The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening

Front Cover
New World Library, Feb 14, 2017 - Body, Mind & Spirit - 320 pages
What does it mean to be enlightened or spiritually awakened? In The Leap, Steve Taylor shows that this state is much more common than is generally believed. He shows that ordinary people — from all walks of life — can and do regularly “wake up” to a more intense reality, even if they know nothing about spiritual practices and paths. Wakefulness is a more expansive and harmonious state of being that can be cultivated or that can arise accidentally. It may also be a process we are undergoing collectively. Drawing on his years of research as a psychologist and on his own experiences, Taylor provides what is perhaps the clearest psychological study of the state of wakefulness ever published. Above all, he reminds us that it is our most natural state — accessible to us all, anytime, anyplace.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
1 Falling Asleep Longing to Awaken
13
2 Wakefulness in Different Cultures
25
Awakened Artists
43
Confusion and Integration
61
5 Gradual Awakening in Spiritual Traditions
75
6 Gradual Awakening outside Spiritual Traditions
89
Transformation through Turmoil
105
A New Mind and a New Life
199
14 The Natural Wakefulness of Children
219
15 Demythologizing Wakefulness
235
A Collective Awakening
251
The Human Race Will Rise Again
269
Acknowledgments
271
An Inventory of SpiritualSecular Wakefulness
273
Notes
275

Kundalini and Energetic Awakening
129
Is It Possible to Awaken through Psychedelics or Technology?
141
Spiritual Crisis
157
Lingering Traits and Questionable Teachers
175
A New World and a New Self
183
Bibliography
287
Resources
293
Index
295
About the Author
305
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2017)

Steve Taylor, PhD, is the author of several books on spirituality and psychology, including The Fall and Waking from Sleep. He has also published two books of poetic spiritual reflections, including The Calm Center. He is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom. Since 2011, he has appeared annually in Mind, Body, Spirit magazine’s list of the world’s “100 most spiritually influential living people.”

Bibliographic information