures of a
Lightsoldier; Surviving the Path to Enlightenment will provide you with
some answers, but also that it will help you affirm your true free spiritual
mind!
Q: Thank you again for this
interview! Do you have any final words?
I wish all readers a blessed, happy and effortless journey!
Thanks for your interview, Alexander!
ReplyDeleteYou are very welcome, thanks for having me!
ReplyDelete