The Leap The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening

Many assume that enlightenment is the result of arduous effort — self-denial such as fasting, travel to far-flung places, encounters with teachers thought to be enlightened themselves. But here, Steve Taylor shows that ordinary people — from all walks of life and every age and place — can and do regularly experience the kind of life-changing moments many of us seek. Taylor seeks out the common features of these diverse experiences. His resulting cross-cultural investigation of spirituality, belief, and human psychology shows how spiritual awakening — a shift into a more expansive and harmonious state of being — can be both recognized and cultivated. How is it triggered and experienced? How do people feel in the midst? How are their relationships and goals affected? Because the experiences Taylor describes are at once unique to those who experience them and obviously available to one and all, this is the rare work that both describes and inspires.

Steve Taylor is the author of several books on spirituality and psychology, including The Fall and Waking from Sleep. He has also published two previous book of poetic spiritual reflections, The Meaning and Calm Center. He is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom. Since 2011, he has appeared annually in Mind, Body, Spirit magazine’s list of “the world’s 100 most spiritually influential living people.”

Eckhart Tolle is the author of The Power of Now and A New Earth.