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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
Reflections In My Magical Mirror: Lessons of Love from the School of Life by Ivan Figueroa-Otero is the latest installment in the author's non-fiction Spirituality series, expanding on some content from previous works and building on them as he presents new bounty in an established harvest. Figueroa-Otero employs a format where a series of individual quotations are provided at the beginning of each chapter and then he gives context to them through a mixture of scripture, philosophy, and his own ideas on how they apply to the spiritually divine ideology of the human experience. The marriage between physical and metaphysical in Figueroa-Otero's concept is spherical in its speculation on what we truly are and what our purpose truly is under the umbrella of what many readers may connect to the Buddhist belief of Primordial Awareness.
Reflections In My Magical Mirror is a ferociously ambitious book that Ivan Figueroa-Otero executes with genuine depth of thought. Whether or not the message resonates with readers will depend on where they are on their spiritual journey and if they are in a place where they are ready to consider an alternate point of view. From a literary standpoint, the writing is good even if it occasionally tips the balance toward wordiness. The quotes themselves are reformatted by the author from quotes that are already out in the world and he does well in applying them with simpler context that a modern reader will find more applicable. This is also achieved without so much as a hint of cliché or franken-quoting, and some are even made better by Figueroa-Ortega. As a math nerd I was supremely impressed by what to me looks like an earlier strike on the extremely complicated mathematical formula of Parrondo's Paradox in quote number ten, “If we only play to win, someone will always end up losing.” Parrondo introduced the formula in 1996 and it's conceivable that Figueroa-Ortega just may have gotten there first. Reflections In My Magical Mirror is an enlightening read that I'm sure will resonate well with readers who enjoy good philosophy with a foundation of theology.
