What do you think?
Rate this book
Minding the Self: Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality
Many people have an aptitude for religious experience and spirituality but don't know how to develop this or take it further. Modern societies offer little assistance, and traditional religions are overly preoccupied with their own organizational survival. Minding the Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality offers suggestions for individual spiritual development in our modern and post-modern times. Here, Murray Stein argues that C.G. Jung and depth psychology provide guidance and the foundation for a new kind of modern spirituality.
Murray Stein explores the problem of spirituality within the cultural context of modernity and offers a way forward without relapsing into traditional or mythological modes of consciousness. Chapters work towards finding the proper vessel for contemporary spirituality and dealing with the ethical issues that crop up along the way. Stein shows how it is an individual path but not an isolationist one, often using many resources borrowed from a variety of religious it is a way of symbol, dream and experiences of the numinous with hints of transcendence as these come into personal awareness.
Minding the Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality uses research from a wide variety of fields, such as dream-work and the neuroscience of the sleeping brain, clinical experience in Jungian psychoanalysis, anthropology, ethics, Zen Buddhism, Jung's writings and the recently published Red Book. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, Jungian scholars, undergraduates, graduate and post-graduate students and anyone with an interest in modern spirituality.
Murray Stein explores the problem of spirituality within the cultural context of modernity and offers a way forward without relapsing into traditional or mythological modes of consciousness. Chapters work towards finding the proper vessel for contemporary spirituality and dealing with the ethical issues that crop up along the way. Stein shows how it is an individual path but not an isolationist one, often using many resources borrowed from a variety of religious it is a way of symbol, dream and experiences of the numinous with hints of transcendence as these come into personal awareness.
Minding the Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality uses research from a wide variety of fields, such as dream-work and the neuroscience of the sleeping brain, clinical experience in Jungian psychoanalysis, anthropology, ethics, Zen Buddhism, Jung's writings and the recently published Red Book. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, Jungian scholars, undergraduates, graduate and post-graduate students and anyone with an interest in modern spirituality.
141 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Murray B. Stein
86 books159 followersNot to be confused with other Analytical/Jungian Psychologist Murray Stein
Jungian psychoanalyst, author, lecturer
Murray Stein, Ph.D.is a training analyst at the International School for Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. His most recent publications include The Principle of Individuation, Jung’s Map of the Soul, and The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis (Editor of the Jungian sections, with Ross Skelton as General Editor). He lectures internationally on topics related to Analytical Psychology and its applications in the contemporary world.
Dr. Stein is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. and M.Div.), the University of Chicago (Ph.D., in Religion and Psychological Studies), and the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich. He is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He has been the president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (2001-4), and is presently a member of the Swiss Society for Analytical Psychology and President of the International School of Analytical Psychology, Zurich.
Jungian psychoanalyst, author, lecturer
Murray Stein, Ph.D.is a training analyst at the International School for Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. His most recent publications include The Principle of Individuation, Jung’s Map of the Soul, and The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis (Editor of the Jungian sections, with Ross Skelton as General Editor). He lectures internationally on topics related to Analytical Psychology and its applications in the contemporary world.
Dr. Stein is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. and M.Div.), the University of Chicago (Ph.D., in Religion and Psychological Studies), and the C.G. Jung Institut-Zurich. He is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He has been the president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (2001-4), and is presently a member of the Swiss Society for Analytical Psychology and President of the International School of Analytical Psychology, Zurich.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 8, 2015
I’ve been interested in Murray Stein’s work ever since I read his “In Midlife” twenty years ago. It practically saved my life. I was going through midlife at the time and had previously subjected myself to five years of Freudian therapy, which was certainly helpful, but it wasn’t until I read “In Midlife” that I came to fully understand what was happening to me, and really how universal and interesting the phenomenon is. I was finally able to come to terms with myself. I’ve read many of Dr. Stein’s other works, e.g., “Transformation, Emergency of the Self” and “Jung’s Map of the Soul,” as well as many of his articles in other publications. I’ve also from time to time struggled with religion and my relationship, or lack there of, to it. I am not a church goer. I do like the ritual and the sanctity of a church but am put off by the dogma and its practitioners. I’ve never been an atheist, although I’ve flirted with it from time to time and have more recently characterized myself as “spiritual” rather than religious. Sure, it’s an overused concept, but it fits. Like my emotional life, which never made much sense until I started reading Murray Stein, my spiritual life didn’t either. And yet, I find in my own writings constant reference and interest in religious subjects. I needed something that would give me perspective on what it means to be a rational 21st century spiritual human being. Which brings me to “Minding the Self.”
The subtitle, “Jungian Meditations on Contemporary Spirituality,” is perhaps too soft spoken to address the full thrust of what Dr. Stein deals with here. First of all, he address the actual situation many of us find ourselves in where we are adrift in a sea of symbols, mythology and dogma reflective of two-thousand-year-old religious concepts that in our time seem to not only stretch credibility but also defy objective reality. He understands our situation, my situation. I come from the sciences and engineering, although I’ve also been educated in literature and have been an author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry for over forty years. I’ve been reading the writings of Carl Jung for over twenty. Jung’s theories now provide a background for all my own work. But I’m a layman when it comes to psychology and spirituality, and Dr. Stein is President of the International School of Analytical Psychology, Zurich. Plus, he is an ordained minister. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to spiritual matters, and here he’s following Jung’s “trail of hints for a possible way forward in our own troubled times.” [page 6]
Specifically, what is Murray Stein presenting here? This is the way he puts it:
“It is a vision for a new type of humanism based on the idea of integration of the divine into the human, which amounts to the incarnation of the full imago Dei for all who accept the challenge. This is the challenge and the opportunity that psychology offers, a challenge to the traditional religious notion of a supernatural metaphysical God and an opportunity for a future in which spirituality will be woven into the fabric of conscious and everyday life.” [page 6-7]
That is quite an undertaking. Does he deliver? And the answer is an unequivocal yes. I found it difficult to proceed through the material with any sort of speed because I kept stopping to reflect on the profound implications of statements like this: “The psyche is linked, in short, to a transcendent factor called Divinity that shapes it structurally.” [page 17] That was what I’d been sensing throughout my own life but couldn’t come to terms with or even have the courage to believe was real. In Chapter 8, “Not Just A Butterfly,” Dr. Stein gives an example of transcendence from his own life that helped me to understand a powerful event in mine, an example of Jung’s “synchronicity” that drove home the importance of paying attention to understand the significance to what is happening to us. He says that, “Perhaps the most tragic failure of human consciousness is that it so easily misses what is untoward and unusual.” A little later he says that, “When we stand squarely in the presence of death, especially of a loved one, our senses seem to be more attuned to hints of transcendence.” [page 48] This was what had happened to me several years ago with the tragic passing of the woman who had been my one true love in life. I had been warned ten days before in a dream, which was much more than a dream, that something was coming and even consoled beforehand. His experience gave credence to mine.
Dr. Stein never leaves behind the Jungian concepts of individuation and transcendent function but always builds on them. In Chapter 2, “Making Room for Divinity,” he states that, “The human task is to incarnate as much of the self, and therefore also of what stands behind the self, which is the Ground of Being, as possible in a single lifetime. This is the task of individuation, and it is what I mean by minding the self.” [page 19] And so it goes all the way through the last chapter titled “Minding the Self,” which is an insightful and powerful reading of “The Ten Ox-Herding Images” of Zen Buddhism, a favorite of Jung’s.
Dr. Stein also deals with the larger picture, society in general and the individual’s place within it. In Chapter 13, “The Problem of Ethics,” he states that:
“This view recognizes that individuation does not proceed in isolation from the wider world. It is not a sealed-off and isolated process limited to the individual personality. If an individual human being minds the self at the personal level and finds the way toward inner unity of the psyche’s inherent polarities, this will enhance order and wholeness as well in the surrounding social and natural worlds. Conversely, if the individual succumbs to inner disorder and disintegrates at a personal level and remains there, this will have a deleterious effect on the surrounding world.” [page 94]
It’s an exciting and exhilarating excursion through Murray Stein’s post-Jung world of analytical psychology, one that provides a new approach to spiritual development on the path to individuation. For me, it is quite possibly the most important book I’ve ever read.
The subtitle, “Jungian Meditations on Contemporary Spirituality,” is perhaps too soft spoken to address the full thrust of what Dr. Stein deals with here. First of all, he address the actual situation many of us find ourselves in where we are adrift in a sea of symbols, mythology and dogma reflective of two-thousand-year-old religious concepts that in our time seem to not only stretch credibility but also defy objective reality. He understands our situation, my situation. I come from the sciences and engineering, although I’ve also been educated in literature and have been an author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry for over forty years. I’ve been reading the writings of Carl Jung for over twenty. Jung’s theories now provide a background for all my own work. But I’m a layman when it comes to psychology and spirituality, and Dr. Stein is President of the International School of Analytical Psychology, Zurich. Plus, he is an ordained minister. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to spiritual matters, and here he’s following Jung’s “trail of hints for a possible way forward in our own troubled times.” [page 6]
Specifically, what is Murray Stein presenting here? This is the way he puts it:
“It is a vision for a new type of humanism based on the idea of integration of the divine into the human, which amounts to the incarnation of the full imago Dei for all who accept the challenge. This is the challenge and the opportunity that psychology offers, a challenge to the traditional religious notion of a supernatural metaphysical God and an opportunity for a future in which spirituality will be woven into the fabric of conscious and everyday life.” [page 6-7]
That is quite an undertaking. Does he deliver? And the answer is an unequivocal yes. I found it difficult to proceed through the material with any sort of speed because I kept stopping to reflect on the profound implications of statements like this: “The psyche is linked, in short, to a transcendent factor called Divinity that shapes it structurally.” [page 17] That was what I’d been sensing throughout my own life but couldn’t come to terms with or even have the courage to believe was real. In Chapter 8, “Not Just A Butterfly,” Dr. Stein gives an example of transcendence from his own life that helped me to understand a powerful event in mine, an example of Jung’s “synchronicity” that drove home the importance of paying attention to understand the significance to what is happening to us. He says that, “Perhaps the most tragic failure of human consciousness is that it so easily misses what is untoward and unusual.” A little later he says that, “When we stand squarely in the presence of death, especially of a loved one, our senses seem to be more attuned to hints of transcendence.” [page 48] This was what had happened to me several years ago with the tragic passing of the woman who had been my one true love in life. I had been warned ten days before in a dream, which was much more than a dream, that something was coming and even consoled beforehand. His experience gave credence to mine.
Dr. Stein never leaves behind the Jungian concepts of individuation and transcendent function but always builds on them. In Chapter 2, “Making Room for Divinity,” he states that, “The human task is to incarnate as much of the self, and therefore also of what stands behind the self, which is the Ground of Being, as possible in a single lifetime. This is the task of individuation, and it is what I mean by minding the self.” [page 19] And so it goes all the way through the last chapter titled “Minding the Self,” which is an insightful and powerful reading of “The Ten Ox-Herding Images” of Zen Buddhism, a favorite of Jung’s.
Dr. Stein also deals with the larger picture, society in general and the individual’s place within it. In Chapter 13, “The Problem of Ethics,” he states that:
“This view recognizes that individuation does not proceed in isolation from the wider world. It is not a sealed-off and isolated process limited to the individual personality. If an individual human being minds the self at the personal level and finds the way toward inner unity of the psyche’s inherent polarities, this will enhance order and wholeness as well in the surrounding social and natural worlds. Conversely, if the individual succumbs to inner disorder and disintegrates at a personal level and remains there, this will have a deleterious effect on the surrounding world.” [page 94]
It’s an exciting and exhilarating excursion through Murray Stein’s post-Jung world of analytical psychology, one that provides a new approach to spiritual development on the path to individuation. For me, it is quite possibly the most important book I’ve ever read.
December 15, 2017
Too esoteric for my tastes. Footnotes would greatly assist for readers who aren't already extremely familiar with Jungian principles. Reading this felt like homework.
February 16, 2018
Insightful, offers a way forward to a contemporary spirituality and deeper consciousness
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews