Product Description

A raw, intensely personal memoir of spiritual exploration from one of the world's great commentators on religion. After seven years in a convent, which she left, dismayed by its restrictions, an experience recounted in 'Through the Narrow Gate', Karen Armstrong struggled to establish herself in a new way of life, and became entrapped in a downward spiral, haunted by despair, anorexia and suicidal feelings. Despite her departure from the convent she remained within the Catholic Church until the God she believed in 'died on me', and she entered a 'wild and Godless period of crazy parties and numerous lovers'. Her attempts to reach happiness and carve out a career failed repeatedly, in spectacular fashion. She began writing her bestseller 'A History of God' in a spirit of scepticism, but through studying other religious traditions she found a very different kind of faith which drew from Christianity, Judaism and Islam and, eventually, spiritual and personal calm. In her own words, her 'story is a graphic illustration -- almost an allegory -- of a widespread dilemma. It is emblematic of a more general flight from institutional religion and a groping towards a form of faith that has not yet been fully articulated but which is nevertheless in the process of declaring itself'. Her lifelong inability to pray and to conform to traditional structures of worship is shared by the many who are leaving the established churches but who desire intensely a spiritual aspect to their lives. 'The Spiral Staircase' grapples with the issue of how we can be religious in the contemporary world, and the place and possibility of belief in the 21st-century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32594 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Karen Armstrong speaks to the troubling years following her decision to leave the life of a Roman Catholic nun and join the secular world in 1969. What makes The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness especially fascinating is that Armstrong already wrote about this era once--only it was a disastrous book. It was too soon for her to understand how these dark, struggling years influenced her spiritual development, and she was too immature to protect herself from being be bullied by the publishing world. As a result, she agreed to portray herself only in as "positive and lively a light as possible"--a mandate that gave her permission to deny the truth of her pain and falsify her inner experience. The inspiration for this new approach comes from TS Eliot's Ash Wednesday, a series of six poems that speak to the process of spiritual recovery. Eliot metaphorically climbs a spiral staircase in these poems---turning again and again to what he does not want to see as he slowly makes progress toward the light. In revisiting her spiral climb out of her dark night of the soul, Armstrong gives readers a stunningly poignant account about the nature of spiritual growth. Upon leaving the convent, Armstrong grapples with the grief of her abandoned path and the uncertainty of her place in the world. On top of this angst, Armstrong spent years suffering from undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy, causing her to have frequent blackout lapses in memory and disturbing hallucinations---crippling symptoms that her psychiatrist adamantly attributed to Armstrong's denial of her femininity and sexuality. The details of this narrative may be specific to Armstrong's life, but the meaning she makes of her spiral ascent makes this a universally relevant story. All readers can glean inspiration from her insights into the nature of surrender and the possibilities of finding solace in the absence of hope. Armstrong shows us why spiritual wisdom is often a seasoned gift--no matter how much we strive for understanding, we can't force profound insights to occur simply because our publisher is waiting for them. With her elegant, humble and brave voice, she inspires readers to willingly turn our attention toward our false identities and vigilantly defended beliefs in order to better see the truth and vulnerability of our existence. Herein lies the staircase we can climb to enlightenment. --Gail Hudson, Amazon.com

Review
'An exceptionally impressive autobiography!Karen Armstrong's account of her spiralling journey provokes thought and inspires respect.'Daily Telegraph 'The book deserves many readers!Karen Armstrong must be a woman of iron to have survived, made a career and a life.' Hilary Mantel 'Admirably lucid!she gives a more exact and vivid account of the pleasures of writing than any I have seen.' Sunday Times 'Unputdownable -- absorbing, moving.' Daily Mail 'A subtle and funny memoir.' Sunday Telegraph 'Armstrong manages to put into words something that most of us cannot express.' New Statesman Praise for The History for God: 'Only those who think they know it all will fail to be fascinated by Armstrong's search for God.' The Economist 'Highly readable and ought to be read!.Karen Armstong has read widely, has missed nothing, and gives us as solid a purview of the God of the past as it would be possible to find in a book,' Anthony Burgess, Observer 'Karen Armstrong is a genius.' A. N. Wilson

Sunday Times
'honest and poignant'

Customer Reviews

Deeply moving and important
Karen Armstrong's books seem to be getting better and better.

The first hundred pages of The Spiral Staircase are interesting, the next very interesting - but the final section is deeply moving and important. After intense study of the sacred texts of the world's major religions, Karen Armstrong re-states with great clarity and understanding a truth discovered by other mystics over the ages - true religious practice does not consist of belief in one creed or another, but in living a compasionate and thoughtful life.

I am reminded of Tolsoy's The Wisdom of Humankind, which comes to similar conclusions.

The Spiral Staircase - a review
Having read both 'Through the Narrow Gate' and Beginning the World, I was intrigued to find out how Ms Armstrong would handle a further book covering the same period without being repetitive. Indeed, there are some episodes in the book which had been covered previously, but taken this time from a different perspective and I generally did not have a feeling of 'deja vu'. Ms Armstrong did refer to her previous book at times, mainly in a negative light. I did feel that this was perhaps oversensitive of her, as it is inevitable that she would view these episodes differently after a further 20 year gap. However, it was sensitively written and it would be difficult for the reader not to empathise with the difficulties she has encountered in her life. I found the spiritual content excellent and well presented, with well thought out arguments, whether or not I agreed with her conclusions.

Overall, this is an excellent book for anybody with a spiritual turn of mind and I look forward to reading her next book

A former nun's story
This is the story of a woman who left the religious life at the end of the 1960s and how she coped with life in the secular world. Karen Armstrong entered the convent in 1962 at the age of 17 and left seven years later at the end of the Swinging Sixties. Armstrong wrote an account of her convent years called Through the Narrow Gate, and The Spiral Staircase begins as Karen leaves the convent to resume her studies at Oxford. She was hampered by what she felt was the conditioning she had undergone in the convent, where she was seen as a hopeless hysteric who dramatised every problem. She was left with feelings of worthlessness and failure that it took many years to overcome. She was also suffering from the misdiagnosis of physical symptoms that only increased her feelings of isolation in the modern world. This is a fascinating account of the journey of a woman to find her own inner peace after many years of struggle to find her own place in the world.