In Through the Labyrinth: Stories of the Search for Spiritual Transformation in Everyday Life Peter Occhiogrosso examines the experiences of 14 individuals whose lives have been turned around by spiritual experiences. They found new meaning and a fresh way of perceiving themselves and the world via various paths including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Transcendental Meditation, and New Age Spirituality.
Occhiogrosso, the author of Once a Catholic(1987), sees these stories of the search for spiritual transformation as offering individuals options between the extremes of Christian fundamentalism and secular humanism. And these are not mountaintop experiences but attempts to set religious practice in the center of everyday life. Among those profiled are a Catholic couple whose lives were set on a new course after attending a "marriage encounter" retreat; a former aerospace engineer who now runs Zen Center New York; a female convert who is a Reformed Jewish rabbi; a woman writer whose spiritual journey has taken her from Jehovah Witness membership to Catholicism; a Long Island housewife who experienced "Kundalini" power; and a former Episcopalian who is now a sheik of a Sufi order and an advocate of religious pluralism.
Through the Labyrinth is an engrossing overview of the diversity of spiritual transformation in America. Readers will come away from this book with a keen sense of the variety of views on God, sin, salvation, and the spiritual practices of prayer, meditation, and ritual.