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The book Creating Heaven on Earth is a pleasantly surprising and in-depth exploration into the pursuit of living a full life by psychoanalyst Paul Marcus. Drawing from rich sources in spirituality, religious studies, psychoanalysis, existentialism and literature, the author urges the reader to “notice” life in a fine-tuned manner - such that we become capable of sensing and experiencing “the specialness of the this-ness of the moment” (p. 7).
Rather than focusing on peak experiences, like the Buddhists, Marcus follows, the path of mindfulness and explores the phenomenology of five of the more ordinary subtle experiences which many people (particularly the Americans - the people on whom he is focusing) may end up taking for granted. If engaged with awareness, it is these very ordinary experiences which can reflect for us the “hiddeness of the divine”. They include gardening, going to a baseball game, savoring a cup of coffee by oneself or with a friend, listening to music and telling or listening to stories. Dwelling at length and pausing reflectively at each of these everyday moments, the author infuses them with infinite living possibilities. It is thus that he weaves a rich tapestry of ideas with an exquisite experiential pattern.
Like psychoanalysts before him, he believes that the capacity to imbue everyday experiences with a “love for life” is not alone a matter of simplicity. It rests on a foundation of faith and trust in the goodness of life, such that they are suffused with grace. He concentrates on the human eye as one gazes, explores, tastes by taking in and internalizes the world as a lover does - a lover who expectantly rejoices in the thought of his beloved. The inner world of this “lover of life” is often other-directed, other-regarding and other-serving. The transcendence reached is one in which ethical considerations are foremost. One enjoys the simple pleasures of being alive to one's own existence by regarding that of others to be equally precious an