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Ruth Williams opens her explorations of spirituality with frank honesty, admirable vulnerability and grounded humanity: “I've looked into the face of darkness, and I've looked into the face of light. I cannot say I loved looking into the face of darkness, but I have and I have survived” (p. 1). Readers get an immediate taste of Williams’ deeply embodied psychological, spiritual, philosophical and ethical stance: “Far from being from ‘above’, having a spiritual attitude entails engagement with gritty reality; a grounded embodied spirituality, incorporated in daily existence” (p. 11).
A Jungian analyst, integrative psychotherapist, author of C. G. Jung: The Basics, and supervisor for the International Association for Analytical Psychology and the British Association for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Supervision, Williams brings her succinct, integrative style into her explorations of this boundless and vast topic which makes it an accessible and thought-provoking read. Organized in four parts: Part 1: “Spiritual Perspective”; Part 2: “The Dilemmas”; Part 3: “Puzzles”; and Part 4: “The Ineffable,” Williams does a masterful job of saying more with less which is particularly challenging for a topic as complex and ineffable as diverse perspectives on spirituality. Readers will not encounter spiritual bypass nor heavy, dense, and distant words in her forays into various expressions of spirituality.
Reading Williams’ book partially felt like an immersive experience into her receptive, curious and creative stream of consciousness. She takes the reader on a “tour de spirituality,” unveiling evocative ideas from great minds within and outside the field of analytical and depth psychology, alongside personal and clinical anecdotes, folksy wisdom and experiential exercises that are profoundly deep in their deceptively simple and human language. Williams’ book affirms Jung's assertion (1931, in Jung, 1997, p. 394) that, “One is only confronted with the spiritual experience when o