Depression and anxiety plague our postmodern society. People are lost, angry, and more polarized than ever. At the heart of the epidemic lies a spiritual vacuum, present life void of meaning and purpose. In her second memoir, The Spiral Staircase, Karen Armstrong delivers hope, sharing her personal journey from despair to self discovery, as she pieces herself back together from the shattered remains of a once devoted young nun.

Exiting the religious life overwhelmed with both mental and physical illness, Armstrong struggled to find her bearings in the secular world, and found the path to recovery slow. Through three decades of experience, she reveals that progress isn’t a fluid climb, but cyclical, moving forward in leaps and backwards in bounds. She highlights that suffering is an undeniable part of the human experience, and accepting that very suffering can lead to life changes and personal growth impossible to imagine at the time.

In her study of religion, The Case for God, she concludes that religion and spirituality were originally created as a coping method for the injustice and suffering so abundant in daily life. Spiritual rituals began as a practice to step out of oneself and escape one’s ego, not to worship an all powerful, idolized version of God. With the rise of human ambition and modern reason during the 16th century, came the desire to define and comprehend the incomprehensible, and in turn, two spiritual extremes that continue to polarize religion, fundamentalism and atheism.

In The Spiral Staircase, Armstrong uses her own life to brilliantly showcase the connection between spiritual extremism and the personal anguish so centered in society today. As her life progressed, her spiritual beliefs shifted vastly. From the austere disciplines as a catholic nun, to the complete rejection of religion as an atheist, her spiritual ambivalence bore a constant heavy weight on her life.

It wasn’t until she discovered theology that she was able to pull herself out from the spiritual emptiness she endured for so long. Through the disciplined study of religion, she found that spirituality can—and even should—be a very personal act, practiced differently from one to the next. The very process of studying theology became her primary spiritual ritual, helping her reach “ekstasis”, and giving her life purpose and meaning.

It took Armstrong almost 30 years to find the inner peace she so desired when pledging herself to God at 17. What she later found was nothing like she expected, but everything she hoped for. Instead of reaching enlightenment through the disciplined worship of God, she found peace in the intense study of theology, and is now one of the world’s predominant scholars of the history of religion.

Her deep knowledge of religious extremism and grounded interpretation of spiritual enlightenment are needed now more than ever. For those interested in the history of religion and elements behind the rise in religious extremism, her books should be high on the list. I thoroughly enjoyed the three I’ve read so far. To anyone dealing with depression and anxiety, chronic illness, or PTSD, I would highly recommend reading Armstrong’s first memoir, Through the Narrow Gate, before her second, The Spiral Staircase.

Only 3 stars because I found the middle a bit long. Armstrong excels at concluding.