Making Peace with the Universe tells the agonizing human backstories to some of the world’s classic spiritual masterpieces. Normal, suffering people, when facing the doubt and panic common to times of illness, midlife, patterns of addiction, and other reminders of the human condition, tried only to figure out their own few next steps forward, and ended up reinvigorating whole religious traditions in the process. Mixing scholarly learning with episodes from his own skeptical quest, Michael Scott Alexander demonstrates how these accounts of private terror and personal triumph offer a model of therapy through spiritual adventure. In the company of William James; Socrates; Muslim legal scholar turned mystic Hamid al-Ghazali; Genghis Khan as described by the Daoist monk Qui Chuji; and jazz musician and Catholic convert Mary Lou Williams, Alexander traces the steps from existential crisis to psychological health. Exposing the shared terrain of religion and psychology, Making Peace with the Universe reveals what spiritual traditions can teach us about finding meaning in the modern world.
Nonfiction
Making Peace with the Universe: Personal Crisis and Spiritual Healing
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2019
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