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Book: The Road Less Traveled
Author: Scott Peck
Year: 1978

Review

The author Peck is a Buddhist that converted to Christianity. His books, however, are not aligned with any specific religion. He picks different ideas from different religions. He conveys a sort of pantheism mixed with meditation methods. Based on the vast success of this book the author wrote several spin-off titles including "Meditations From The Road" and "Further Along The Road Less Traveled".

According to the author the road less traveled is a rocky and strenuous one. Personal growth is a complex, arduous and lifelong task. Love is the fuel on the road less traveled. Peck describes how self-discipline is necessary to cope with the difficulties of life. Love is presented as the motive and reward for self-discipline.

While the book covers four general topics -- discipline, love, religion, and grace -- Peck excels on the topic of love. Making it to me primarily a book about love, a book to help us understand love and relationships, a book to help us love.

Spiritual Message

The messages I extracted from the book are the following.

• We have problems. We need discipline to solve the problems.
  There are 4 tools for discipline
  • delaying gratification
  • acceptance of responsibility (the problem is mine, I have to solve it)
  • dedication to truth (full truth in acting and saying, no hiding)
  • balancing
    • openness to challenge (open to change life's road map)
    • Is our perceived truth still up-to-date? Do I need to adjust my truth?
  
  
• What gives us the energy for discipline? Loves does.
  • Love is not a feeling, love is action (doing, not saying, not feeling)
  • Love is not dependency (parasitism is dependency)
  • Love is not self-sacrifice
  • Love is not cathexis (dedicating time, having knowledge about, ...) (a hobby or a thing can be cathexis)
  • Love is not "Falling in love" ("Falling in love" is a feeling)
  • Love comes with the will to do something (it is planned, it is a conscious act of wanting to love, ...)
  • Love is conscious (Grace, ESP or dreams are unconscious, ...)
  • Love is work or courage directed toward the nurture of our own or another's spiritual growth
  • Love requires attention, attend to one's personal/spiritual growth
  • Love requires to listen
  • Love requires to take risks

• Strengthen your partner, make her/him more valuable by herself, make her/him less dependent on you

• Question your actions if they nurture or limit the spiritual growth of the other

• Listen more to the unconscious, for it is always right and knows more than the conscious. All that the conscious knows came from the unconscious. So to speak, the unconscious is a super-set of the conscious.

This book got me thinking about the definition of love. Peck defines it as
Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.

I was not successful in creating my own definition of love but all of the issues above seem valid and important. I would include into the definition of love also these items:

• Love is that feeling that no matter what happens or what the other person does, somewhere in your heart, you will find a way to forgive or understand them.
• Love does not require that you cannot envision yourself living without the other person.
• Love is that you want to see and help the other people grow.

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