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 Self: 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 traditions: it is a way of symbol, dream and experiences of the numinous with hints of transcendence as these come into personal awareness.

Minding the Self: 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.

Introduction. "New Wine Needs New Skins". Making Room for Divinity. Changing and Emerging God Images. The Way of Symbols. Attending to the Lunar Mind. Hints of Transcendence. Turning on the Transcendent Function. Not Just a Butterfly. Spirituality in the Psychoanalytic Context. Mapping the Psyche. Initiation into the Spirit of the Depths. Humanity’s Shadow Monster. The Problem of Ethics. The Gifts of Cultural Dialogue. Minding the Self.

Murray Stein is a training and supervising analyst at the International School of Analytical Psychology, Zurich, Switzerland. He is the author of many articles and books.