Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation

... and 1 star for the patchwork, cumbersome nature and redundancy. A worthy effort and worth the effort.Since I have the floor I'll muse here: It's too bad that this book couldn't be shipped back in time (like the 1950's) to the "inscrutable East" and the concepts elucidated be made mandatory training for the Sages headed West (Though who knows what additional powers over impressionable young "hippie" Western brains could have been welded by the occasional Eastern mystic with Darth Vader-like appetites?).A common occurrence these days among Western "gurus" is their mention of how many decades they've spent as meditators, used, I suppose, to trumpet some claim to ineffable credentials. In this book Welwood cites Maharshi and Krishnamurti, both considered pretty high-rollers in the "God racket", both critical of the word "meditation" as a mere label for what we call what we're doing on our cushion till the real deal manifests, which can happen to anybody, anytime.I guess I'd like to hear Welwood and similar players say something like, "I've spent a lot of time sitting there, thinking I'm meditating, and by God, I want credit for it!"

Welwood's books are amazing, but even for someone with degrees in psych and religion quite a intense read. One of the only authors I've read outside of academic necessity where I find myself rereading paragraphs, sometimes sentences, multiple times to assure myself of the deeper meanings. This particular book offers some fabulous insights into the differences, similarities, and the surprisingly frequent nexus of Eastern and Western thought. Just recommended it for a friend, and decided to buy the hardcopy for my personal library and give it another read myself.

great philosophical and existential reasoning, and his work is not a simple read. for me, I had to digest some of it before I understood it well enough to move on the next thought! am reading it with a group of 8 women and 5 are psychologists and 3 of us are "other". we are all having a good time delving into his thought processes, and we're getting a lot from his book.

I like how the author tries to push and pull east and west back and forth but the synthesis is still a little stiff and forced. I get the feeling his audience is his western colleagues, cuz he occasionally talks over readers' heads, and his orientation is all towards therapy, practice, and so on, and not the ordinary reader.Having said that, I thougth there were many good descriptions of eastern practice, and I particularly liked the later chapters when he started getting more transcendental, for instance, talking about love without an object. We could stand to here a lot more of talk like that. Maybe next time.

This book is a superb mix of Buddhism and psychotherapy. Welwood is able to illuminate these two sides of the one coin of growth because of his deep personal experience. I went highlighter-happy reading it! Highly recommended!!!!!As an aside: even though Welwood came up with the term "spiritual bypassing" almost 30 years ago, I only heard of it for the first time when reading this book. I ended up using this text as the basis for a series of 3 talks on the topic at my local Zen group.

Welwood is one of the greats. This book will touch anyone who reads it. Every page contains profound wisdom. A phenomenal book on psychology and transformation.

Amazing book. A culmination of Welwood's work over the last 2 decades. This is an absolute must read for therapists and buddhists (I am not Buddhist). Anyone in a helping profession would likely benefit. Enjoy.There are 10 books that I categorize as precious in my library. This is one of them. Alongside the Tao Te Ching and A few texts by Trungpa (path of the warrior, cutting through spiritual materialism).

Classic text. It should be apart of every Buddhist practitioners library.

Welwood combines an teaching of how we are stuck in our psychological states of mind with the practice of mindfulness.Almost everyone goes through their days living in dreams, fantasies and thoughts. We take this to be "our life". Welwood tells us that we need to be able to see what we are doing to let go of our issues to be able to live fully. Meditation, of course, is a great benefit but if we aren't aware of our issues, we are going to be drawn back into them.I expect that this book will be beneficial in making us aware of our shadow issues. There are Zen teachers who though awakened to the nondual, they have not resolved their shadows."Toward a Psychology of Awakening" is an enlightening book in more ways than one.

Such a fantastic book. Excellent quality reading

The best for understanding Westeners and finding a way to work with mind.

One of the best books I have ever read on the confluence of Eastern and Western approaches to psychology!

This is a work of pure, unadulterated genius. I doubt there are many books in existence that contain as much poignant wisdom that is so directly relevant for our times and who we are. Read it, and you will never be the same again.