13 posts tagged “book review”

I purchased this at Half Price Books. It was located in Psychology, a section I have previously ignored in my preference to the Religion, Philosophy, and Native American sections. I found so many interesting books in the Psychology section and I was dumbfounded at my previous ignorance of this fascinating area of the bookstore.

Needless to say, this is more of a philosophy book than a psychology book. Jennifer Michael Hecht's wanted to look at how we view our current happiness in a historical framework, outside of our current culture. Hecht believes our cultural education shapes how we value what makes us happy. In order for us to look objectively at what makes us happy, we need to look at the history of those things that make us happy.

Yet the worst thing we do to ourselves is not about giant hats, tight corsets, bad diets, or cosmetic surgery; the worst thing we do to ourselves is to let ourselves get trapped in thoughts and behaviors for decades, for a lifetime, repeating and repeating. What a paralyzing potion culture can be! The antidote is history. (14)

I can't say I disagree. History can teach us so much about our current condition and us. Many great mistakes can be avoided by simply knowing your history.

According to the great philosophers, your worst barrier against happiness is you, you own wrong thinking. Your four problems are these: You cannot see yourself or much about the world you live in. You are ruled by desire and emotion. You will not take your place or rise to your role. You are alternately oblivious to death and terrified of it. As such, your job is to master these for errors in yourself. If you do, you will be happy and more free to love, work, and play the way you wish you could. None of this comes easily; it has to be practiced a great deal, and it never works completely. (67)

This is wonderful insight. So many people allow their emotions and desires to rule their personality, which in turn clouds their judgment and enables them to make bad choices. People have the ability to rise above these errors and take control of their lives.

We fall into an error of thinking about drugs in black-and-white terms: that some drugs are good and some are bad. This idea is in the minds of users as well as abstainers. We all inhabit a cultural frame wherein some drugs are for normal people and some are for naughty people--and none of them are understood as happiness drugs. The only drugs our present-day culture might call happiness drugs are modern prescription psychopharmaceuticals-- and even these are more likely to be called antidepression than pro-happiness. (91)

There is much hypocrisy where drugs are concerned. Some drugs are good and some are bad, depending on how they are viewed by the culture. Although most drugs provide happiness, some are acceptable and some are not. I used to fall into this hypocrisy because I held a strong hatred of illegal drugs. Reading this book has helped me think about and realize this hypocrisy within myself.

Though we feel proud of how much we know nowadays, we can find ourselves sad that our world is more reasonable than magical. Cheer up: we don't know as much as we think we do, and we are, in fact, magical. (311)

This is another reminder of my great realization and theory about humanity: many people really don't know all that much about anything.

This book should have been titled Athens During The Trial of Socrates because I.F. Stone went into painstaking detail about everything going on in Athens at the time of Socrates' trial and eventual execution. Stone did a wonderful job in research and argumentation. However, I was misled by the book because I thought it would be more about Socrates then the history of Athens. While Athenian history is certainly interesting, I was not after that in this book. Nevertheless, I did learn more about Socrates, my favorite philosopher and the model of my style of argumentation and debate.

Real knowledge, Socrates taught, could be obtained only through absolute definition. If one could not define a thing absolutely, then one didn't really know what it was. Then Socrates demonstrated that such knowledge was unobtainable, even by him. (39)

For Socrates, if you couldn't define something with unvarying comprehensiveness, then you didn't really know what it was. (68)

This is a theory of mine that I have developed during my education. Although I am not as extreme as Socrates here regarding absolute definitions, I do believe many people don't know as much as they think they know.

Socrates was the master of a negative dialectic that could destroy any and every definition or proposition put to him. But he rarely offered a definite proposition of his own. This complaint about Socrates' negative dialectic was a familiar one in his time and in later antiquity. (56)

Why would he (and I) offer a definite proposition if we believe one is unattainable? Unlike Socrates, I do believe definite propositions are possible. However, I am going to make you work to prove that to me. A serious problem in the United States of today is that so many of the masses take information at face value and do not question the giver or the so-called facts. Rather than succumb to being duped, I am going to challenge a person that puts forth information and facts. If the information stands up to scrutiny, I will certainly respect it and relent. However, the vast majority of people I come across spew information that is incomplete and/or incorrect.

There is not only a palpable conceit just under the surface of Plato's more graceful account but even a touch of cruelty at the expense of his interlocutors. The most humiliating--and infuriating--part of the Socratic mode of interrogation was that their ignorance was shown to be real while they felt that his self-proclaimed ignorance was ostentatious and pretended. This was the famous Socratic "irony." The Greek word eironeia from which our word irony derives meant dissembling or dissimulation, saying what one did not really mean. His interlocutors felt that, behind his "irony," his veil of mock-modesty, Socrates was laughing at them. (80)

I believe that if one is going to put forth information and beliefs, they ought to back it up under all circumstances. If more people would take seriously the stuff that comes out of their mouths, our society would not be in the trouble it is in today. If these people would be humbled by being challenged at the filth falling out of their mouths, perhaps many great evils would be prevented. Again, if someone is going to pass off information to me as credible and good, they should prepare to have that information picked apart and challenged.

I thought this book was great in the beginning and fantastic in the end. However, the bulk of the book in the center was made up of several tangents that were way out there. I would have preferred to read more about E.I. Lonoff's wife Hope feeling like a prisoner in their marriage. However, I was treated to strange diatribes about Nathan Zuckerman's childhood relations with his father and Amy Bellette's mental illness of thinking she was/is Anne Frank. It was extremely difficult to make it through these asides while longing to read more about the marriage. The ending was almost good enough to make it worthwhile.

This is my favorite part of the book because it is so extreme and yet so familiar:

"Take her, Manny. If you want her, take her," she cried, "and then you won't be so miserable, and everything in the world won't be so bleak. She's not a student anymore--she's a woman! You are entitled to her--you rescued her from oblivion, you are more than entitled: it's the only thing that makes sense! Tell her to accept that job, tell her to stay! She should! And I'll move away! Because I cannot live another moment as your jailer! You are a monument and can take it and take it--but I'm down to nothing, darling, and I can't. Chuck me out! Please, now, before your goodness and your wisdom kill us both!" (43-44)

I often see myself in many of the books I read. For some reason, I identify a little with E.I. Lonoff.

In the end, Hope ends up leaving Lonoff in a dramatic scene.

Here, with her two hands, she hurled the overnight bag into the snow at her feet. "Oh, Manny, you wouldn't move into Stockbridge because the streets are paved, so how could I ever get you to Boston? And what difference would it be in Boston anyway? You'd be just the same--you'd be worse. How could you concentrate in Boston, with all those people swarming around? There, somebody might even ask you something about your work!"

"Then maybe the best bet is to stay here."

"Even here you can't think if I so much as make toast in the kitchen--I have to catch my toast before it pops up so you won't be disturbed in the study!"

"Oh, Hopie," he said, laughing a little, "that's overdoing things. For the next thirty-five years just make your toast and forget about me."

"I can't."

"Learn," he said sternly.

"No!" Picking up the bag, she turned and started down the driveway. Lonoff closed the door. I watched from the window to see that she stayed on her feet. The snow had been banked so high by the town plow the night before that when she turned into the road she immediately passed out of sight. But then, of course, she wasn't very big to begin with.

Lonoff was at the hall closet, wrestling with his overshoes.

"Would you like me to come along? To help?" I asked.

"No, no. I can use the exercise after that egg."

The way Lonoff says that is so matter-of-fact, kind of like this sort of thing has happened many times in the past: the logical, hard-feeling author dealing with his emotional, fed-up spouse. It made me giggle.

There is more information in this book than what I can grasp at this time. Ken Wilber is on a completely different plane; one that I did not know even existed until recently. While I did pull a lot from this book, there is so much more left on the table that I simply could not digest in this present time. Perhaps I simply am not on a level to understand much of what was written in this book. However, that does not mean I did not learn a tremendous amount from reading this important book. I tend to believe I am heading down a religious path that Wilber describes in this book. Now, this book is extremely dense. I am used to reading heavy theological and philosophical texts and this was challenging for me. Although I felt bogged down at times, I was able to plow ahead and continue to learn from Wilber's writing.

This diagram is the foundation of Integral Spirituality.


From what I read in the book, a person or event can be on any point of this cycle. To continue to develop as a person, we need to strive to look outside of our quadrant for both perspective and knowledge. Being stuck in one of the quadrants inhibits our growth in all areas, including spirituality. I believe Wilber is advocating for people to break down the barriers that inhibit them from stepping out of their quadrants.

Wilbur wrote a lot about developmental stages. At one point, he even mentioned the Ten Oxherding Pictures. Wilber said:

The point is that a person can have a profound peak, religious, spiritual, or meditative experience of, say, a subtle light or causal emptiness, but they will interpret that experience with the only equipment they have, namely, the tools of the stage of development they are at. A person at magic will interpret them magically, a person at mythic will interpret them mythically, a person at pluralistic will interpret them pluralistically, and so on. But a person at mythic will not interpret them pluralistically, because that structure-stage of consciousness has not yet emerged or developed. (91)

This is critical for people to grasp, especially those people that are educators and leaders. People can only do what they can do with the tools they have.

Wilber must be used to his writing being difficult for many to understand. Here is a note against haughtiness.

Frankly, any earlier/lower stages would simply not find this topic interesting. But if we do pat ourselves on the back, let it still be with humility: whatever stage we might be at, there are always higher stages; and somewhere, someplace, in some universe or dimension, somebody is writing a text that is over our heads... (92-93)

I wrote a few months ago about the dark night I was experiencing spiritually. I still am working through this stage and I do appreciate it whenever I read about this. Wilber did write about the dark night.

That is, dark nights tend to appear at the boundary between those general states as attachment to, or identify with, those states is let-go of or surrendered. The states themselves (and their general realms of being and knowing) remain and continue to arise, but identity with them is stripped, and that "stripping" constitutes the respective dark nights of senses, soul, and self--causing a dark night of the senses, a dark night of the soul, and a dark night of the self. (99)

This confirms what others have written about this subject: I am entering a new stage of spiritual development. I must be pushing through this stage because I am not suffering like I was in the past.

I used to worry about which religious tradition to adhere to because I liked them all. I finally recognized that I am a sort of religious mutt that leans Christian. I like to label myself as Catholic, Lutheran, Unitarian Universalist, and mystic. Basically, I take on the traditions that I have been educated in during my conversion to religious life. Wilber seems to talk briefly about this.

Therefore, choose your View carefully. And make your View or Framework as comprehensive or integral as possible, because your View--your cognitive system, your co-gnosis, your conceptual understanding, your implicit or explicit Framework--will help determine the very form of your enlightenment. (115)

Apparently, my form of enlightenment will come by the way of being a religious mutt. Instead of fighting this, I chose to work with it and advance myself spiritually. Wilber said:

So it is true that nothing is subtracted from my path, but a few things can be added: Supplement! (117)

To advance spiritually is to constantly gain knowledge from all places on the quadrant. This means I should be learning constantly and in all areas of existence. I should be reading classic literature as well as religious texts. I should be learning from the sciences as well as theology. From my reading of the great religious and philosophical thinkers, this is very true. John Paul II was more than a theologian: he excelled in all academic areas like linguistics, art, and science. This is a clue to me that I need to constantly be learning and applying that knowledge to my spiritual travels. I often see people languish and stop growing because they stop learning. I also see people that seem to think they find the path and then stop because they think their work is complete. Wilber said something about this:

Notice individuals who have been practicing one path for a decade or more, and you will often see a gradual closing of their minds, a narrowing of their interests, as they go deeper into spiritual state experiences but don't have an integral Framework to complement their plunge into Emptiness, or Ayin, or Godhead, or Holy Spirit. The result is that they become closed off to more and more parts of the world, which can actually lead to a regression to amber or fundamentalism or absolutism. They become both deep mystics and narrow fundamentalists at the same time. (118)

I see this as a warning to watch out for becoming too bigheaded or haughty. A particular warning for me is to look down on those that do languish and stall on a particular stage for some reason or another, like laziness or lack of resources. I see a lot of people at this place and it frustrates me because they are capable of so much more. Wilber talked about this as well:

Human beings, starting at square one, will develop however far they develop, and they have the right to stop wherever they stop. Some individuals will stop at red, some at amber; some will move to orange or higher. Some individuals will develop to a stage, stop for a while, then continue growth; others will stop growing around adolescence and never really grow again. But that is their right; people have the right to stop at whatever stage they stop at. (195)

Let people develop at their own pace and with the tools they have. Do not inhibit their quest for knowledge and do encourage them to seek information from all sources, no matter how challenging it may be to your own framework.

There are those books that are simply too difficult to do justice in words. In my opinion, this book is a magnificent work of literature. This is a wonderful story of family dynamics, human emotion, religious thought, and so much more. It was interesting reading this book after The Way of a Pilgrim because it gave me a good reference point to help understand what Franny was experiencing.

Naturally, the many religious references resonated with me. In his letter to Zooey, Buddy said:

Seymour once said to me--in a crosstown bus, of all places--that all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold. (67)

This should have been a foreshadowing to what this book was trying to tell me about the relationship between religion and the believer. I tend to agree with Seymour here.

Zooey said to Franny:

You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned! Do you want to hear something funny? Do you want to hear something really funny? In almost four years of college--and this it the absolute truth--in almost four years of college, the only time I can remember ever even hearing the expression 'wise man' being used was in my freshman year, in Political Science! (146)

Not much has changed in forty years. Even in my religion courses was wisdom rarely mentioned.

Later, Zooey said to Franny:

Everybody in this family gets his goddam religion in a different package. (153)

I wish more people would realize this, accept it, and move on with their lives.

More religious wisdom from Zooey to Franny:

You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. (196)

From all the world's religions comes the concept of detachment. It is one of those universal teachings that are essential to growing spiritually. It is difficult (if not impossible) to embrace the Divine if we are clutching to our attachments.

There is so much more contained in this book. I will have to read it again next year.

It is 4:15 am and I cannot sleep, thanks in part to my allergies and the 24-hour Sudafed I took almost eight hours ago. So I decided to finish this book with the hope that I would become tired enough to go back to bed.

I do not own this particular version of the book. My copy is part of a series called Mystical Classics of the World. Despite that small detail, this is an amazing book about a Russian pilgrim and his experiences with prayer, specifically the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner). The pilgrim would wander around Russia visiting different places and talking to people about the power of this prayer and the command to pray without ceasing. The pilgrim carried two books with him--the Bible and The Philokalia, a book of writings by early Eastern Christian church fathers that "contains clear explanations of what the Bible holds in secret and which cannot be easily grasped by our shortsighted understanding" (10).

This book educated me about the benefits contained in constant, repetetive prayer as a way of training your body and soul to connect with God at a high level. Like the centering prayer in certain aspects, the constant repitition of the Jesus Prayer gives one a focus that can block out distractions and channel energy toward God. This nice thing about this is that it can be done anywhere and in any situation.

From having all these and other like feelings I noted that interior prayer bears fruit in three ways: in the spirit, in the feelings, and in revelations. In the first, for instance, is the sweetness of the love of God, inward peace, gladness of mind, purity of thought, and the sweet remembrance of God. In the second, the pleasant warmth of the heart, fullness of delight in all one's limbs, the joyous "bubbling" in the heart, lightness and courage, the joy of living, power not to feel sickness and sorrow. And in the last, light given to the mind, understanding of holy Scripture, knowledge of the speech of created things, freedom from fuss and vanity, knowledge of the joy of the inner life, and finally certainty of the nearness of God and of His love for us. (38-39)

This is a good explanation of what prayer does for a person, at least from my experience.

One spiritual writer speaks of it in this way: 'Love,' he says, 'usually grows with knowledge, and the greater the depth and extent of the knowledge the more love there will be, the more easily the heart will soften and lay itself open to the love of God, as it diligently gazes upon the very fullness and beauty of the divine nature and His unbounded love for men. (132)

I used this passage in the autobiography/faith statement for my seminary application. Knowledge is the key to most everything in life and religion is no exception. Part of loving God is to know God and the best way to do this is to become educated through reading, writing, and listening to people talk about God.

It is now 5:07 am and I am only slightly tired, not enough to sleep. I have a feeling I will be paying for this later today.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes wonderful books and this book is no exception. There is a tremendous amount of information in this book that I am sure I missed. Here are some insights I have learned from reading this book.

We can talk about the phenomenal world, but it is very difficult to talk about the noumenal world. It is impossible to use our concepts and words to describe God. All the adjectives and nouns that we use to describe waves cannot be used to describe God. We can say that this wave is high or low, big or small, beautiful or ugly, has a beginning and an end. But all these notions cannot be applied to water. God is neither small nor big. God has no beginning or end. God is not more or less beautiful. All the ideas we use to describe the phenomenal world cannot be applied to God. So it's very wise not to say anything about God. To me the best theologian is the one who never speaks about God. (pg. 7-8)

I have learned to be wary of those individuals that think they have knowledge of God.

We don't want to say that Buddhism is a kind of Christianity and Christianity is a kind of Buddhism. A mango cannot be an orange. I cannot accept the fact that a mango is an orange. They are two different things. We have to preserve the differences. It is nice to have differences. Vive la différence. But when you look deeply into the mango and into the orange, you see that although they are different, they are both fruits. If you analyze the mango and the orange deeply enough, you will see the same elements are in both, like the sunshine, the clouds, the sugar, and the acid. If you spend time looking deeply enough, you will discover that the only difference between them lies in the degree, in the emphasis. At first you see the differences between the orange and the mango. But if you look a little deeper, you discover many things in common. In the orange you find acid and sugar, which are in the mango too. Even two oranges taste different; one can be very sour and one can be very sweet. (pg. 16-17)

This is a nice way to show the importance of differences while also stressing how everything is connected.

Impermanence is the reality of things in the phenomenal world. This is the insight from both East and West. "No one can bathe twice in the same river" is a Western insight. While standing on a bridge, Confucius once said, "Flowing always like this day and night." It is the same kind of insight. If everything is impermanent, there cannot be a permanent entity. This is the meaning of non-self. Non-self does not mean non-person or non-existing. Even though you are non-self, you continue to be a person with a body, with feelings, with perceptions, with mental formations, with consciousness. You continue to be a person, but a person without a separate self. (pg. 19)

The understanding of non-self has helped me understand how things work in the universe. This has also helped me put myself into perspective.

It is therefore not correct to say that Christianity teaches being while Buddhism teaches non-being. If you spend a little time studying Buddhism, you will see that the practice is to transcend both notions of being and non-being. To the Buddhist, "To be or not to be" is not the question. The question is whether or not you can transcend these notions. (pg. 27).

One's notions are forms of attachments. In order to alleviate suffering, we need to let go of our notions.

In the Buddhist circle, people speak about letting go of your knowledge. When you know something, you stick to your knowledge. You are not ready to let it go, and this is an obstacle on the path of practice. In Buddhism, knowledge can be seen as an obstacle. Many people try to accumulate knowledge, and one day they may realize that the knowledge they possess has become an obstacle to their understanding. (pg. 58).

I know many people that possess vast amounts of knowledge and yet do not understand. I also know many people that are attracted to those that seem to have knowledge. Much suffering would be alleviated if these people would let go of their attachments to knowledge.

As understanding and faith are living things, there is something in our understanding and faith that dies in every moment, and there is something in our understanding and faith that is born every moment. In Zen Buddhism, it is expressed in a very drastic way. Master Lin Chi said, "Be aware. If you meet the Buddha, kill him." I think that's the strongest way of saying this. If you have a notion of the Buddha, you are caught in it. If you don't release the notion of the Buddha, there is no way for you to advance on the spiritual path. Kill the Buddha. Kill the notion of the Buddha that you have. We have to grow. Otherwise we will die on our spiritual path. (pg. 62-63)

Once we think we understand something, we need to let it go. Otherwise, we are stuck in our understanding, which prevents further growth.

When we believe something to be the absolute truth, we are closed. We are no longer open to the understanding and insight of our people, and this is because the object of our faith is just an idea, not a living thing. But if the object of your faith is your direct experience and your insight, then you can always be open. You can grow everyday in your practice, in sharing the fruit of your practice, and in making your faith, love, and happiness grow. (pg. 80)

A closed mind cannot be open to learning something new. If you are not open and learning, you are not growing.

In your daily life, you have to seek in order to touch the other dimension of your reality, the ultimate dimension, the dimension of God, the dimension of water. It is a pity that you spend all your time dealing with the phenomenal world and becoming entangled in it without having any opportunity to go back and touch the deepest dimension of your being. (pg. 156)

I know many people that are so entangled with making money, working, and self-made dramas. These people are so wound up in matters that they cannot take with them once their physical bodies are gone. They do not pay any attention to the health of their soul, which is the one thing that remains after the physical death. I am sad for these people because they suffer much concerning these earthly matters.

That is the true meaning of loving God with all your might. You do not reserve for that object of your love only a few minutes or one hour a day. You have to devote twenty-four hours to touching the Kingdom of God, to touching the ultimate dimension that is deep in you. You can only love your God with all your might when you are really a full-time student or practitioner. (pg. 158)

I liked this idea: being a full-time student of God. We would all be better educated about God if we devoted as much time learning about God as we do working at a job.

if you are rooted in your own culture, you may have a chance to touch deeply and become rooted in another culture as well. (pg. 181).

I recently became fond of my culture as a person that is religious but not a strict practitioner of any one branch of Christianity. I did not grow up religious and became a Christian as an adult. I used to worry and despair over not growing up in a certain denomination. I attempted to find a home in various denominations before realizing that I am and always will be a mixture of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Unitarian Universalism, and mysticism. By accepting these roots, I am now free to explore and become part of other faiths.

When two people from different traditions marry, the young man could make a vow to learn and practice the spiritual tradition of the young woman, and the young woman cold make a vow to learn and practice that of the young man. In that case, both of them wold have two roots instead of one, and this can only enrich each person. When they have a family, the children should be raised in such a way that they can appreciate the best things in both traditions. The parents should encourage their children to have two roots in to have both the Buddha and Jesus within their life. Why not? (pg. 202)

Many people have wondered how I can be married to an atheist and raise children. It is easy because I respect her choice to believe whatever she desires. It is also easy because I am educated in my own beliefs as a Christian. She, along with my children, have freedom of conscious. I do not have the power to tell them what to believe. Their own minds and hearts will tell them what is best.

This book has been a tremendous help to me. I have learned so much from Fr. Keating's work in this book. In my opinion, this is a must read for anyone that seeks a deeper connection with the Divine Presence that I choose to call God. There is so much in this book that I could talk about. Here are just a few segments that really struck a chord with me.

The false self is the idealized image of ourselves developed from early childhood to cope with emotional trauma due to the frustration of our instinctual needs for survival/security, affection/esteem, and power/control. The false self also seeks happiness through identification with a particular group from whom it can find acceptance and thus build feelings of self-worth. On the social level, it gives rise to violence, war, and institutional injustice. (pg. 2)

Using this idea of the false self, I have learned something about my false self. I am learning to recognize and to stop clinging to the false self I have created to deal with situations and ideas that have threatened me over the years. Instead of feeling the need to project the false self in times of crisis, I let go and allow my true self to remain.

Centering prayer as a method is based on the first two steps suggested by Jesus: to let go of external circumstances and their turmoil and to let go of the interior noise of our thoughts and feelings, symbolized by closing the door to them. Prayer in secret seems to be Jesus' term for what later became known in Christian tradition as contemplation. These are obviously three movements into deeper degrees of silence. The third movement takes place when our awareness joins the hidden God in the secrecy where God actually dwells and is waiting for us. (pg. 19)

This is the mechanics of centering prayer. Usually my prayer consisted of me talking more and listening less. What I found beneficial about centering prayer is the silence it helps generate. I have found an intimate connection with God using the centering prayer that I have not experienced before.

Some people experience a preview of divine union, lose it for a period of time, then have to climb back to it. God can start you off at any point in the spiritual life. If you get a headstart, you have to go back and fill in the gaps. Don't think that some people are lucky because they have visions when they are five or six years old. These people still have to go through the struggle to dismantle the emotional programs of early childhood. These programs are only temporarily put to sleep by the divine action. One great advantage for such persons, however, is that they know by experience what is missing in their lives and that nothing less than God can ever satisfy them. It is a mistake, however, to envy or admire someone else's path. You must be convinced that you have everything you need to reach divine union. The reason any expectation is a hindrance is that it is a form of clinging, hence comes from the desire to control. (pg. 71).

This is exactly what happened to me when I became a Christian. I experience a short time of intense encounters with God followed by a period of darkness. I have often wondered why this occurred and this passage helps put that into perspective. I can also couple this with my frustrations in academic study in theology and realize that I have years of learning to catch up on. Like Fr. Keating said in this passage, I cannot look to anyone else's path for a script; I must follow my own path.

Fr. Keating responded to the question, "Why are contemplatives so often misunderstood by their families and communities"

It is one thing to have the grace of contemplative prayer; another to be able to communicate it. They do not necessarily go together. Sometimes someone who truly has the contemplative experience expresses it in a way that upsets the more conservative element in the environment. Such persons may be labeled as heretics when they are just expressing themselves clumsily.

Mystical language is not theological language. It is the language of the bed-chamber, of passionate love, and hence of hyperbole and exaggeration. If a husband says that he adores his wife, it does not mean that he regards her as a goddess. He is just trying to express his feeling of love in language that is powerless to do so--except through hyperbole. (pg. 75).

This is a wonderful description of how mystics talk. I had a hard time reconciling these types of feeling with my logical, rational self. This is why I cannot undertake any type of academic work in theology, with the exception of work in church history. If I do pursue academic work in religion, it will be on church history as a way of setting up doctorate work in moral philosophy. I will leave the theology for personal exploration and communion with God. I used to be afraid of being labeled. However, I have let go of that fear and now allow myself to go where I need to go spiritually.

Here are some of the few passages in the book I found interesting.

Talking about a girlfriend he lost, Will Forte said, "But nothing scared me more than the information I found out next: Steve played bass for a popular campus band called the Brewmasters. Oh, great, a fucking musician" (14). Further on, Forte said, "How many times do I have to tell you, we're just friends" (18).

I've heard this tired excuse before from girls (they were girls at the time). Why is it always a musician? What is it about a man that is in a band?

Pollack's story was funny because it involved a cat. ""You and that cat," she said. "She's in love with you. It's unnatural"" (42).

I have been accused of having an unnatural relationship with my cat, an orange male tabby named Oliver. I think this accusation is shrouded in jealousy.

Todd Hanson writes, "It is also crucial to bear in mind that even after a lifetime of such learning experiences, you will never understand the first thing about women. Do not delude yourself about this. Guys who claim to understand everything about women are like Kansas school boards that claim to understand everything about the creation of the world--interesting from a sociological perspective maybe, but still, totally full of shit" (152).

I cannot argue about this.

Jason Nash writes about what sex may look like before being dumped. "Our sex started to go downhill, as she began not moving during the act. That made me unable to get hard, and then she blamed me for my lack of prowess" (181).

I would have a difficult time having sex with a partner that did not move or respond. It would feel like having sex with someone that is sleeping. It would feel creepy and I would not feel too good about myself when the act was complete. Yikes.