Overview: A messy wool ball, a smelly sick cat, a cranky corpse - unrelated images coincide to bring the author’s family to a threshold of make or break. He faces the legal threat of colossal corporate fraud while his daughter wrestles with a life-threatening eating disorder. We walk with them to the edge of life’s mystery, where dreams and our living are interwoven in coincidences.

Verdict: Here in The Wool Ball the Smelly Cat and the Cranky Corpse from author Manny Mak, we venture into a liminal realm where traumas are healed, sufferings are remade, and symbols sacred and profane are brought to their manifestation. Social scientist and author Manny Mak explores spiritual experiences with an anthropological rigor rarely seen in spiritual books.

Written with the sophistication of a veteran researcher and the naïve sensitivity of a spiritual seeker, this book offers a unique combination of first-hand testimony and a rigorous examination of dreams and meaningful coincidences. The captivating prose and paintings cultivate a sensibility in readers - one that is healing, dream-awakening, and spiritually enlightening.

Having now read this book cover-to-cover twice in the past 10 days, I can honestly say I am as enthralled with its contents now as I was blindly going in. I did not know anything of the liminal realm of spiritual experiences and so was fascinated to learn more; and trust me, I did.

I also learnt more about just what a social scientist is and discovered they are a professional who studies human society, relationships, and behaviors through scientific methods. They specialize in areas like economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, using a variety of research methods such as surveys, interviews, and statistical analysis to understand how societies and individuals work and change over time. Their findings are used to address real-world problems in areas like education, healthcare, and government policy.

Now include the aforementioned liminal realm of spiritual experiences to which Manny Mak, PhD refers to, and we see how the transitional in-between states of consciousness - where one is between the familiar and the unknown - can often lead to transformation and profound spiritual insights. These spaces are often characterized by feelings of disorientation, uncertainty, and heightened awareness, and they can be entered through intentional practices like meditation or by being triggered by major life changes such as grief, initiation rites, or near-death experiences.

Indeed, and as we begin to learn ourselves, developing the ability to navigate these states can lead to a deeper sense of connection, personal growth, and a new perspective on life. For along the way our unconsciousness becomes engraved with memories, like an eternal program that keeps updating, and so transforms itself - behind the veil, so to speak - perhaps on a daily basis.

Mak welcomes such transformations, moreover fully embraces them, and through helping us awaken our own deeply psychological and spiritual growth, aims to show us a way to discover our very own paths to enlightenment.

About the Author - Manny Mak, PhD, columnist and retired professor. His PhD in communication and politics is from Goldsmiths College, the University of London. For more than two decades, he had taught qualitative research methodology in general, and ethnographic research in particular, for MPhil and PhD students. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books written in Chinese on collective memory, cultural identity and social changes. Awakening to Coincidences is his first book written in English for the general readers.

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