The Spiral Staircase

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

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Please think twice - Rated
There are some unduly negative reviews of this book, based mainly on ignorance of the reality of epilepsy. Weird sensations, as I know well, are only the beginning. Without diagnosis, fear for one's sanity is natural. However, after diagnosis, senseless ignorance and prejudice commonly result. I had Ms Armstrong's own experience, dismissed without warning from a successful teaching post, with the loss of my home and marriage (and my ex-wife's sanity). Epilepsy isn't normally the classical convulsive collapse. Temporal lobe attacks are indescribable, driving one to question reality. I applaud Ms Armstrong's work, in bringing this subject to our attention - and in stressing the capacity to succeed regardless (as did Dostoevsky). Navel-gazing this is not. When no information is available (how many titles are there on the subject in bookshops?), you are thrown on your own inner resources. Don't underrate the problem. The UK has around 300,000 people with epilepsy, the US around 2.5 million. Yet we never hear of it, for it's become a socially unmentionable condition, subject to religious idiocy and superstition - quite apart from employment difficulties (I was once dismissed from successful employment as suspected likely to bite colleagues! No, not the Middle Ages, but 1990) So, before accusations of undue introspection, think of those in Ms Armstrong's position, and mine and those of the millions worldwide plagued by stupidity over one simple word: Epilepsy. So to her I say, congratulations for letting the reading public know - and for her success in the often senseless world.

M.Igoe M.A. (hons), M.Litt, PGCE (but classed as unemployable in the UK)

Essential spirituality - Rated
I recently gave my copy of this book away, I was reluctant to but seeing the pain and confusion in my recipients life I thought it would help him as he struggles to discover an essential spirituality after losing his faith in Christianity. I am delighted to see that it has, which led me to want to once again have this book as part of my library. Looking on Amazon I was sad and surprised to see that it didn't have straight 5 star reviews. I guess we all have different tastes. I have read the final chapter several times it is engaging and lucid in outlining the nature of the spiritual life. It is really the final chapter that I would like to have not as part of my library but part of my consciousness. Karen doesn't set out to write definitions but her open heartedness and clear intelligence facilitates an understanding of what is essential to the true spiritual life as opposed to a religious life. I will include a short quote which I hope gives you a sense of her writing.
"Hyam Maccoby had given me a clue six years earlier, when we sat together, eating egg and tomato sandwiches in the little café near Finchley Central tube station. He had told me that in most traditions, faith was not about belief but about practice. Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life-enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice. The myths of the hero, for example, are not meant to give us historical information about Prometheus or Achilles - or for that matter Jesus or the Buddha. Their purpose is to compel us to act in such a way that we reveal our own heroic potential."
(Karen Armstrong, Spiral Staircase pg 304.)
I hope this review has been helpful.

Uggh! - Rated
I intensely disliked this book and although friends urge me to read more of Karen Armstrong's work, I couldn't bring myself to face another.

It was a self-pitying, navel-gazing autobiography and I also didn't like her portrayal of life in a nunnery. I admire ex-nuns who admit that they had no vocation for the life, as Karen obviously didn't, but can't understand those who complain of a path which they entered by their own choice.

Interestingly, I read this shortly after reading the autobiography of Terese of Lisieux. Terese recounted similar experiences to Karen, but instead of considering them abuses, she saw them as aids to her spiritual progress and surrender to God. Reviewers praise Karen Armstrong's intelligence, but in my view, Terese's writings reveal a higher order of intelligence, despite her lack of university education.

An insider's view - Rated
Having read the two previous volumes of karen Armstrong's autobiography, I was very keen to read this latest one. I had found "Through the Narrow Gate" particularly moving. In all honesty, I was disappointed with this account, filtered as it was through many years of memory. I too spent seven years in a convent in the sixties, but this latest volume failed to sound many sympathetic notes.
It is the account of the author's struggle to find her rightful place in the world after her experience in the religious life, and what a meal she makes of it! (One is tempted to suspect that the opinion of her former superiors was indeed justified!)
With Ms Armstrong's obvious intelligence and talent, her total lack of self confidence and will to self preservation are surprising. Is it possible that the medical establishment in England in the sixties failed to recognise epilepsy? In my experience, a fellow nun with epilepsy was diagnosed without any difficulty in 1964, and that was in a remote town in Africa!
The first part of the book, which deals with the years immediately following her having left the convent, will be of interest to those who have not had this experience, but to one who has "been there", they seemed overly self-indulgent in that they pandered to the commonly held view of the religious life as being a truly dreadful,gothic thing. This is an unfair generalisation, made with obvious bitterness on the part of one who must have known better. She did choose it freely after all.
The second part of the book deals with the author's later insights into the phenomenon of religion and belief. I found that this part spoke to me more directly, perhaps because it was more immediate to the author, but I have the impression that Ms Armstrong still has not shrugged off that old bitterness completely.
At the end of the day, this is a very well written book, an interesting read if one does not get bgged down in the author's problems.

The Spiral Staircase - Rated
In this third volume of Karen Armstrong's biography, she traces her life journey from the time she left the convent and her life as a nun to the present day. She writes of her initial rejection of God and all things religious. She wrote and presented television programmes that promoted a secular view. Her life was marred for a long time by undiagnosed epilepsy, which resulted in the feeling (regrettably supported by her psychologist) that she had serious mental illness. Eventually she returned to religion but not to the conventional God of Western religion. She started to view religions as adherence to certain practices which took one out of oneself. Good religion is that which promotes compassion - feeling what others feel and not treating them in ways in which one would not like to be treated. Bad religion is that which promotes intolerance and hatred. This is a very well-written book that explores one person's search for meaning. It is worth reading by those who are religious, irreligious or just not sure. For me there remained one unanswered question - How can belief and practice be divorced? Whether one adheres to a religious view or not, our beliefs influence our practices but our practices also affect our beliefs.