How to Be an Adult in Faith and Spirituality

by David Richo

Popular best-selling author and therapist David Richo provides here a detailed and straightforward vision of what faith and spirituality can look like in adult consciousness. He explores our inherited and often childlike understanding of God, religion, and life’s plaguing question. He then offers adult alternatives in the light of mysticism, depth psychology, and the evolutionary cosmology. He looks at the differences between religion and spirituality in the light of their similar beliefs, a moral code, rituals, and devotion. The emphasis is on self-help so the chapters outline exactly how human maturation in faith thrives best with religious views that are open ended rather that parochial, metaphorical rather than literal, and respectful of our potential rather than rigidly demanding of obedience. How to Be an Adult in Faith and Spirituality is written for the average person and is not biased toward or against any religious tradition. It can be of assistance to us in designing an expansive and adult spiritual path. This book is a gentle reply to the atheism of our postmodern world though it does not recommend a return to the “God in the sky” but rather an opening to the transcendent, the More within and around us everywhere, where adult faith abounds. †

168 pages, Paperback

First published May 2, 2011

About the author

David Richo, PhD, is a therapist and author who leads popular workshops on personal and spiritual growth.

He received his BA in psychology from Saint John's Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, in 1962, his MA in counseling psychology from Fairfield University in 1969, and his PhD in clinical psychology from Sierra University in 1984. Since 1976, Richo has been a licensed marriage, family, and child counselor in California. In addition to practicing psychotherapy, Richo teaches courses at Santa Barbara City College and the University of California Berkeley at Berkeley, and has taught at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. He is a clinical supervisor for the Community Counseling Center in Santa Barbara, California.

Known for drawing on Buddhism, poetry, and Jungian perspectives in his work, Richo is the author of How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Lovingand The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find in Embracing Them. He has also written When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships, Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power and Creativity of Your Dark Side, The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know, and Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth.

Richo lives in Santa Barbara and San Francisco.