What inspired you to write your memoir?
I began keeping journals in 1975 when I became a member of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. During my 23 year involvement with this group I had many amazing experiences which I documented in my journals. In 2001 I realized I had 40+ journals and knew a story was sitting there waiting to be told. It took me six years to distill all those volumes down to what eventally became a 252 page memoir which I published in 2007. I experienced a tremendous amount of therapeutic value from taking time to go back and write about all those adventures and as it turns out, it’s also a fascinating read for others.
About your Book:
A Grand And Glorious Adventure: The Saboteur Years is the profound journey into the heart and soul of a man who spent his entire life looking for love and self-worth outside himself. With tremendous honesty and sincerity, Paul explains how as a spiteful angry young man he locked himself into an emotional cocoon where he operated out of his head rather than to give love or be loved.
Within his lonely and fearful world Paul became so desperate to please God that after graduating from high school he allowed himself to be swallowed up by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. He speaks candidly about his 22 years as a Moonie including being one of Moon’s chosen leaders, about his struggles with his sexuality, and about the tremendous challenge of developing a relationship with his Moon-chosen spouse.
After divorcing both Moon and his spouse, Paul’s adventure turned inward where he learned through meditation and journaling that God was within him, not outside him. He slowly realized that all his life he’d been trying to manipulate the world outside himself in an attempt to repair his broken heart by wanting everyone to join him in his healing. Such massive expectations eventually caused tremendous heartbreak. He had to learn to accept all the things about himself he once hated and finally discovered deeper meaning to his life only when he began surrendering to the absolute wonder of God, the mystery of life itself. This is a fascinating story for anyone who is even mildly curious about living a spiritual path.
Author Bio:
There was a time in the life of Paul Reinig when he was so alienated from himself that he didn’t have a clue who he was. He was raised a Catholic and had a severe habit of judging himself and consequently, not allowing himself to be expressed much at all. In March, 1975, nearly four years after graduating from a Catholic high school, Paul was so lacking in self-worth that he chose to dedicate his life to a religious cult whose core teachings were that God expected him to deny all his desires in order to save the world (Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church).
This lifestyle only intensified his self-loathing. In May 1979 he allowed Moon to match him to a woman who he’d never met and on July 1, 1982, he participated in a mass wedding of 2075 couples in Madison Square Garden in New York City. When they began living together it was as if Pandora’s box had been opened. Paul experienced emotions he never knew he had and was forced into counseling in order to save the marriage. While counseling did help to begin understanding himself and in bringing the two of them somewhat emotionally closer, eventually neither one of them could continue such a lifestyle. In 1998 they both chose to not only divorce Moon, but each other as well.
After his divorce Paul pursued a variety of healing modalities, attended many seminars and read tons of spiritually oriented books. In the process he has come to realize that we are so much more than we think we are. Today he knows clearly that mastering true love means to develop a relationship with our divine Self by becoming aware of and accepting every single aspect of ourselves without exception.
He has developed tools which helped him tremendously in understanding how to love himself while in the midst of experiencing emotional aspects that were causing such emotions as panic, terror, doubt, depression, fear, hurt, spite, shame and guilt (to name a few). Today he is a completely different person as a result. After having experienced such a remarkable releasing of so many intense emotional aspects, he has a desire to help others find the same inner freedom he now enjoys. He offers private sessions where he shares with his clients the same tools that helped him.
How did you decide how to publish your book and where is it published through:
I self-published this book through PageFree Publishing in Michigan. I contacted several companies and eventually chose to publish with PageFree because I had developed a good connection with the owner and because of their prices. However, this company has since gone out of business so that the book is now only available from my website which I’ve listed below. Note: I have since published two other books through Lightning Source and there may come a time when I re-publish this memoir through them so it can again be available on Amazon and b&n.
Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link to Book for sale via other sites
Originally posted 2012-09-02 09:12:50.
