Awakening to Spirit: On Life, Illumination, and Being

Lee Irwin

jul 1999 · State University of New York Press

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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.

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Lee Irwin is Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the College of Charleston. He is the author of a number of books including Visionary Worlds: The Making and Unmaking of Reality, also published by SUNY Press.