Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life (Studies in imagination) [Paperback]

Robert Sardello (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0940262460 | ISBN-13: 978-0940262461

All the organizing forms in modern life that ought to enrich life with beauty, purpose, and depth no longer do so. We live in a troubled world itself in need of care. To heal ourselves and the world, Sardello claims, we need to bring to birth a new imaginative consciousness that is fully awake and alive. Those aspects of life that challenge us -- money, health, education, environment, nutrition, spirit, the city, addictions, technology -- are here illuminated by the powerful images that Sardello unfolds before our eyes.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Facing the World with Soul is recommended for anyone suffering from the spiritual emptiness of our time. -- Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words and Recovering the Soul

There is simply no better guide to the healing of our times. -- Randolph Severson, coauthor of Money and the Soul of the World

Whatever Sardello touches breaks open with startling new meaning. -- James Hillman, author of The Soul's Code and The Force of Character --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

"Fascinating work on soul in the world. . . . He constantly surprises with the freshness of his approach."--Thomas Moore, author of Soul Mates. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Lindisfarne Books (April 30, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940262460
• ISBN-13: 978-0940262461
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,541,001 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing a Different View of Reality, May 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life (Paperback)

Sardello begins his discussion of Soul of the World by framing his observations in a series of "Letters" to the reader. They are essays which begin with an explanation of What is World Soul?; include the topics of the built environment, education, medicine, money, technology, things, violence, beauty, and food; and end with a discussion of Hermetic Consciousness. Throughout he makes a case for changing our attitudes, our habits of seeing beauty, things, disease, the world as nouns to seeing them as verbs instead; "moving from a perception of things as entities to things as activities". He asks the reader to suspend understanding and intention in favor of attending and entanglement--to increase imagination to effect transformation, rather than to hide or seek to change or to find solutions. He suggests that this is not done by turning away from the world toward inner work but by learning to see the presence of everyday things, to see what is actually present vs. inventing theories. The best ideas, in my opinion, have to do with: Beauty vs. the notion of energy; making of the world by attention to it; the particularity of EACH inside a concept of wholeness; and "no longer looking at a thing, but being seen by it". The book departs from other New Age literature in that it does not advocate transcendence away from or out of the body (or the world) into a kind of spiritual hubris, but rather argues for loving the world better "as is". This viewpoint requires a different kind of consciousness and lots of responsibility. It also insists on exercising consistently the activity of imagination, of which Sardello reports the Sanskrit root meaning to be the "ever-changing ensnaring play of appearances". Sardello builds upon the work of James Hillman.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars too bad it's out of print...., September 10, 2001

By 

Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLO... (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life (Paperback)

....because it's nicely written, zeroing in as it does on the things and details in life: light on theory, thick on getting the most out of the phenomenology of everyday experience.

The pleasant "Dear Friends" letter format will work for some readers but not perhaps for others; also, while a lot of the concepts are review if you're well up on archetypal psychology, the applications are novel; the chapter that deals with cancer and AIDS as "cold" manifestations is very interesting.