Awakening to Spirit: on Life, Illumination, and Being (Suny Series, Explorations in Contemporary Spirituality)

Awakening to Spirit explores the nature of spirituality in the postmodern age as a personal journey within a living, responsive cosmos. In a world of multiple religious traditions, spiritual ambiguity, and widespread secular atheism, Lee Irwin offers a non-traditional view of spirituality that's intrinsic to personal growth and development.

He presents Ten Principles that reflect stages of spiritual growth and culminate in a mystical encounter inherent to an experiential view of contemporary spirituality. Various physical, emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and psychic aspects of spiritual development are considered, leading to a discussion of spiritual maturity, old age, and self-renewal. Social relations, compassionate love, and responsible, mature human relationships are emphasized. Altered states of consciousness (dreams, visions, mystical experiences) are presented as a valid, necessary means for an understanding of Spirit, and many ideas from contemporary cosmology, process theology, parapsychology, and western esotericism are integrated into the book.