My Book Reviews

My copy of this book Some weeks ago I reviewed a memoir in these pages, viz.,  Staring at Lakes.  Here, I wish to review another memoir, this time one by Paul Auster called Winter Journal  (Faber & Faber, 2012).  It differs greatly from that of Michael Harding.  Harding's work is one which is centered on the Self as an ontological reality as encountered in meditation, in deep philosophical thinking and in that exacting way, I know only too well, of the person who suffers from clinical depression.  Auster's work is not as intense at all as its guiding force is that of a phenomenological exploration of what it means to be a human being in today's modern world.  I was intrigued by Auster's approach which I deem one of remarkably sharp observation. Like every other human being, mortality rears its ugly head for this author in this wonderfully honest book.  We meet him in its pages as an embodied self, whereas in Harding's work we meet th...

I have already reviewed a book by Robert A. Johnson, viz., Owning Your Own Shadow  in this blog before  here . This time I wish to review another one from Dr. Johnson's pen, namely Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth , HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins, 1989. My copy of this little classic Robert A. Johnson is an internationally recognized Jungian analyst, lecturer and author who is now in his early nineties.  Dr. Johnson is to be praised for popularizing the work of Professor Carl Gustav Jung in the United States of America especially, but also much more widely around the world.  He is universally lauded for the accessibility of his texts and lectures to the man and woman in the street.  He studied at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich where Jung's wife Emma was his main analyst.  He also steeped himself in both Eastern and Western mysticism, the former by dialogue with  Jiddu Krishnamurti  (1895...

When I'm feeling somewhat low, or perhaps empty or lacking in inspiration even, it is then that I instinctively look to poetry for something uplifting, fulfilling or inspiring - even healing, if possible.  As I write these notes here, a friend of mine is preparing a collection of my poems in the Irish language for publication.  It took me best part of a week to sift through a couple of hundred poems I had written in Gaeilge to pick out around fifty for a collection to send on to him. Doing that was literally a labour of love and a great sustenance for my soul.  Not that I'm being egotistical here as real poetry, or more correctly the making of poems, has more to do with soul than with ego.  However, as I had to read them thoroughly to pick some out, the reader will forgive me some little self-obsession, at least momentarily.  Further, I was overcome with both emotion and inspiration looking back at my spiritual path over the past twenty years as revealed in th...