Finding meaning in the second half of life pdf

A remarkable book that will both guide and inspire, The Happiness of Pursuit reveals how anyone can bring meaning into their life by undertaking a quest. By: Chris Guillebeau. Many words have been written about this period of life sometimes called middle age. What makes Hidden Blessings different is its unique blend of psychological and spiritual guidance to help us respond fully to the transformative invitation of midlife.

That invitation is to step away from taking life literally -- and, perhaps, superficially -- to discover a deep and profound underlying existence. By: Jett Psaris. Awakening the Soul addresses issues of the loss of soul throughout the world and the loss of meaning and truth in modern life. By: Michael Meade. In this challenging and entertaining audio program, internationally recognized Jungian teacher and theorist James Hillman, Ph.

The fantasy of the family remains the dominating theme of psychotherapy and psychotheory. In this recording, Dr. Hillman brings his critical eye, his wide eye - and often his absurd humor - to bear upon the myths that operate in our thoughts about family. By: James Hillman. James Hillman was a past master of alchemical psychology. This field uses metaphors derived from ancient alchemy to elucidate deep structures in the creative imagination.

Creative processes are not random. By studying alchemical psychology we come to understand ourselves and other humans in surprising ways that frequently diverge sharply from the habitual understandings we have unconsciously absorbed from the cultures in which we were raised. Man and His Symbols owes its existence to one of Jung's own dreams. The great psychologist dreamed that his work was understood by a wide public, rather than just by psychiatrists, and therefore he agreed to write and edit this fascinating book.

Here, Jung examines the full world of the unconscious, whose language he believed to be the symbols constantly revealed in dreams. By: C. From Robert A. Johnson, the best-selling author of Transformation , Owning Your Own Shadow , and the groundbreaking works He , She , and We , comes a practical four-step approach to using dreams and the imagination for a journey of inner transformation.

In Inner Work , the renowned Jungian analyst offers a powerful and direct way to approach the inner world of the unconscious, often resulting in a central transformative experience.

By: Robert A. What does it really mean to be a grown-up in today's world? We assume that once we "get it together" with the right job, marry the right person, have children, and buy a home, all is settled and well. But adulthood presents varying levels of growth and is rarely the respite of stability we expected. Turbulent emotional shifts can take place anywhere between the ages of 35 and 70 when we question the choices we've made, realize our limitations, and feel stuck - commonly known as the "midlife crisis".

Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis believes that it is only in the second half of life that we can truly come to know who we are and thus create a life that has meaning. In Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life , Hollis explores the ways we can grow and evolve to fully become ourselves when the traditional roles of adulthood aren't quite working for us.

Offering wisdom to anyone facing a career that no longer seems fulfilling, a long-term relationship that has shifted, or family transitions that raise issues of aging and mortality, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life provides a reassuring message and a crucial bridge across this critical passage of adult development. Are you interested in learning more about mid life crisis or the meaning of the second half of life?

This is obviously not the book. He actually tells you this at one point in the story. Its just a book about people he has spoken with in his practice and decided to write a book about it. Great thing is people who actually listen or read this go nowhere book will eventually need psychotherapy just to get over the fact they wasted a credit on a book that is dryer than a tv guide from that is being read while sitting on the john in a freezing cold bathroom.

Galone must have had a bet with someone on how fast he could finish reading this book. He read at the pace and with the dis passion of an auctioneer, plowing through complex ideas at the speed of a bullet train, leaving the listener hanging on for dear life.

The content is absolutely worthy. I think the book touchs each one of us especially men who get loss of meaning in life starting from the age of Good intentions with some interesting questions.

IWish the questions had been interspersed throughout the book rather than left until the very end. Hollis is a truly exceptional psychologist as well as writer. The content is rich and it strikes deeply with the reader. The Best of James Hollis.

Not pregnant yet? You bet! The book «Not pregnant yet? Reinventing HR. Revolutions are typically huge and dominating events in the world's history accompanied by radical, visible change. The current revolution is in this regard 'si. That disparity, the longing for eternity and the limits of finitude, is our dilemma, the conscious suffering of what is also what most marks our species.

It is the symbolic capacity which defines us uniquely. The images which arise out of the depths, be they the burning bush of biblical imagery, the complaint of the body, or the dream we dream tonight, link us to that throbbing, insistent hum which is the sound of the eternal. As children we listened to the sound of the sea still echoing in the shell we picked up by the shore. That ancestral roar links us to the great sea which surges within us as well.

The therapist would be obliged to say at least three things in return to the suffering supplicant: First, you will have to deal with this core issue the rest of your life, and at best you will manage to win a few skirmishes in your long uncivil war with yourself.

Decades from now you will be fighting on these familiar fronts, though the terrain may have shifted so much that you may have difficulty recognizing the same old, same old. The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Mid-Life The Middle Passage occurs when the person is obliged to view his or her life as something more than a linear succession of years.

The longer one remains unconscious, which is quite easy to do in our culture, the more likely one is to see life only as a succession of moments leading toward some vague end, the purpose of which will become clear in due time. Second, you will be obliged to disassemble the many forces you have gathered to defend against your wound. At this late date it is your defenses, not your wound, that cause the problem and arrest your journey.

But removing these defenses will oblige you to feel all the pain of that wound again. And third, you will not be spared pain, vouchsafed wisdom or granted exemption from future suffering. In fact, genuine disclosure would require a therapist to reveal the shabby sham of managed care as a fraud, and make a much more modest claim for long-term depth therapy or analysis. Yet, however modest that claim, it is, I believe, true. Therapy will not heal you, make your problems go away or make your life work out.

It will, quite simply, make your life more interesting. You will come to more and more complex riddles wrapped within yourself and your relationships. This claim seems small potatoes to the anxious consumer world, but it is an immense gift, a stupendous contribution. Think of it: your own life might become more interesting to you! Consciousness is the gift, and that is the best it gets. On This Journey We Call Our Life: Living the Questions One way of looking at this journey is to observe that psyche presents us with two large questions, one for the first half of life and one for the second.

Our response requires the development of ego strength and an operational sense of self. We cannot know the Self, which is a metaphor for the organizing, purposive energies of psyche which have a life and a telos transcendent to consciousness. But we are challenged to gain some provisional, adaptive sense of identity in the world into which fate has thrust us. Each of these questions is necessary for the development of personhood.

The person who has reached midlife and still not created an ego identity, and a stake in the social context, has much unfinished business. But the person who clings to the values and idols of the first half — youth, status, continuous reassurance from others — is locked into a regressive and self-alienating pattern in which he or she colludes in the violation of their soul and their summons.

Thus, not only do we have questions, but life has questions for us. Mythologems: Incarnations of the Invisible World When we take the gods as facts, rather than metaphors, then we get lost in debating the merits of the facts rather than apprehending their meaning.

The fundamentalist ties his or her beliefs to the facts and narrows the spiritual vitality by fighting rear-guard actions against disputation. On the other hand, the atheist disputes the evidence, gets confused by the institutional forms to which he or she has been exposed, and misses the possible deepening which occurs whenever one confronts the meaning of divinity.

When institutions prevail over private experience, the oppression will manifest as depression and reification, precursors to the horrors of pogroms and crusades. Each had observed that the imago Dei ossified and ceased to move its communicants to awe. In time, the momentum and self-interest of the institution can even serve to prevent people from primal, religious encounter which could actually threaten its stability and the social vision it guards.

As Jung said, the gods had become diseases. The names they once rendered luminous had become husks. As I have previously noted, the oldest of religious sins is to worship the husk after the energy has departed. It is called idolatry, and we have raised up many false gods in our time. Consider our contemporary Pantheon: plenipotentiary Progress, massive Materialism; heroic Health; normative Narcissism, nasty Nationalism; sophistic Scientism, and many others.

None saves, none connects, none abides, and we all damn well know it. Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life Your life is addressing these questions to you: What has brought you to this place in your journey, this moment in your life? What gods, what forces, what family, what social environment, has framed your reality, perhaps supported, perhaps constricted it?

Whose life have you been living? Why, even when things are going well, do things not feel quite right? Why does so much seem a disappointment, a betrayal, a bankruptcy of expectations? Why do you believe that you have to hide so much, from others, from yourself? Why does life seem a script written elsewhere, and you barely consulted, if at all?