Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir

One of this century's most popular psychology scholars, Robert A. Johnson, was among the first to present Carl Jung's rich but complex theories with simple elegance and grace, opening them to an entirely new and hungry audience. His masterful works—including the bestselling He, She, Inner Work, and Owning Your Own Shadow—are known and loved as much for their beautiful retellings of timeless myths and folktales as for their deep wisdom and profound insight. Balancing Heaven and Earth reveals for the first time Johnson's own fascinating and mystical life—from his near-death experience at the age of eleven to the lifelong soul journey that has informed his writing and taught him how to live a spiritual life in the endlessly challenging modern world. Full of compelling, humorous, and surprising stories of encounters with an assortment of sages, saints, and sinners, it lays bare Johnson's own inner world and its dazzling landscape of powerful dreams, mystical visions, and synchronistic events. Beginning with a vivid retelling of the childhood accident that claimed the lower part of his right leg, Johnson describes the life-defining moment when he was transported by a mystical vision to a realm that exists just beyond ordinary consciousness—a realm he calls the Golden World. With this experience, described as 'both my curse and my blessing,' Johnson is launched on a spiritual quest that leads him in search of Eastern wisdom, to encounters with such wise men as J. Krishnamurti and D. T. Suzuki, and finally to Carl Jung, who shows him his destiny revealed in a dream. Johnson's experiences lead him to a unique understanding and acceptance of the slender connecting threads at work in all our lives, guiding us and shaping who we are—call it fate, destiny, or the hand of God. As much a personal guide as a memoir, Balancing Heaven and Earth teaches us to follow, as Johnson has, the subtle influences of dreams, visions, and even our deepest sufferings in order to live attuned to our spiritual selves. A pure delight for Johnson's many fans and a splendid example of his trademark blend of illustrative myth and psychological insight, this is a work of incomparable beauty and inspiration showcasing the wisdom of a lifetime.