Mystic Nomad: A Woman’s Wild Journey to True Connection

Meditation teacher Knopp debuts with a luminous and layered account of her search for spiritual liberation. Driven by her “seeker’s heart” and the trauma of an abusive childhood, the author embarked on a quest across Europe, the Americas, and Australia in search of fundamental truths about life. Her initial wanderings took her to Nepal and an Indian ashram, but it was later in San Francisco when she first experienced a spiritual awakening. “What felt like a lightning bolt shot through my body,” she writes, recalling how she was struck by a “silent openness [that] was already calm and peaceful in an absolute way that required no doing... the invitation was to let everything simply be.” In a notable twist, the realization does not result in a happy ending but is followed by a darker phase in the author’s “spiritual homecoming” when she is raped by the leader of a yogic spiritual retreat in Germany. From there, Knopp launches into a discerning exploration of the interplay between trauma, fantasies of “enlightenment,” and the unwholesome dynamics of guru culture. Along the way, she contemplates how attempting to “bypass” her unprocessed childhood traumas via her spiritual pursuit partly pushed her into her violator’s hands. The result is both a nuanced exploration of diverse spiritual paths and a riveting narrative of a seeker’s fraught efforts to find peace. (Oct.)