Are you looking for an introduction to self-help that can be read and understood by anyone-even people with a rational, materialistic outlook on life? If so, this book offers a universal approach to personal growth that will help you understand how it is possible to systematically improve your life. The ideas are easy to understand, the language is clear and the tone so neutral that virtually anyone can read it without being offended. The book begins by describing the eight pillars to personal progress, which includes understanding the "Equation of Life." The next section outlines a new world view based on the scientific reality that everything is made from energy. The book then explains why no approach to self-help can produce the desired results unless you understand the role of mental and emotional energy and how you can neutralize its limiting effects on your life. You are literally surrounded by toxic energies that are the mental and emotional equivalent of air-borne viruses. You will learn how to guild a personal defense against these toxic energies, so you can be at peace in your own mind. You will also learn how to make truly free choices, and this will give you an understanding of just how often we make choices based on a pre-programmed subconscious response instead of truly making conscious choices. Many people literally live their lives as slaves of their own subconscious computers and have no awareness that they are functioning like biological robots. This is followed by an action plan for taking a systematic approach to personal growth, an approach that will produce the results that the "feel-good" self-help book always promise and always fail to deliver. The second part of the book gives a more spiritual approach to personal growth, and it is specifically aimed at helping you attain peace of mind by resolving some of the difficult inner conflicts that most modern people have about the spiritual side to life. The book explains the origin of these conflicts - the human dilemma - and gives teachings that can help you make peace with the spiritual aspect of your own being. The book also contains teachings about making peace with God by seeing how many religions have distorted our relationship with our spiritual source. Finally, the book describes the human ego as the inner cause of conflict and exposes why you created the ego. This helps you see the reality that you do not need the ego, and this gives you the option of leaving behind the ego and the never-ending struggle it produces. All-in-all a fabulous introduction to self-help and spirituality. Advanced spiritual seekers might find the teachings basic, but the book is an ideal gift to friends or family who do not understand your spiritual interests.