Further Along The Road Less travelled
I continue my spiritual journey. I use that word ‘spiritual’ in its very widest sense to also encompass mental growth generally.
I have been reading M. Scott Peck ‘The Road Less Travelled’ and ‘Further Along The Road Less Travelled’. I read these about 20 years ago, but have been amazed at how fruitful I have found a re-reading, no doubt as well because I am further along my spiritual journey.
He talks about life being a journey, one we ultimately negotiate alone as what works for one will rarely work for another and that our success or failure in life is dependent on our will to face problems and overcome them and he warns us that this is very painful and difficult. It is also not a linear process.
I am in my 50s as I go through the issues I write about here. When I read through the emails I had to stop after a while because it brought back to me vividly things that had been hurtful and sorrowful, pain perhaps I am able to acknowledge more with hindsight than I was at the time.
With my updates, which were monthly summaries to my friends, I have skirted over much of the pain. The raw material, and it is raw, is different this time because I am writing on a weekly basis to my two eldest children who by now have left university and are working abroad. I write to them every week. They don’t perhaps write as regularly, but they are of an age where they can give very good advice and I am becoming of an age where the advice of my children is welcome. I feel they know me well and if they do criticise me it is with love.
I have to edit quite severely as my writings are increasingly becoming less historic and friends and associates in my current circle may be more easily recognisable. If I insert italics this is where I am commenting in current time.
As always the process is intensely therapeutic. My wish for you is that you be encouraged.