James Hollis

A Masterful Author and Jungian Analyst Examines the Qualities that Bring Meaning to Our Human JourneyWhat is it that brings meaning to your life? Our culture tells us to seek wealth, power, prestige, or even enrollment in someone else’s idea of a worthy cause—yet where do we turn when these myths fail to fulfill our need for purpose? “When the old stories and beliefs that once defined us have played out and grown exhausted,” teaches Dr. James Hollis, “our task is to access our inner compass, the promptings of the psyche that help us find our way through the complex thickets of choice.” Investigate the Mystery of Your Existence Through the Portal of Depth PsychologyA Life of Meaning is a profound audio exploration of the nature of meaning and how we can orient toward it or away from it with the choices we make. Through examination of myth, literature, historical figures, and the wisdom of depth psychology, Hollis provides penetrating insight into the search for purpose. Here you’ll explore:• How our story-seeking mind forms our sense of meaning from early experience• Why these early stories inevitably fail as we are called to our own path• Skillfully accessing the inner oracle of your dreams• Shadow work—where we fear to tread, yet where our greatest treasures may be found• Missing the mark—examining the archetype of the Seven Deadly Sins through a psychological lens• Dispelling the “ghosts” that haunt our memories and possess our psyche• Finding personal resilience in times of internal and external change• Living more fully in the presence of our mortality• Guidance for coming into alignment with your soul’s abiding quest for meaning at any stage of your lifeNobody else can provide you with a sense of meaning. Anyone who tries is attempting to enroll you in their own version. In A Life of Meaning, James Hollis offers no easy answers or feel-good certainties—instead, he shares his most valuable questions and reflections to help you find the courage, persistence, and inspiration to navigate your own odyssey. “It’s humbling work, this process of getting our lives back,” he teaches. “Yet I submit to you that's worth the price of the ticket, for in the journey our lives become ever more luminous.”

An Invitation to Listen to Your Soul’s Calling How do you define "growing up"? Does it mean you achieve certain cultural benchmarks―a steady income, paying taxes, marriage, and children? Or does it mean leaving behind the expectations of others and growing into the person you were meant to be? If you find yourself in a career, place, relationship, or crisis you never foresaw or that seems at odds with your beliefs about who you are, it means your soul is calling on you to reexamine your path. With Living an Examined Life, James Hollis offers an essential guidebook for anyone at a crossroads in life. Here this acclaimed author guides you through 21 areas for self-inquiry and growth, challenging you • Recover Personal Authority―how to stop living in response to the expectations placed on you • Choose Meaning Over Happiness―why seeking truth instead of entertaining distractions ultimately leads to greater fulfillment • Exorcise the Ghosts of the Past That Bind You―how the voices that haunt you can lead you to grow • Bestow Love on the Unlovable Parts of You―recovering the guiding force concealed in your Shadow • Construct a Mature Spirituality―the five essential elements of integrating meaning and mystery into your life • Seize Permission to Be Who You Really Are―the challenge of fully showing up for your life With his trademark eloquence and insight, Dr. Hollis offers Living an Examined Life to inspire you toward a life of personal authority, integrity, and fulfillment. "It is my hope that this book will be a tool to recover your respect for that which abides deeply within," writes Dr. Hollis. "You will not be spared disappointment or suffering. But you can know the depth and dignity of an authentic journey, of being a real player in your time on this turning planet, and your life will become more interesting, taking you deeper than ever before."

Is the purpose of life to achieve happiness? Who does not long to arrive some distant day at that sunlit meadow where we may abide in pure contentment? In reality we know life is not like that; our road is often dreary, the way unclear. Much of the time we are lost in the dismal states of guilt, grief, betrayal, doubt, depression, anger, terror and the like. Is this all we can hope for? Perhaps not, says this author. The Jungian perspective, by encompassing both the meadow and the bog, asserts that the goal of life is not happiness but meaning. And meaning, though it may not be all sunlight and blossoms, is real. Swamplands of the Soul explores the quicksands where we have all floundered. It lights a beacon by showing what they mean in terms of our individual journey and the engendering of soul. For it is precisely where we encounter the gravitas of life that we also uncover its purpose, its dignity and its deepest meaning.

Why do so many go through so much disruption in their middle years? Why then? Why do we consider it to be a crisis? The Middle Passage presents us with an opportunity to reexamine our lives and to ask: "Who am I apart from my history and the roles I have played?" It is an occasion for redefining and reorienting the personality, a necessary rite of passage between the extended adolescence of the first adulthood and our inevitable appointment with old age and mortality. The Middle Passage addresses the following issues: How did we acquire our original sense of self? What are the changes that herald the Middle Passage? How does one revision the sense of self? What is the relationship between Jung's concept of individuation and our commitment to others? What attitudes and behavior support individuation and help us move from misery to meaning? This book shows how we may travel the Middle Passage consciously, thereby rendering our lives more meaningful and the second half of life immeasurably richer. --back cover