PDF Download The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong
Don't transform your mind when you are starting to prepare to have analysis practice. This practice is a great and terrific routine. You must enliven it with the most effective publications. Several books show and also present there unbelievable web content based upon each genres as well as subjects. Even each publication has various taste of creating; they will certainly provide much better problem when read effectively. This is what makes us happily existing The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out Of Darkness, By Karen Armstrong as one of the books to check out now.
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong
PDF Download The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong
Want to get experience? Want to get any ideas to create new things in your life? Read The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out Of Darkness, By Karen Armstrong now! By reading this book as soon as possible, you can renew the situation to get the inspirations. Yeah, this way will lead you to always think more and more. In this case, this book will be always right for you. When you can observe more about the book, you will know why you need this.
Reading will certainly not offer you lots of things. But, reviewing will certainly offer just what you require. Every publication has certain subject and lesson to take. It will certainly make everyone need to choose just what publication they will certainly check out. It makes the lesson to take will really relate to just how the person requires. In this case, the existence of this website will actually aid readers to find several books. So, really, there is not just the The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out Of Darkness, By Karen Armstrong, there are still great deals of kinds of guides to collect.
By seeing the link, you can make the take care of the site to get the soft file. Ever before mind, there is no difference in between this sort of soft file book and also the printed publication. It will certainly distinguish only in the forms. And exactly what you will additionally obtain from The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out Of Darkness, By Karen Armstrong soft data is that it will teach you how you can live your life, how to boost your life, and the best ways to guide to be much better.
When picking this The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out Of Darkness, By Karen Armstrong to get and check out, you will start it from the initial web page and make deal to enjoy it a lot. Yeah, this publication truly has fantastic problem of guide to read. Just how the author bring in the viewers is very clever. The web pages will show you why guide is presented for the wonderful people. They will certainly concern you to be one that is much better in undergoing the life as well as boosting the life.
Review
“Enjoyable and deeply interesting. . . . Very rewarding.” –San Francisco Chronicle“A story about becoming human, being recognized, finally recognizing oneself. . . . It fills the reader with hope.” –The Washington Post Book World“Riveting. . . . It’s a pleasure to read simply because it’s honest and hopeful. . . . Armstrong is such an evocative writer.” –Newsday“I loved this powerful and moving account, and read it nonstop.” –Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief“In . . . Armstrong’s memoir there lurks wisdom about the making and remaking of a life . . . from which all of us could learn.” –The New York Times Book Review“A powerful memoir. . . . Buoyed by keen intelligence and unflinching self-awareness and honesty. . . . Armstrong is an engaging, energetic writer.” –The Christian Science Monitor“Candid and compelling, and the sentences are flawless.” –The Dallas Morning News
Read more
From the Inside Flap
In 1962, at age seventeen, Karen Armstrong entered a convent, eager to meet God. After seven brutally unhappy years as a nun, she left her order to pursue English literature at Oxford. But convent life had profoundly altered her, and coping with the outside world and her expiring faith proved to be excruciating. Her deep solitude and a terrifying illness-diagnosed only years later as epilepsy-marked her forever as an outsider. In her own mind she was a complete failure: as a nun, as an academic, and as a normal woman capable of intimacy. Her future seemed very much in question until she stumbled into comparative theology. What she found, in learning, thinking, and writing about other religions, was the ecstasy and transcendence she had never felt as a nun. Gripping, revelatory, and inspirational, The Spiral Staircase" is an extraordinary account of an astonishing spiritual journey.
Read more
See all Editorial Reviews
Product details
Paperback: 305 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (February 22, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385721277
ISBN-13: 978-0385721271
Product Dimensions:
5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
248 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#103,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I cannot even begin to tell you how or why this book speaks to my heart like it does. It just does. The life, the journey--spiritual, religious, and otherwise--is one to which everyone and no one can relate. Yet, she comes so finally to a place of some understanding and therefore peace. But not really peace. Isn't that life though? We jump around in a state of unrest and rest only to find ourselves in unrest once again. Read it. My soul needed it.
An extraordinary book. Armstrong takes an unflinching look at her personal and spiritual development from her entry and departure from a convent, a doctoral candidate at the British University, her modest success as an educator, to her gradual emergence as a highly successful author. It is a personal story of self discovery It is a story familiar to anyone who has experienced a spiritual crisis and emerged with a fuller understanding of the universality of the religious experience and a faith that is not handed down, but discovered. Strongly recommended.
I am enjoying reading this book. Though I am not a nun, personally I have spent most of my life studying and researching religions in the quest of understanding and to know what "It's/God/ Spirit" is all about. I don't share Karen Armstrongs strong negative feelings, obvious her experience was rather traumatic one. What I have concluded in my personal quest is that "God/Spirit" is unknowable in human terms, He/It is the source of All there is, so our so-call searching for God is like the dog who continously chase his tail thinking his tail is a different being apart from himself. God is us, we are Gods as rabbi Jesus of Nazarette said. All we need is to stand still and quiet our endless mind chatter and listen, truly learn to listen.
An intensely personal and candid account of Karen Armstrong's journey and transformation into one of the world's preeminent authors on theology. Armstrong takes us through a brief discussion of her childhood and time as a Catholic nun, but largely focuses the book on her unintended spiritual quest. Experiencing many of the classic challenges espoused by Campbell in the Hero With a Thousand Faces, Armstrong first has her faith destroyed, her health fail, her career derailed and her self-worth reduced to smithereens, before embarking on an unintended journey as a theological author that also brought her to a uniquely spiritual awakening.Armstrong's candor, compassion and vulnerability are evident throughout the book. Once you finish reading it, you feel like you know the author intimately - and you do - because she allows herself to be open and vulnerable for the reader. There are times when you feel sympathy, others when you feel empathy, but you always feel the vulnerability and the humanity.The book itself is a great read - I would classify it as nearly a page-turner. It is like watching a train wreck, but knowing that Armstrong is a preeminent author, it is also inspiring and awe provoking. In essence, the reader will find it hard to believe that Armstrong could become the woman she is given her experience - and yet it is that very experience and the humanity of it that makes the book an inspiration.
This is a remarkably personal and insightful journey which takes us through the loss of hope and faith and then back to a higher realm of love and understanding. Here are my personal thoughts about this book:1. By the end of the book, I felt a bond with her that is similar to something I have felt for some of my best professors and teachers who helped me understand complex things. Karen is extremely honest and open and able to describe emotions and reactions which many thoughtful people must have to orthodox religious training and dogma. She works so hard to do the right thing and yet she is unable to feel the connection to God and make the decision to accept things as they are. She is the opposite of the normal rebellious person who bolts. She is the long suffering special person who will follow the rules, sacrifice and do the right things over and over again to come up with the expected result of obedience and conformity. And yet, that brilliant and analytical mind of hers cannot allow herself to be tricked or cajoled into compliance. I feel that this is because she is brutally honest and pure.2. She lets us into her very private and sometimes sad life. We know her every fear and understand that she is shy, awkward socially, and backward, and as she heals and moves to the next level of understanding in her life, we root for her and admire the things she is trying to do. Her accomplishments are huge and she has done it virtually all alone with extreme patience and many setbacks as well as thousands of days carefully studying the history of religion, various poets and other important writers. The ultra close relationship we have with her every day struggles helps us comprehend her conclusions and remarks about spirituality, religion and life. She has taken the time to do what many of us would like to do but can't do because of other more pressing obligations and, perhaps, addiction to regular shallow life things.3. She is imprisoned by her unknown health problems, her religious obligations, fear and shyness, and yet we see her determination get her to a level of freedom experienced by very few people. She loses her faith, gains a cause to help others understand how religion at a certain level can be damaging, and as she reads and studies each of the three major religions, she gradually moves back to a spiritual understanding that gives her a new freedom and love of everyone. Along the way, she teaches us some of the basics about each of the religions and why we need to understand them before we assume that all others are incorrect and horrible. This gives us hope and makes us want to reexamine and study others and then move to that higher level that is taught by all of them. Certainly, it makes me want to study more about Judaism and the prophet Mohammed's teaching.I finished the book with a great and positive feeling that there may be hope in the world if we could take the time to truly understand each other. It's a great book. Thanks, Karen.
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong PDF
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong EPub
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong Doc
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong iBooks
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong rtf
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong Mobipocket
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong Kindle
