Creating Heaven on Earth

How does one best fashion an "internal" world, a personal identity, that creates the conditions of psychological possibility to apprehend immortality, that almost magical Infinite-conceived as something-outside-everything, God, or the Other-from everyday living? The art of living the "good life"-following Freud, one of deep and wide love, creative and productive work, one that is guided by reason and ethics and is aesthetically pleasing-requires skillful attunement to these 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 four easily accessible, everyday activities: gardening, especially the creations of British horticulturist and garden designer, Gertrud Jekyll; baseball spectatorship; coffee drinking; music listening and storytelling (i.e., in professional storytelling, child analysis, encountering a "charming" person, and in love and friendship). 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".