Why this book:  I had briefly met Tom Murphy during my career in the Navy, and I recall that he had a reputation as an unusually intelligent and gifted SEAL Officer.  I was very interested in his perspective on the role of spirituality in his career.

Summary in 3 Sentences: This is Tom Murphy’s personal story about his spiritual journey and development, beginning with experiences in his childhood, his early years in the SEAL teams, to include being a victim of an ambush in Vietnam, and then on to his post-Vietnam Navy Career.  His focus in the book is sharing lessons he’s learned from his experiences in the Navy and life in general, about how we might better develop the spiritual leg of what he refers to as the three legged stool of a good healthy life: Mind, Body, Spirit.  He refers to but doesn’t dwell on his lessons about life from his SEAL career, but he shares a lot about what he’s learned exploring the different manifestations of a much broader perspective than what most of us perceive as reality, and the implications of those rather esoteric experiences, including his own, as to how one might consider one’s spiritual place in the universe.

My Impressions: If you’re looking for a book about SEALs doing SEAL commando stuff, you’ll probably be disappointed in this one. Tom only gives us a few SEAL stories from his very full career and life. Most particularly, his two tours in Vietnam, the killing he experienced and paricipated in had a profound impact on him, which he spent the next few decades coming to terms with. He does include a number of other stories from his Navy career where he wasn’t working with the SEALs – but only in so far as they help the reader understand his perspective on his own spiritual development and the primacy of spiritual development in a good life.  This book is about his spiritual journey and the SEAL anecdotes are provided as key part of his life’s journey, but are discussed only in so far as they contribute to understanding him and his spiritual journey.

He begins with a SEAL operation in Vietnam in which he and his platoon were ambushed and several of his men were injured. And he talks about the impact of that on him over time – how he suppressed the trauma for years, in order to focus on his job and doing it as well as he could. And he noted how repressing that trauma impacted him later in his life and career. Only later did he realize that the effects of his wartime missions in Vietnam, and other brutality he witnessed and experienced and perhaps even in part participated in, were still with him and negatively impacting his life.

There is a whole section in the book about dealing with Trauma and PTSD – his own experience as well as what he’d learned from others.  But he notes that dealing with PTSD is only part of what one should be paying attention to, if one is trying to live a full life. Early on he gives us his metaphor of the good life being a solid and well balanced three legged stool.  In this metaphor, each of the legs represents one fundamental component of a good and well balanced life, and if any one of these legs is shortened, weak, or ignored, one’s life, just like a three legged stool, is unbalanced and much less than it could be. He makes the point that dealing with trauma effectively, should not be done in isolation or separate from one’s spiritual growth.

The three legs of a well balanced life represent 1. The physical ; 2. the mental;  and 3. the spiritual.  He notes that the physical and the mental aspects are well recognized and get plenty of attention in Western culture. The spiritual aspect however, often gets short shrift or is ignored altogether, much to the detriment of individuals and society.  The three legged stool is therefore out of balance. It is this spiritual leg of the three legged stool that Murphy spends most of this book addressing, and he seeks to  open the readers’ minds to many aspects of spirituality about which most people are either unaware, or choose to ignore. He makes a point of not pushing any single option – but encouraging his readers to explore and find a spiritual path that works for each individual. He emphasizes that there are many good paths – but one should seek and find what works for oneself.

He talks about the Out of Body Experience – which in the audible version is refered to as an “OB”.  Tom has had many such experiences over his life, and notes how such phenomena indicate that our purely physical understanding of the world is incomplete. He notes that OB experiences which are and have been well documented all over the world over time, indicate that we are not “merely” tissue, bones and living cells – that the OB indicates that consciousness and awareness must have a separate or different dimension of existence if they can leave the body behind.  He gives not only his own but the well documented examples of others, especially in Near Death Experiences.*

He also shares his extensive research on channels or mediums who receive knowledge and wisdom from outside their own bodies and experience. 

I found the book interesting and enlightening, and it has inspried me to look into some of the channels he describes. I’d heard of Seth, but was unfamiliar with most of the others, and would like to explore them. Many years ago, I had read and been inspired by many books on/about Edgar Cayce, whose incredible capabilities Murphy gives attention to in a portion of his book, and he refers to Edgar Cayce several times. Cayce lived in Virginia Beach, and the Association for Research and Enlightement (which I have visited) is still there dedicated to the study of Cayce’s readings and to continuing his legacy.

What disappointed me a bit about the book are a couple of things he didn’t address, which I believe deserved some attention, given his theme. He may have chosen not to address these for his own reasons, or they simply didn’t occur to him, or he considered them unimportant or irrelevant.

1. He didn’t include in his discussion remote viewing, an incredible phenomenon which supports his thesis that our rational understanding of reality is incomplete, and that time and distance and consciousness are not what they seem to most of us in the Western tradition.

2. He didn’t discuss “the problem of evil” – does it exist as a separate force, or is it “merely” the absence of good, like cold is the absence of heat? We read or hear regularly of humans torturing and doing horrific things and causing great harm to other humans and other living creatures, for pleasure or to fulfill personal agendas. Understanding, and learning to live with, if not accept that reality I believe should be part of any book offering spiritual guidance.

3. And finally, I would have liked him to have elaborated more on how the spiritual perspective and practice he advocates can help us deal with great disappointment and sadness in life, when we lose or have to give up things that are very important to us, such as loss of a child, or close friend or loved one, a life altering disease or accident, or having one’s career derailed by nefarious actors.

After reading the book, I listened to Jocko Willink’s podcast interview with Tom (Jocko podcast 455) which added a lot to my appreciation of this book and Tom Murphy. He did note that he didn’t address psychedelic therapies for dealing with trauma, which have been shown to be very effective for some, and are being widely used by retired SEALS. He said he didn’t address this because he hasn’t had any personal experience with these drugs or therapies and didn’t feel qualified to address them.

* Note: Sebastian Junger – an avowed atheist – recently published a book entitled In My Time of Dying in which he describes a powerful OB experience he had when he nearly died. He describes his book as “part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.”