James Jones, both a professor of religion and a practicing clinical psychologist, has found that the crises we face in life, love, and work demand comprehensive spiritual answers. Here he weaves together the personal stories of his patients with the insights he has gained from years of counseling and teaching. This is a beautiful exploration of the spiritual search as a way to answer our deepest longings and find our true selves.Meet Bob, a successful ophthalmologist who walks away from the security of his medical practice and his comfortable family life to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming an actor.Meet Marion, the battered wife of an alcoholic who finally seizes control of her future when she can no longer ignore the sad pattern of her life.Meet Tom, a high-powered Wall Street broker whose life is transformed in the instant his BMW careens off a cliff, leaving him helpless and alone in a cold, bare hospital room.Did these people change their lives - confronting obstacles, connecting with their deepest desires, and pursuing paths to meaning and fulfillment - because of therapeutic insights or because of spiritual awakenings? Neither and both.James Jones perceptively links the spiritual and psychological quests. As he observes more and more people entering therapy in search of lasting, whole-life answers, he has realized that for many, psychology isn't enough, that neither traditional psychology nor conventional religion can illuminate the path to these answers. Jones increasingly finds that "our personal (and psychotherapeutic) struggles often require a spiritual solution ... [that] spirituality, like psychotherapy, is a process ... of bringing into awareness the deepest recesses of ourselves where the divine dwells within us."Jones calls on his knowledge of both the enduring spiritual traditions of the world and the contemporary concerns of modern men and women to show that the deep-seated desire to connect - with our true selves, with others, and with a source of meaning - is the essential longing of the human heart, and that satisfying this fundamental longing is vital to our happiness and well-being. Jones's wise and warm observations and insightful case histories reveal the many factors that keep us from intimacy and spiritual experience and explore provocative ways of rediscovering both.
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Book details

• Format Hardcover
• Pages213 pages
• LanguageEnglish
• ISBN100062509608
• ISBN139780062509604