Something essential is missing from modern life. Many who’ve turned away from religious institutions – and others who have lived wholly without religion – hunger for more than what contemporary secular life has to offer. Yet, they are reluctant to follow organized religion’s strict and often inflexible path to spirituality.
At a time when so many feel disillusioned with or detached from organized religion yet long for a way to move beyond an exclusively materialistic and rational lifestyle, A Religion of One’s Own points to ways in which one can create a personal spirituality in a secular world.
As examples of religious individuals, Thomas Moore refers to people like astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Henry David Thoreau, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Glenn Gould who found and expressed a sacred point of view in their personal experiences and through their art.
Steeped in Jungian perspectives, he sees religion as the result of an individual movement toward depth, an awareness of the mysterious and the beyond-ego elements in ordinary living.
Still, this lecture is not about a self-centered quest or personal psychology. Instead of a vague spirituality, it recommends a freshly re-invented notion of religion suited to the 21st century.