The Soul and the Sea: Essential Healing for Everyday Life

In this meandering outing, Jungian psychologist Mauger (Love in a Time of Broken Heart) outlines an emotional healing practice based in spiritual openness. After a painful breakup spurred a search for renewal—taking her from practicing yoga in Bangalore to communing with nature in Ireland—Mauger concluded that “healing... requir[es] nothing more than our openness and willingness to love.” And while all are “born with God in our DNA,” Mauger writes, most people end up suffering because they’ve been separated from their “divine self.” For relief, she suggests looking inward, investigating psychic desires and wounds, and working to “awaken [one’s] inner healer.” This can entail journaling, meditating, or reading poetry. The program proves to be uneven, though, with powerful insights too often getting lost within circuitous, inscrutable prose (“Mystical and wise women along the way have helped weave me into existence as have many of my soulmates both men and women and wonderful and gifted healers that shared my path”). The spiritually curious may find this inspiring, though they’ll need to put in a lot of effort to get to the goods. (June)