Cracking Open
A Memoir of Struggling, Passages and Transformations
Paperback: $12.99
Kindle: $9.99
An Engaging Book…
Thoughtful, Searching, and Surprisingly Personal
Dr. Harris is a Jungian analyst, author, and life teacher dedicated to the passionate pursuit of self-exploration and the art of living a well-lived life. By being willing to share his own very personal journaling, he shows us the importance of reflecting about our lives in an ongoing way…and even the importance of revisiting these reflections. Through his re-membering and storytelling, he brings to light the interface between dramatic periods of transformation in his own life and reveals how “past” history is always penetrating the present. During these reflections, it becomes clear how deeply he is wrestling like Jacob with the angel, as he attempts to grasp the creative patterns of life that are trying to be lived through him.
Dr. Harris tells about his surprise when his journaling takes on a life of its own, and shifts like scenes in a dream – a dream created by his greater Self. Like any serious quest, his story has a haunting history with terrors and resistances along the way. He recounts the shocks, surprises, and hard work necessary to pursue self-knowledge and admits how living with awareness and the search for healing and wholeness brings about suffering to his ego, his everyday self.
Yet, he tenderly leads us into the spiritual depths of passion, transformation, and renewal, and shares how his devotion to this work forces his transformation and helps him to tap into the joy of creation.
Throughout this book, Dr. Harris offers us a fresh, accessible approach to finding out how to heal and recover what has been lost of our own intrinsic selves. His thoughtful reflections show us how the path of creative transformation can also be healing, when the life-giving journey begins with self-exploration. This invaluable book has strength as well as soul, and offers a challenging and encouraging voice that needs to be heard in this time when our lives are being defined by our culture in the most shallow of terms.
Through this book made up of special moments in the quest for personal meaning, Dr. Harris will inspire you to deepen your own relationship to yourself and to life itself.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION: 2015
PART ONE: Excerpts from My Personal Journal, 1994
Pressing Grapes for New Wine: Reflections on Religion and Psychology
Day 1, 1994: Love thy Neighbor as Thyself
Day 2, 1994: Becoming a Person of Value
Day 3, 1994: Self-Knowledge and Self-Hate
Day 4, 1994: Obligations, Responsibility and Self-Love
Day 5, 1994: Reflection and Self-Love
Day 6, 1994: Rediscovering a Life
PART TWO: Excerpts from My Personal Journal, 1994
The Cracking Open Story (1972) and Journal Reflections (1994) About the Story
1. The Breaking Point: Into the Shadowed Forest
2. Darkness: Savage, Dense and Difficult
3. The Stream: A Chrysalis of Bloodlines
PART THREE: Excerpts from My Personal Journal, 1994
Remembering My Sessions with Dr. John Madden in Zurich (1985-86)
1. Listening to Ghosts
2. Life Source
3. The Walls of Job – A Life that works
4. The Turning Point
EPILOGUE: 2015
Author’s Bio