Ebook: Creating Heaven on Earth: The Psychology of Experiencing Immortality in Everyday Life

How does one best fashion an “internal” world, a personal identity, that creates the conditions of psychological possibility to apprehend immortality, that almost magical Infinite―conceived as something-outside-everything, God, or the Other―from everyday living? The art of living the “good life”―following Freud, one of deep and wide love, creative and productive work, one that is guided by reason and ethics and is aesthetically pleasing―requires skillful attunement to these lovely presences in everyday life.

Lodged in a psychoanalytic sensibility, and drawing from ancient and modern religious and spiritual wisdom, this book provides the details, conceptual structures and inner meanings of four easily accessible, everyday activities: gardening, especially the creations of British horticulturist and garden designer, Gertrud Jekyll; baseball spectatorship; coffee drinking; music listening and storytelling (i.e., in professional storytelling, child analysis, encountering a “charming” person, and in love and friendship). It also suggests how to best engage these activities, to consecrate the ordinary in a way that points to experiential transcendence, or what the author calls “glimpsing immortality,” a core component of the art of living the “good life".