Joni A Story of Compassion
Joni was born in 2001, and from early childhood was able to help people reduce their pain. She spent four years in retreat with an Indian mystic embodying a thousand year meditation tradition. Together they modified and redefined that tradition to be appropriate for people today.
She achieved international prominence when she helped cure the President of the United States of a terminal infestation and subsequently disappeared. It was later revealed that the world’s most wanted Terrorist had been cured of a similar infestation.
Regarding Joni, she is an original. Her story is not.
Reader comments and Joni quotes
To me, truth was a stone, was comprised of facts dense enough to build a house to live in. To Joni, truth was the aroma of a flower; delicate, ephemeral and elusive.
Book of Evelin
I read “Joni” two weeks ago and felt compelled to read it from cover to cover. I have a passionate appetite for reading, and when there’s a work of fiction with a message of compassion, a teaching and an open exploration of human being-ness, it is right in my zone!
I felt a continuity, an intimate connection, revealing Joni’s character page by page. Her family and all who were associated with her scrutinise their lives, interwoven and reworked through their experiences with her. To me she appeared as images once did onto photographic paper, when we made our own black and white prints in the darkroom, her freshness, honesty and humility drawing out the same qualities in those she engages with.
I enjoyed every exploration of her life and commentary made by each of the characters as they shared their experiences of who Joni was through their eyes, hearts and minds. I found it exhilarating reading. As I read my way through “Joni”, even the darkest side of human nature had an element of redemption, implicitly threaded through the fabric of the book as Joni embodies her message of compassion in the world .
Cate Foley-Burke (Community artist)
It was odd really. Because what we talked about was usually so depressing. Lost souls scrabbling for some meaning, and finding chaos. Seeking intimacy, and finding alienation. Waiting for enlightenment, and finding violence around every corner. Yet paradoxically catching glimpses of what we wanted in the lamenting of its absence.
Book of Sarah
Is it possible that the life of a single person can affect the lives of others, even the lives of large nations of people.
Of course it is. History records many such individuals, some good, and some evil.
In his novel, Joni, Noel introduces us to such a person who from the very moment of birth begins to create change in those around her. We journey with Joni as she grows in spiritual strength and stature as witnessed by the many with whom she shares time, from parent to school friend to President and more.
Each has their own story and we the readers are taken on an enchanting journey through their experiences and gaining of wisdom. Noel’s novel imparts his messages of spirituality and wisdom through the characters he had created; some messages are obvious and some subtly woven into metaphor tucked within another metaphor.
Don’t just read this novel. Allow yourself to go on a journey, be enchanted, rekindle your optimism.
Thank you Noel for giving us Joni.
John F McGowan (Author of ‘As Leaves Are Prey To Wind‘)
When will the world live in peace, with no more war?
It would be nice, would it not, if the end of war were equivalent to peace. Inequality and injustice, violation and rebellion, the indicators of structural violence, do not disappear with war. Rather are they its precursors. War merely makes a spectacle of the tragedy of our lack of compassion for each other.
Joni’s meeting
I read the book quite quickly the first time. I found the style engrossing, with enough new aspects of Joni’s character and relationships revealed with each new voice to keep my curiosity kindled. Biographical details accumulated, from birth through both ordinary and unusual relationships; and the nature of Joni’s ability to heal and express compassion, gradually emerge as the central theme. Joni’s tacit worldview incrementally changes to become the explicit teaching of a wise, conscious being, in her final question and answer session. Along the way, there were elegant gems of simplicity to convey how Joni sees people and the world.
I reached the end of the book satisfied that I’d been taken on a journey of exploration, engaging with big questions like: How would a Jesus-like healer and teacher of deep compassion be received and treated in the twenty-first century? Could such a person engage and have an impact on world leaders? Could such a person yet emerge and change the cliff towards which globally we are heading?
I love Noel Wilson’s courage tackling such a significant theme as the power of compassion to change the world and the people on it. And I appreciate the depth of personal experiences and philosophy he has integrated along the way.
Graham Ross (Storyteller)
I was not filled with that focused desire for vengeance that directed my brother’s life, and inevitably resulted in his early death. My father’s influence probably contributed to this. He was a strict disciplinarian, especially with the boys. He would beat Jose if he did anything wrong. And every Friday evening he’d beat him anyway, just in case. And as he beat him he’d say how he loved him, and he was just doing it for his own good, so that he would know the difference between right and wrong. And he did learn the difference between right and wrong from his father. And he learnt two other things as well. He learnt that the strong used violence against the weak. And he learnt that if you want to teach someone the difference between right and wrong you beat them, preferably at random. As I write this here and now, it is easy to see how in his early years Jose was prepared for his life as a terrorist. To me, truth was a stone, was comprised of facts dense enough to build a house to live in. To Joni, truth was the aroma of a flower; delicate, ephemeral and elusive.
Book of Paula
This is a brilliant book. Cleverly constructed, interweaving the lives of each of the characters, revealing formative years and emotional wounds that filtered who they became as adults and how the interplay of their relationships impacted one another and their way of being in the world.
With sharp insight, wisdom and humour the author, Noel Wilson, develops a story around how unhealed emotional wounds and trauma play out; from the violence and injustice in social systems and institutions to the ultimate violence of war and the destruction of our natural environment. He reveals the war that often rages battle within our individual psyche that is then projected out onto the larger stage of life.
The character of Joni shows compassion as a way through to self healing, and ultimately healing of others. Through her, he outlines a way we can all play a part in transforming humanity from a fear based world of separateness and violence to a more love based world of connectedness.
Buy this book, read it, give it to family and friends. And most importantly do the work to become more peaceful and heart centred. In that, as Joni did, you will find the courage to stand and act for the truth of our oneness, and paradoxically to step into more authenticity, integrity and freedom.
A significant work and contribution toward a more caring, compassionate and sustainable world.
Thank you Noel Wilson. I’ll be reading it again!
Joan Chinnery (Life Long Learner, Teacher and Poet)
She came down from the mountain, radiant in spirit and grounded in body, and she smiled as she described herself as a racehorse at the starting gates, tremulously ready to leap out onto the track, waiting for the gates to open. And she waits. And waits. Are the gates stuck? She backs out and goes for a brisk walk around the paddock to settle and then goes back into the starting box. And waits once more. And again. And again.
It is within the unease of this frustration that doubt magnifies and feeds the fear of abandonment, and it is in this state of impending depression that Joni comes to me and says, ‘I am lost’.
Book of Alain
This immensely readable book threads a story path of intriguing complexity, with accessible simplicity, as we engage in well developed snapshots of friends and foes.
Noel shares, through various character dialogues, succinct kernels of wisdom born of experience and deep insight and my own mindset is questioned, or validated. Practical and esoteric direction and purpose is melded from individual and shared dreams, visions, work and service, also from living in a universe accepting of diverse, perverse and delicious paradox.
This story encourages us to extract the precious treasures from our lives; the ones that can’t be exchanged for money, and it nurtures us beyond just yearning for change and peace, to creating solutions to world problems – rather than trying to hold onto the fragrance of a flower, or being devastated by its demise, instead we can actively allow the flow of eternal nature to bring our yearnings to fruition.
Through Joni, we see that a life of compassion is a life of action.
Thank you for your compassion, Noel. I love this book.
Christine Gamble (Social Justice Advocate)
Now I will briefly skip thirty years. Past my three years alone in the
Himalayas. Past that momentous day that I later learned was the first day in August in the year 2001 on the Western calendar, when I felt impelled to leave my long self-imposed solitude and return to the more extravagant world of mortals, morality, meaning and money. Past my twenty years of wandering and learning, moving and listening, watching and reading. And past those first few years working in the sanctuary at the United Nations until that time when I was appointed resident steward of that essentially crucial and largely ignored centre of spiritual possibility. So I grew older, and learned much about the material and social world, and about the tortured minds of men and women. And I waited.When she walked into the sanctuary at precisely 11am on the morning of the first day of August, 2026, I knew that my waiting was over, and the culmination of my life’s purpose was at hand. I was quietly meditating as she entered, looked at me closely to check she was not imposing, and then double checked, ‘May I sit with you?’
‘At the very least,’ I said, ‘I have been waiting a long time.’
‘It’s my birthday,’ she smiled.
Book of Khrisma
Yeah stunning . . It is difficult to express the depth of my appreciation!
My appreciation of the reality of the underlaid structure.
I don’t know why I didn’t at first see it . . Blind sided by my own agenda . . Joy of life in Joni.
Now . . I have to mention the experience generating my biases here.
I have a stunning little 6 year old daughter.
If she walks in to a room everyone is automatically a little healthier! The undercurrent of forces at work are in parallel – at least in a base structure – to Joni.
I took her with me when a mate’s son was sitting morose, fresh from hospital after a suicide attempt. Within half an hour he and Choenzin were off taking the dog for a walk down the park. The mother had come over from Melbourne – and started raving about what a miracle worker I am as a psychologist.
This simply means she, and most people, do not give credibility to how things really ARE!
So then your science fiction angle invites credibility for something that normal credibility overlooks . . . . yet at a basic level is present in any case!Book of KhrismaSo then your science fiction angle invites credibility for something that normal credibility overlooks . . . . yet at a basic level is present in any case!
Brilliant!
Jim Fletcher (Psychologist)
We collected people. Young people mainly, of course. But I remember Joni spending hours talking to an old derelict called Tom, finding fascination with his life, filtered and feebly fumbling on and sustained by regular topping up from casks of cheap spirits. He talked of the shearing sheds of his youth, he spun yarns about the war. Which war? Who knows. About the girls he loved and left, and the children he loved and left. And when he left us, he invariably asked if we had a few dollars to spare. For his tonic, he’d explain. And Joni, as predicted, always gave him something. ‘Why?’ I’d complain. ‘He’ll spend it on drink and it will kill him.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Joni would say, ‘but in the present it makes life just bearable for him.’
Book of Sarah