Diary of a MYSTIC APPRENTICE

NEW BOOK

BY PHIL SHANKLAND

Diary of a

MYSTIC APPRENTICE

A candid, often comic journey through doubt, meditation, poverty, spiritual teachers, and fleeting epiphanies.

Diary of a Mystic Apprentice isn’t a guidebook — it’s a field report from the edges of sanity and stillness. You may not find enlightenment, but you’ll meet someone who earnestly, foolishly, beautifully tried.

More about the book

“Maybe I’m enlightened after all and I don’t know it.”

In Diary of a Mystic Apprentice, the Lightweight Warrior, a millionaire on paper only, sets off in search of enlightenment armed with a DIY mantra and an overdraft. He constantly falls prey to the distractions of the world – money, women and coffee shops. He moves from the city to a small market town to sit in a cold church for two hours every morning for three years with an old man with a white beard. What can possibly go wrong? Irreverent, sometimes amusing, often deeply touching and always surprisingly relatable, this is the antidote spiritual memoir for those who think the path to enlightenment is taken far too seriously … and who, like the Lightweight Warrior, still check their phone for likes.

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More about this book

“Maybe I’m enlightened after all and I don’t know it.”

In Diary of a Mystic Apprentice, the Lightweight Warrior, a millionaire on paper only, sets off in search of enlightenment armed with a DIY mantra and an overdraft. He constantly falls prey to the distractions of the world – money, women and coffee shops. He moves from the city to a small market town to sit in a cold church for two hours every morning for three years with an old man with a white beard. What can possibly go wrong? Irreverent, sometimes amusing, often deeply touching and always surprisingly relatable, this is the antidote spiritual memoir for those who think the path to enlightenment is taken far too seriously … and who, like the Lightweight Warrior, still check their phone for likes.

What they say about

‘Diary of a Mystic Apprentice’

A triumph: wry, rollicking and wise.
Charles Foster, author of ‘The Edges of the World’

A spiritual memoir of the search for enlightenment – as if Christian from Pilgrim’s Progress got waylaid by Richard E Grant from Withnail and I. Soulful, shambolic, and yet strangely inspiring … You could call it a field report from the edges of sanity and stillness….a unique voice.
Robert Twigger, best selling author and winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for literature

A mix of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions & Thomas Merton’s Journals.
BAFTA Winner, Nick Daubeny