The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

This memoir is gripping, fascinating and thought provoking. It is full of passion and human pathos, tragedy and triumphs, affliction and misfortune, it speaks to every human heart. The author had a very rough life indeed. Always a social outcast, the weirdo of the class she always felt like a failure. She also suffered from epilepsy and she didn't even know it. To make matters worse she voluntarily chose to live the convent life for seven years, but it took a deadly toll on her and it took her years to recover after she left the convent. Though she failed again and again she never quite gave up. The author possesses a very deep and analytical mind. A brilliant writer herself she takes the reader through all the stages and explains in detail exactly how she felt in every step of her way (which i found very intriguing). Her religious life is as unpredictable as her secular life, she starts off as a nun and then becomes disgusted with Christianity and organized religion in general, she is so scarred that she stops going to church and starts doubting that there is a god. Only much later is she inspired and converts, she develops a new idea of religion and theology.Though i do not agree with most of her points on religion, neither do i accept her radical understanding of god, i still think this book deserves a read, it will give you a fresh perspective on religion. Almost everyone that was or is still religious can relate to her, everyone harbors doubts about god and religion and has moments of disgust and moments of inspiration. (Note that the author does not defend the institution of religion. Actually it mocks religion more than it defends it. The author also makes it very clear that even after her conversion she still does not believe in a personal god, so she is basically an atheist, and her religion resembles Buddhism and the eastern traditions more than the Abrahamic faiths--a kind of godless religion which i don't find particularly inspiring).

The first time I ever read a book by Karen Armstrong, I was recovering from a naive conversion to Catholicism. I had taken instruction and joined up, hoping to find a stronger sense of the sacred in my religious experience than I had known previously. After 3 years of trying my best, I was convinced there was something lacking in me. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WOMAN was so germane to my disappointment and confusion, I almost felt it was divinely sent. When I finally admitted that Roman Catholicism didn't work for me, I was haunted with doubts that I might be spiritually "wishy-washy" (as one other reviewer chose to characterize Ms. Armstrong), but in spite of that, I knew that sticking with a decision made as a teenager that I had come to see was wrong, was just stupid. I still needed to find my way to a relationship with God. I continued to search for a religious position that I could trust for the next 30 years, sometimes coming upon nuggets of gold, often finding nothing but lead, but always growing more intellectually informed, and less spiritually naive. Having travelled a ways down many different religious roads, I was beginning to despair at where my search for faith was taking me. When I picked up Karen Armstrong's latest book, THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE: My Climb out of Darkness, it felt again like divine intervention. Reading her story made me thing that my own turning and turning was not all in vain but a necessary quest to make find my own truth, rather than settling for someone else's. I believe that many have felt the things that Karen Armstrong has felt in her spiritual quest, but few can articulate quite so well and with quite so much academic and personal resonance as she. This book spoke to me on every page and I know that I am better for having read it. There aren't many reading experiences that inspire me to say that. This book may not speak to everyone. Some may not have struggled on the same path, or even struggled at all. Some may feel that she's headed straight to hell--which I doubt she would characterize in quite the same way they do. But for so many of us, this book is a treasure and a light in the darkness. If I could meet her, I would thank her with all my heart for her journey and for her generosity in sharing it so honestly and so well.

Basic warning: she spends a lot of pages on some awful experiences in the convent and later. Hey, it's an autobiogaphyI But it does get depressing until she manages to get over it.I identified with a lot of KA's life experiences, having entered a religious community around the time she did, though her community was clearly pretty awful. She went through a lot and came out the other side, once she got properly diagnosed as epileptic. It's a useful journey, and I'm glad I read it.At this stage of my life, it's hard for me to understand how people can come to any other view than the one she came to about God. Once you read (for example) Thomas Aquinas's teaching that all talk about God is analogical, not literal, the game should be up. Theology is poetry. I get it! True, yes, just not literally so. One small cavil would be that she was an English major, so this is probably the way an English major would view theology! Others of us might like a dip into the waters of philosophical speculation. Pick your poison.

The struggle of Karen and her discovery of the new religion which has been oblivious too and which was present in all the religions of the world gives the underlying idea that all comes down to compassion. There are some brilliant insights in the last chapter of the book.

A spiritual journey that does not require believing 20 impossible things before breakfast. The mood of the writing changes as the author goes through her journey.

This is a multi layered book

One of the reviewers on here refers to Karen Armstrong's book as "a memoir of her journey from nowhere to nowhere along a path of self pity". I could not disagree more. Any autobiography might be considered self-indulgent in its tacit assumption that the author's life might be of interest to others but, frankly, it might very well be. And in Karen Armstrong's case this and her previous book, 'Through the Narrow Gate' (which I would recommend people to read first), provides a fascinating insight both into the brain-washing that nuns were expected to endure in the 1960s and the impact that had on a young vulnerable individual trying her level best to come closer to the concept of God with which she had been indoctrinated. The idea that she is some kind of whining egotist, after many years of undergoing mental suffering in which she steadfastly refused to blame anyone else other than herself for failing to achieve her goal, is one I find impossible to accept. On top of that she had to cope with the extreme indifference shown to her manifestations of illness while struggling to build her life anew once she knew that her life as a nun could not continue. And anyone who has read her other books can see that, far from ending up nowhere, she has gained huge insights into some of the most profound problems that religion poses for the world today. Of course, I would not deny that in writing her book, Ms Armstrong probably gained some huge emotional benefit in terms of her own self-understanding, but I feel highly privileged and grateful that she has chosen to share her journey with us. I would thoroughly recommend it.

Good