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Product Description
A raw, intensely personal memoir of spiritual exploration from one of the world's great commentators on religion. After seven years in a convent, which she left, dismayed by its restrictions, an experience recounted in Through the Narrow Gate, Karen Armstrong struggled to establish herself in a new way of life, and became entrapped in a downwards spiral, haunted by despair, anorexia and suicidal feelings. Despite her departure from the convent she remained within the Catholic Church until the God she believed in 'died on me', and she entered a 'wild and Godless period of crazy parties and numerous lovers'. Her attempts to reach happiness and carve out a career failed repeatedly, in spectacular fashion. She began writing her bestseller A History of God in a spirit of scepticism, but through studying other religious traditions she found a very different kind of faith which drew from Christianity, Judaism and Islam and, eventually, spiritual and personal calm. In her own words, her 'story is a graphic illustration -- almost an allegory -- of a widespread dilemma. It is emblematic of a more general flight from institutional religion and a groping towards a form of faith that has not yet been fully articulated but which is nevertheless in the process of declaring itself. ' Her lifelong inability to pray and to conform to traditional structures of worship is shared by the many who are leaving the established churches but who desire intensely a spiritual aspect to their lives. The Spiral Staircase grapples with the issue of how we can be religious in the contemporary world, and the place and possibility of belief in the twenty-first century.
Amazon.com Review
Karen Armstrong speaks to the troubling years following her decision to leave the life of a Roman Catholic nun and join the secular world in 1969. What makes this memoir especially fascinating is that Armstrong already wrote about this era once---only it was a disastrous book. It was too soon for her to understand how these dark, struggling years influenced her spiritual development, and she was too immature to protect herself from being be bullied by the publishing world. As a result, she agreed to portray herself only in as "positive and lively a light as possible"---a mandate that gave her permission to deny the truth of her pain and falsify her inner experience. The inspiration for this new approach comes from T. S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday, a series of six poems that speak to the process of spiritual recovery. Eliot metaphorically climbs a spiral staircase in these poems---turning again and again to what he does not want to see as he slowly makes progress toward the light. In revisiting her spiral climb out of her dark night of the soul, Armstrong gives readers a stunningly poignant account about the nature of spiritual growth. Upon leaving the convent, Armstrong grapples with the grief of her abandoned path and the uncertainty of her place in the world. On top of this angst, Armstrong spent years suffering from undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy, causing her to have frequent blackout lapses in memory and disturbing hallucinations---crippling symptoms that her psychiatrist adamantly attributed to Armstrong's denial of her femininity and sexuality. The details of this narrative may be specific to Armstrong's life, but the meanin! g she makes of her spiral ascent makes this a universally relevant story. All readers can glean inspiration from her insights into the nature of surrender and the possibilities of finding solace in the absence of hope. Armstrong shows us why spiritual wisdom is often a seasoned gift---no matter how much we strive for understanding, we can't force profound insights to occur simply because our publisher is waiting for them. With her elegant, humble and brave voice, she inspires readers to willingly turn our attention toward our false identities and vigilantly defended beliefs in order to better see the truth and vulnerability of our existence. Herein lies the staircase we can climb to enlightenment. --Gail Hudson
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Strong Both Intellectually and Spiritually, 2008-11-08
One caveat - this book is a very intellectual read, so if you're not interested in that, you won't like it. There's not much dialogue and though parts of the book are funny, it's very dry humor and I get the feeling it is unintentional. So if you're looking for a purely entertaining memoir, look elsewhere.
I have a background in graduate studies in religion and I kept thinking that this book would have been perfect for one of my classes, most notably the Psychology of Religion, though it would have fit into several others. The author is very bright and perhaps too introspective for her own good. There are some gaps in terms of her personal history, especially in her upbringing and her romantic life, though she explains why she left the latter discussion out of this particular book.
Though everything comes together well at the end, it's not really a happy ending per se - the author is too realistic for that. She understands that her spiritual life is really part of an overall journey that is going to have detours, stops and starts, and plain old confusion. The difference is that she now trusts herself to be able to make the journey on her own instead of relying on and copying the experiences of others.
I highly recommend this book to those who are interested in following their own path. It is thought-provoking and you will be processing it long after reading the last page.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
An Extraordinary Collection of Compared and Clearly Expressed Thoughts, 2008-09-04
This book is a beautiful act of compassion for other women and men who, like Karen Armstrong, have struggled with doubts, conforming to religions, and other related "failures." The book provides alternate, thoughtful, and understandable means of interpreting and expressing hopes and faiths. Thank you Karen for writing down your thoughts and helping many of us who have struggled with so many of the same issues you have studied.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Finding God, 2008-07-22
As a memoir, Armstrong's "The Spiral Staircase" succeeds in the first half. She documents her life in a Catholic convent, her physical challenges and her mental state of mind. Readers wonder, Why would she do this to herself when she was so miserable most of the time? Answer: Her goal was to find God.
Her obsessive journey leads me, and I suppose many other readers, to conclude that she tried too hard. But it's a fascinating story.
The last half of her memoir solves the puzzle of her physical (misinterpreted early in her life as mental) disability. Success follows her discovery, but the book gets tedious with her sometimes repetitious account of daily life and re-learning how to cope with job loss. She eventually finds her niche as a writer by publishing "A History of God," a thoughtful review of many religious cultures.
Armstrong realizes that the study of God does not have to include belief in all the dictates of a specific religion. In fact it need not include belief in God at all. She finds out that the journey is more important than the goal.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Sadly misunderstood by some - author and book. Try again., 2008-06-05
So Karen is dysfuntional? No, like me, she has temporal lobe epilepsy, a condition from which the world and society prefer to turn away and pretend it doesn't exist. It's exceptionally hard to describe, since it has literally hundreds of forms and does leave one doubting one's sanity at times. Then we doubt the world's mental balance. I was once dismissed from work by someone who feared I'd bite colleagues. And Karen is an apologist for Muslim extremists? Oh, for pity's sake, grow up! Read what she says, not what your prejudice tells you. Does she perhaps wear a Paisley scarf too (originally a Scottish design, by the way)? There's no trusting these people, is there, if they don't think just like you? Open the window and look outside. There's a world out there, bigger than even your prejudices and bigotry.
And a note to Mr Benanchou: the Greeks didn't believe the world was flat. In the centuries BCE, the circumference of the world was calculated to a high degree of accuracy, with two sticks, sunlight and basic trigonometry (subtended angles - look it up.) We rely on very pricy satellites, not garden canes, which cost so much less.
I applaud Karen Armstrong. It can still be problematical - I know well from experience - to assert one has epilepsy. Fears of evil spirits crop up, even now. And it can lead to social and career disaster. I was forced to retire, with two degrees, at only 42.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Empathy, 2008-04-07
Written with much sensitivity (and courage), it induced much empathy with the author. A good read.
I was less than impressed with some of her books on history of religion, but this autobiography shows where she was coming from, and helped me better appreciate what she was trying to convey in those other books.
I look forward to the next installment in this autobio series. :-)
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