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The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth | 
| Author: M. Scott Peck
Publisher: Touchstone
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  169 reviews
Sales Rank: 750
Media: Paperback
Edition: 25 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0743243153
Dewey Decimal Number: 302
EAN: 9780743243155
ASIN: 0743243153
Publication Date: February 4, 2003
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| • | Paperback - The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth | | • | Hardcover - ROAD LESS TRAVELED: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth | | • | Paperback - The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth | | • | Hardcover - Road Less Traveled | | • | Audio Cassette - The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth | | • | Paperback - The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth | | • | Hardcover - The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth | | • | Audio CD - The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spritual Growth | | • | Library Binding - Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth | | • | Audio Download - The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Values, and Spiritual Growth, 25th Anniversary Edition | | • | Hardcover - The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition : A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth |
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Amazon.com
By melding love, science, and religion into a primer on personal growth, M. Scott Peck launched his highly successful writing and lecturing career with this book. Even to this day, Peck remains at the forefront of spiritual psychology as a result of The Road Less Traveled. In the era of I'm OK, You're OK, Peck was courageous enough to suggest that "life is difficult" and personal growth is a "complex, arduous and lifelong task." His willingness to expose his own life stories as well as to share the intimate stories of his anonymous therapy clients creates a compelling and heartfelt narrative.
Product Description
Perhaps no book in this generation has had a more profound impact on our intellectual and spiritual lives than The Road Less Traveled. With sales of more than seven million copies in the United States and Canada, and translations into more than twenty-three languages, it has made publishing history, with more than ten years on the New York Times bestseller list.Now, with a new Introduction by the author, written especially for this twenty-fifth anniversary deluxe trade paperback edition of the all-time national bestseller in its field, M. Scott Peck explains the ideas that shaped this book and that continue to influence an ever-growing audience of readers. Written in a voice that is timeless in its message of understanding, The Road Less Traveled continues to help us explore the very nature of loving relationships and leads us toward a new serenity and fullness of life. It helps us learn how to distinguish dependency from love; how to become a more sensitive parent; and ultimately how to become one's own true self. Recognizing that, as in the famous opening line of his book, "Life is difficult" and that the journey to spiritual growth is a long one, Dr. Peck never bullies his readers, but rather guides them gently through the hard and often painful process of change toward a higher level of self-understanding.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 164 more reviews...
 Life changing July 24, 2008
I'm not one of those people who stalk the aisles of the self help section at all. But when someone lent me this book seven years ago, it was a turning point in my life. I've since bought my own copy of all three books in the series and have found it necessary to go back and read them from time to time (especially the first and third books).
When I first started reading this book I couldn't fathom that the brand of spirituality that Peck offers was even possible. I had discarded all spirituality since childhood because I had learned early on about the hoorors of religion. More than anything, this book spurred me to start along the path to discovering my own sense of spirituality and my own life philosophy. It also helped me to think in more complex terms and beocme more comfortable with ambiguity and contradiction...reality essentially.
This book should make you uncomfortable when you read it for the first time. You have to be uncomfortable to evolve. I am grateful for having come across it at a relatively young age because my life has been better for having read it.
Road Less Traveled June 28, 2008
excellent self help book. a must read for everyone. You will be happy and successful in life if you follow the principles of this book.
Great Book on Self-Reflection! June 13, 2008
The Road Less Traveled is a classic that explores personal discipline, love, growth and religion. It is inward looking, insightful, sound and practical in many cases. There are some areas that are controversial, and this can detract from the material a little. But, each person must choose his or her own path...as the book points out.
Scott Peck does an excellent job of presenting this material on self-reflection, analysis and addressing personal growth in a positive manner. Although the book was released three decades ago, it remains useful today.
The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking
Growth Oriented April 18, 2008
I have accidently found this book and read it, This is an extraordinary book with great insight on the Life, conscience growth and Love. If you haven;t read this then you are missing lot of great insight which has been provided in the book. 5 star from my side
An all-time classic filled with penetrating insights which brings purpose and meaning to life January 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I remember receiving this book as a gift from an aunt of mine a number of years ago and reading it more out of an attempt to show appreciation to her than out of interest. Well, was I pleasantly surprised! Remembering this, I recently decided to read it again. M. Scott Pecks' Road Less Travelled is filled with deep, penetrating and original insights that most people at some level would concur are true. This is a book about spiritual growth, and specifically the author's view of how this can be achieved, and upon completion of it one cannot help but feel that he has succeeded to a large extent in illuminating the path towards such a noble, but difficult, objective. Many readers, after having completed this book, will feel that there is in fact meaning and purpose to life, and that is why this book can be a life-changer. That been said, however, do be prepared for some interesting surprises as you continue through it!
Being about psychotherapy and how this is actually a route to spiritual growth (as Peck states, psychological maturity is synonymous with spiritual growth), one of these surprises was to find Scott-Peck become quite mystical and philosophical in his writing the further you read, but in a way that makes sense and is quite convincing. In addition, many people would think that a book dealing with spiritual growth would be related to Christianity and its concept of God, while in actual fact the book encompasses much more than this. Indeed, it struck me, once I started reading the parts on Growth and Grace that the author has tried to put into modern words and concepts many of the things which the mystics and great seers of the past taught and believed. This was confirmed when in the chapter on the Welcoming of Grace, near the end of the book, we read: "One way or another these concepts have been set forth before - by Buddha, by Christ, by Lao-tse, among many others. The originality of this book results from the fact that I have arrived at their same meaning through the particular individual byways of my twentieth-century life." Some readers, especially the more scientific-minded, may be put off by the fact that the book becomes mystical and philosophical the more we progress through it. Such readers should however stay the course as this is an excellent book which anyone can benefit from, especially since it also deals with psychology and how one can improve their life. There is much wisdom in this book. I myself am very interested in science and quite well read on the latest scientific developments yet I did not find the author's statements about things like the unconscious mind being God, or serendipitous experiences, a turn -off. I think one day we are going to find that there is far more to this existence than the mundane "blind, pitiless indifference" and accidental universe taught and believed by many leading scientists who are adherents to scientific materialism. But that is only my opinion. Most people would concur that there certainly are experiences and events which cannot be explained by science, which itself is far too preoccupied with objective, measurable phenomena than the equally real subjective and un-measurable phenomena.
One of the insights provided in the book is the author's definition of love, which will be very different to what most people think love is. Real love is effort! Romantic feelings do (almost) always fade away! Love is not a feeling! To be truly loving is to make an effort for the benefit of another individual even when one does not feel like it or when it offers no direct reward to oneself. Nobody likes to make an effort because it drains your energy, but when you do so i.e. extend yourself for the benefit of another, then in many ways you are being truly loving. A typical example would be marriage. To make a marriage work when the romantic feelings of grandeur and excitement have passed requires effort, work and courage - i.e. the will to extend oneself for the benefit of another's spiritual growth. It was especially humorous to note the author's notion that romantic love, with its feelings of omnipotence and ecstasy (which is what a young baby feels when in its mother's arms - but which in the years ahead will have to grow up and break away and look after itself), is in reality a trap designed by evolution to snare people to mate in order to ensure the propagation of the species because the feelings always pass sooner or later and consequently most couples get married in total bliss unaware of what lies ahead. If most people really knew what marriage was all about and what lay ahead later on and how much work is involved in letting a marriage work, they would tremble at the mere thought of marriage vows and would not get married! At least, in the author's opinion.
So what is the road to spiritual growth that the author lays out for his readers, and the underlying message of this book? We have lost our spirituality and sense of purpose and meaning in life because we believe in the mechanical nature of the universe, not in miracles. Science tells us that not only are we lost and insignificant amid the enormity of the universe, but that we are also helplessly determined by internal forces not subject to our will - by chemicals within our brain and conflicts in our unconscious that compel us to feel and to behave in certain ways when we are not even aware of what we are doing. Because of this we suffer a sense of personal meaninglessness. But once we perceive the reality of grace, our understanding of ourselves as meaningless and insignificant is shattered. The fact that there exists beyond ourselves and our conscious will grace, being a powerful force that nurtures our growth and evolution, is enough to change our notions of insignificance forever, because once we perceive it, it indicates with certainty that our human spiritual growth is of the utmost importance to something greater than ourselves, namely God, and that God's will is devoted to the growth of the individual human spirit. The reality of grace indicates humanity to be at the centre of the universe. The author further asserts that we are born that we might become, as a conscious individual, a new life form of God, and also that the interface between God and man is at least in part the interface between our unconscious and our conscious minds. Our unconscious is God within us (like the Holy Spirit). Spiritual growth is a process of the conscious mind coming into synchrony with the unconscious. The collective unconscious is God; the conscious is man as individual; and the personal unconscious is the interface between them. Being this interface, it is inevitable that the personal unconscious (subconscious mind) should be a place of some turmoil, the scene of some struggle between God's will and the will of the individual. Mental illness occurs when the conscious will of the individual deviates substantially from the will of God, which is the individual's own unconscious will. Our conscious self concept almost always diverges from the reality of the person we actually are. The unconscious however knows who we really are, and therefore a an essential task in the process of one's spiritual development is the continuous work of bringing one's conscious self-concept into agreement with reality, because our unconscious is wiser than we are. We live our lives in a real world and to live them well it is necessary that we come to understand the reality of the world as best we can. Many aspects of the reality of the world and of our relationship to the world are painful to us. We can understand them only through effort and suffering. People attempt to avoid this effort and suffering and ignore the painful aspects of reality by blocking and throwing certain unpleasant facts out of their awareness. In other words, we attempt to defend our consciousness, our awareness against reality. If in our laziness and fear of suffering (these two things being the impediments to spiritual growth, caused by lack of discipline and by non-love) we defend our awareness, then it will happen that our understanding of the world and our actions will bear little or no relation to reality, and we will eventually become `out of touch with reality' and be deemed mentally ill. But before this extreme occurs, we are given notice by our unconscious of our increasing maladjustment through a variety of means: bad dreams, anxiety, depression and other symptoms. Although our conscious mind has denied reality, our unconscious, which is omniscient, knows the true score and attempts to help us out by stimulating, through symptom formation, our conscious mind to the awareness that something is wrong. In other words, the painful and unwanted symptoms of mental illness are manifestations of grace. They are the products of `a powerful force originating outside of consciousness which nurtures our spiritual growth.' Psychic phenomena are also clearly related to the operation of the unconscious.
The author further asserts that that are two forces at work on humanity: entropy and evolution (analogous to how these two fundamental laws work in physical science). Laziness is the force of entropy within us, pushing us down and holding us all back from spiritual evolution, because the process of spiritual growth is an effortful and difficult one, due to it being conducted against a natural resistance and natural inclination to keep things the way they were and to cling to the old maps and the old way of dong things ie. to take the easy path. But the miracle is that this resistance is overcome and we do grow. This force that pushes us as individuals and as a species to grow against the natural resistance of our own laziness is love - the will to extend oneself for one's or another's spiritual growth. Therefore love is evolution in progress. The origin of love (which is conscious and is the whole force of evolution) and of grace (which is unconscious) the author states, is a God who loves us and who wants us to grow. "We are growing toward godhood. God is the goal of evolution. It is God who is the source of the evolutionary force and God who is the destination" declares the author.
One minor issue I had with the book is that the author could have included some exercises on how we may develop our unconscious minds and thereby how to manifest synchronous events, because, in his own words, "A major purpose of the section on grace has been to assist those on the purpose of spiritual growth to learn the capacity of serendipity. And let us redefine serendipity not as a gift itself but as a learned capacity to recognise and utilise the gifts of grace which are given to us from beyond the realm of our conscious will. With this capacity, we will find that our journey of spiritual growth is guided by the invisible hand and unimaginable wisdom of God with infinitely greater accuracy than that of which our unaided unconscious will is capable. So guided, the journey becomes ever faster." There are quality books (ie. not new age mumbo-jumbo) on meditation and development of human abilities that teach one how to do this, and perhaps the author could have included some exercises for his readers. But all in all, this is a very interesting book that seems to summarise the great teachings of the past in the language of our modern-day world and which has the potential bring meaning and purpose into the lives of many who need it.
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