It's a lucid practice manual for a psychologized adaptation of chod. My review is in a way more for the practice than the book. It's fine as a book, though a bit chatty. I understand the anecdotes are supposed to help a reader relate the practice to the every day life of a Western practitioner. I occasionally found them off-puttingly new-agey, in that they make claims to magical effects without just going out and saying yeah, magic is happening. Anyway as a book, it's trying to straddle the line between the psychological and the miraculous and I think it doesn't succeed. Claim your miracles and let me believe or not. Or don't claim them and be conservative. (I prefer you just claim the miracles, when you're basing your practice on something as outrageous as feeding a magical simulacra of your body to demons, but hey, not everyone comes to Buddhism from ceremonial magic).

Anyway, that's why it's four stars and not five. It's a wonderful practice, suitable for people with no meditation practice at all - no kidding! - and you can learn it from the book, I think. I took a course so it might be slightly better that way. But the point is, unlike traditional chod, you don't need a formal transmission, you can drive right in.

I would recommend this book and this practice especially to creative people. Your dark shit is where the gems of your creative potential are found, and this meditative practice literally lets you make friends with your demons.