Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World (SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology) - Tapa dura

"Michael Washburn's ability to integrate the central findings of psychoanalytic, Jungian, and transpersonal psychology has enabled him to work out a comprehensive and convincing account of spiritual development. Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World, his magnum opus, is an impressive overview of how the spirit expresses itself at every stage of the life cycle and in all the areas of experiencing that make us human."

Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of human spirituality will find something of value in Michael Washburn's new book. Drawing on a rich variety of psychoanalytic, Jungian, and existential-phenomenological sources and on both Western and Asian spiritual texts, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World provides a theoretical foundation for the idea that human development follows a spiral path. Washburn shows that ego development early in life requires us to turn our backs on original sources of our existence and, therefore, that spiritual development later in life requires us to spiral back to these sources on the way to whole-psyche integration. He elucidates the underlying causes and pivotal events that set development on its spiral course and traces six major dimensions of experience as they unfold along the spiral path: the unconscious, the energy system, the ego system, the perceived other, the experiential body, and the life-world. In providing a theoretical foundation for the idea of the spiral path, Washburn defends the idea against its critics and helps explain why the idea has been compelling to so many people in diverse traditions.