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

'Paul Marcus has shown us how to experience more deeply the beauty, truth, and goodness associated with enjoying the "small pleasures in life". His psychological and sociological insights into, for example, the delights of gardening, drinking coffee, and going to a baseball game are thoughtful, instructive, and thoroughly uplifting.'- Professor William B. Helmreich, PhD, author of The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6000 Miles in the City 'Creating heaven on earth. Tall order. But we have many heavenly moments throughout a lifetime: tastes of heaven. Paul Marcus shows us ways to promote this state, not just as rare moments but as a feeling that informs existence. Not only does he describe psychological conditions for growth of this precious responsiveness, but he also gives down-to-earth depictions of heaven at work in daily activities, gems of accessible moments many of us take for granted that, with a shift of attitude, can open wider a love that permeates life.'- Michael Eigen, PhD author of The Birth of Experience

The art of living the "good life" requires skilful attunement to the 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 a number of easily accessible, everyday activities, including gardening, sport, drinking coffee, storytelling, and listening to music. 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".