or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
More Buying Choices
51 used & new from $7.88
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
or
Get a $2.50 Amazon.com Gift Card
Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation [Paperback]

John Welwood (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
List Price: $24.95
Price: $16.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $8.48 (34%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it delivered Friday, September 3? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
27 new from $12.00 24 used from $7.88

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --   $17.49 $6.50
Paperback $16.47   $12.00 $7.88

Frequently Bought Together

Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation + Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart + Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship
Price For All Three: $37.83

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together

  • In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart by John Welwood Paperback$10.17

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship by John Welwood Paperback$11.19

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart

Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart

by John Welwood
4.5 out of 5 stars (33)  $10.17
Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path

Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path

by John Welwood
5.0 out of 5 stars (3)  $11.56
Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship

Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship

by John Welwood
4.6 out of 5 stars (16)  $11.19
Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective

Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective

by Mark Epstein
4.7 out of 5 stars (13)  $10.85
Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love

Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love

by John Welwood
4.7 out of 5 stars (26) 
› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Have you ever noticed that self-described spiritual people are not necessarily all that easy to be with? John Welwood has a term for what often happens--spiritual bypassing. This is when a person reaches for the stars while forgetting about the goop on his shoes. Welwood, author of the popular Love and Awakening and Journey of the Heart has made a profession out of bringing East and West together, integrating the path to enlightenment with the techniques of psychotherapy. In Toward a Psychology of Awakening, Welwood integrates a series of his articles written over a period of 30 years in an attempt to explain the dynamics of psychologies East and West. The hope is that, combined, they can create a wholeness that encompasses the various levels of human experience. Since many of these articles were written for specialist readers, they won't have the verve and inspiration of Welwood's other books, but Welwood fans and enthusiasts of transpersonal psychology will be delighted to have all these ground-breaking articles together in one place. So go ahead and reach for the stars--just don't forget that you still have to slog through the mire with the rest of us. --Brian Bruya --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Much has been written about the link between Buddhism and psychotherapy in recent years. Yet this thoughtful work by longtime psychotherapist and Buddhist practitioner Welwood (Love and Awakening) shows that an experienced observer can add much to the emerging conversation about a path of development that could embrace both personal psychology and the deeper reaches of our inner nature. In traditional Chinese philosophy, the human condition was seen to touch three dimensions: earth, heaven and man. At its best, Welwood believes, psychotherapy acts as earth, grounding the individual, while Buddhist thought and practice can be heaven, liberating a person from fixed ideas and blind spots by providing a spacious view of the real self. To become fully human--able to embrace our experience with an open heart and an open mind--we must stretch between heaven and earth. Welwood illustrates how this stretching works by showing how various concepts from Buddhism and from psychotherapy play out in practice. "The Mahamudra lineage of Tibetan Buddhism sees the awakened mind and the confused mind as two sides of the same reality," he writes. "An image from this tradition that portrays coemergence is that of the silkworm binding itself in its own silk." Welwood describes how one client built a sense of self in a deprived environment by identifying with deprivation itself; how another nurtured a sense of specialness and aliveness by identifying with sadness to distinguish himself from his uncaring family. The author helped these clients appreciate the brilliant resourcefulness behind the defensive personalities--the better to eventually let them go. Rich, potentially transforming insights abound here. Psychotherapists and spiritual seekers alike will be enriched by this book. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Shambhala (February 12, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1570628238
  • ISBN-13: 978-1570628238
  • Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #88,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Author

John Welwood
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

› Visit Amazon's John Welwood Page
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
"AS A PSYCHOTHERAPIST and meditation practitioner, I am continually faced with questions about the relationship between psychological and spiritual work-in my own experience, as well as with clients, students, and friends." Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
prereflective identification, nondual presence, transpersonal ground, spiritual bypassing, unconditional presence, nonconceptual awareness, horizontal unfolding, conditioned personality, diffuse attention, conceptual mind, experiential field, larger nature, focal attention, conceptual reflection, awakening power, phenomenological reflection, pure awareness, conscious love, divided consciousness, larger ground, psychological reflection
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Tantric Buddhism, William James, Eugene Gendlin, Tibetan Buddhism, Carl Rogers, Jim Jones, Lodro Thaye, Ramana Maharshi
New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 6 books:
See all 6 books this book cites
 
8 books cite this book:
See all 8 books citing this book

Books on Related Topics (learn more)
 
 

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation
78% buy the item featured on this page:
Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation by John Welwood Paperback 4.8 out of 5 stars (14)
$16.47
Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart
10% buy
Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart by John Welwood Paperback 4.5 out of 5 stars (33)
$10.17
Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love
5% buy
Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love by John Welwood Paperback 4.7 out of 5 stars (26)
Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship
4% buy
Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship by John Welwood Paperback 4.6 out of 5 stars (16)
$11.19
› Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(4)
(4)
(2)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
Agree with these tags?
See all 11 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more
 

Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
5 star:
 (12)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
70 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Integrating couch and cushion., April 18, 2002
This review is from: Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation (Paperback)
"In addition to waking up to our ultimate spiritual nature," John Welwood observes about the psychology of awakening, "we also need to grow up--to ripen into a mature, fully developed person" (p. xviii). Welwood is a San Francisco psychotherapist and a thirty-year student of Tibetan Buddhism and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In this collection of articles written over the past three decades, Welwood integrates Eastern spiritual practice with Western psychology, maintaining that "awakening needs psychology just as much as psychology needs awakening" (p. xvi).

Too often Westerners attempt to avoid dealing with their "emotional unfinished business" by turning to spiritual practices instead. Welwood calls this "spiritual bypassing (pp. 5; 11-12; 207-13). Many people engaged in spiritual practice suffer from psychological wounds including self-hatred, aggression, emotional reactivity, narcissistic egocentricity, depression, and other defensive patterns, and Welwood maintains that a course of psychologically-oriented personal work could serve, support and further their movement toward awakening (p. xviii).

Welwood's 330-page book is divided into three sections, each exploring the interface between Eastern spiritual practice and Western psychology. The first explores what it means to be human: the relationship between personal growth--becoming a more mature, authentic person--and spiritual development (p. 3). "Enlightenment is not some ideal goal, perfect state of mind, or spiritual realm on high" Welwood writes, "but a journey that takes place on this earth. It is the process of waking up to all of what we are and making a complete relationship with that" (p. 33). In the second section of his book, he explores the capacity to be fully present with our experience "as it is" through psychological healing (pp. 134-35). He calls this "unconditional presence" (p. 141)--"just being with what is, open and interested, without agenda" (p. 143). Welwood confronts the subject of depression not only as an affliction that should be suppressed, but as "a potential teacher that can convey an important message about our relationship with ourselves, the world, or life as a whole" (p. 172). Part three explores personal relationships, intimacy, love and passion, and more specifically, how to remain conscious in our personal relationships with friends, lovers, coworkers, parents and children (p. 229), "in a sane, wide awake, spiritually vital way" (p. 231).

Fascinating, compelling, and insightful, Welwood's guide to personal and spiritual transformation is sure to become one of the most frequently revisited resources on my bookshelf, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in living a more meaningful life.

G. Merritt

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
71 of 72 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on integrating psychology and spirituality, November 16, 2000
By a reader (San Rafael, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation (Hardcover)
This is the best book on integrating psychology and spirituality that I've read, written in both a clear and heartfelt way.I'm truly moved by the great depths that the author has touched. His ways of discussing how healing happens and the warmth and brilliance and range of his insight are quite inspiring. His way of discussing the ground of being is the clearest I've read, and he writes of it in many different ways that will reach a wider range of people, both in the healing professions and in ordinary life. I felt that everything he discussed came from his own realization. He shows how spiritual work helps us discover how "the ground of our being actually holds us up" and how the essence of healing lies in learning how to let be. Can someone heal who doesn't learn that whatever emotional states they have can be held openly and unconditionally in awareness? This book shows how in both psychotherapy and spiritual work, it is being awake with thoughts, feelings, and sensations, without separation and distance, that heals. Then the mind can "self-liberate" when we stay open right in the middle of what's coming up.In Welwood's words,"unconditional presence is the most powerful transmuting force there is, because it is a willingness to be there with our experience." Each one of the therapy examples in the book moved me and focused on the larger field of how we are with our experience.This book will undoubtedly by a guide for brand new ways of practicing therapy. Let me share one of my favorite quotes (among so many). Welwood describes a client whose fear of nothingness was a symptom of being cut off from herself. As she began to open unconditionally to "being nothing," her inner division fell away "as she stepped out of the fixed stances/attitudes/associations she held toward 'being nothing' with their long history dating back to childhood. In becoming present in a place where she had been absent, she experienced her being, rather than her nothingness. 'Being nothing' transmuted into the empty fullness of being--where the fear of being nothing no longer had a hold on her." For me, this is the crux of healing and the author describes it so wisely and compassionately that it has opened up many new vistas for me.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars More intellectual than John Welwood's more popular books on relationship, October 8, 2006
This review is from: Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation (Paperback)
TOWARD A PSYCHOLOGY OF AWAKENING is a dense book that describes the path of spiritual transformation from both an Eastern and Western perspective. Its primary value lies in trying to synthesize these two ways of looking at reality and describes in detail how each path informs the other.

Many paradigms both East and West aren't necessarily integrative for many modern people. This book is an attempt to provide a more holistic worldview that reconciles psychology with Buddhist insights into human nature, love and transformation.

There is also a good section on relationship as a path. I think this is an important area to address because something arises in intersubjective experience that has emergent qualities that transcend each individual. In other words, things like love, compassion and community. We can only be fully human when we are fully engaged with others in a conscious manner. This book discusses these issues and does a great job of it.

Many people won't find this book an easy read. It contains a lot of material and it explores many ideas in-depth. It also attempts to synthesize a lot of material in a brief space. However, if you have a deep interest in psychology or Buddhism, you will discover a treasure trove of good information and innovative ways of bringing it together.

If you are not very familiar with Western Psychology or Buddhism, but have a deep interest in personal and spiritual growth, you will still get a lot out of this book. However, you may find it a slower read and will undoubtedly have to take time to assimilate all of the concepts. It will be well worth the effort, but this isn't a superficial bedtime story.

Overall, I give this book my highest recommendation. It is original, well-organized, and well thought out. It is an important contribution in the area of psychological and spiritual growth and the relationship between them.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible book
Just like another reviewer said - this is not an easy read, but the result is liberating
Published 1 month ago by Leigh Meryl Attridge

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear, Insightful, Helpful!
Welwood's writing on psycho-spiritual union is a gift that keeps on giving. This is a book that i've turned to over the years, one i wish were known to all interested in the... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Raffi Cavoukian

5.0 out of 5 stars An insightful read
I found this book to be very insightful about the blend of Eastern Mysticism with Western Psychology. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Taylor Ellwood

5.0 out of 5 stars Half a book
This is an excellent book on the theory of enlightenment. I have asked numerous Buddhists of differing denominations, what is enlightenment, and few have been able to give me a... Read more
Published on August 30, 2008 by A. Robinson

3.0 out of 5 stars Some Chapters Excellent, Some So-So
The main problem with this book is that it is another collection of articles edited to become a book. Thus, each chapter doesn't tend to flow with each other chapter. Read more
Published on April 11, 2008 by David M. Bell

5.0 out of 5 stars Not everything is solved on the meditation cushion
Most folks who join a Buddhist center in the West likely have a combination of psychological pain and spiritual angst, and it is often difficult to sort out which is which. Read more
Published on February 16, 2008 by Katherine Masis

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written & argued
The author integrates Western Psychology & Eastern Spirituality (Tantric Buddhism) in a highly readable book--p. Read more
Published on August 4, 2005 by Neal J. Pollock

5.0 out of 5 stars very good
This was one of the first spiritually inclined books i've ever read and was rather hard to get my head around some of the information. Read more
Published on May 22, 2005 by A. Hawthorne

5.0 out of 5 stars Toward a Psycholody of awakening
I have been practicing Zen Buddhism for the past 15 years as a lay person. I can not thank John Welwood enough for his book not only for its insightful and wise content but for... Read more
Published on September 26, 2004 by Natasha Turaki

5.0 out of 5 stars You're enlightened...OK...so now what?!!
Ok, this guy knows what he's talking about. I've been looking for a book like this for a long, long time. Read more
Published on March 12, 2001

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   

So You'd Like to...

Create a guide

Look for Similar Items by Category

Look for Similar Items by Subject

Search Books by subject:










i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...
 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.