The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

I originally purchased this book back in the 80's. I was going through some very troubling times and when I read this book the information shook me to my core. It wasn't till years later that I would be able to understand and open up to what I had read and start applying it to my life. Great book even if your not ready to understand at the moment. Planted a couple of really good seeds in me that threw the grace to god have sprouted and are growing strong today. 5 Thumbs Up.

The media could not be loaded. This is the greatest book I have ever read! After reading this book you will come away wanting to be a better, more authentic version of who you are. This book has inspired me to do the following: I hereby declare all future recantations and retractions I may make of any of my ideas, theories, and beliefs null and void for the next one hundred years. People, including members of law enforcement, are trying to coerce me into retracting my idea proving God’s existence. If you read this book, you will make a similar commitment to being exactly who you are.

I first read The Road Less Traveled some 35 years ago. I find rereading it certainly worthwhile after fathering 3 children and living an adult life. It hasn't been easy, and the first line certainly still applies, "Life is difficult." Scott's book provides many valuable insights, perhaps the most valuable is recognizing the purpose of life, to regain our divinity and become one with God. Frankly, that didn’t stick with me after the first read. Concepts like delayed gratification, discipline and serendipity, among others, did. Also laziness being the fruit of our original sin and affecting many facets of life. Becoming one with God took a while and some other books like The Way of Divine Love written thru Sr. Josefa Menendez and This Tremendous Lover by Fr. M. Eugene Boylan. The most influential book, even more than Scott’s, is True Life in God being written thru the Greek Orthodox mystic Vassula Ryden. Over 25 years ago, a friend introduced me to the work and after some reading and discernment; I concluded that God is the author.There is one part of the work that really addresses this becoming one with God. It’s called the Odes of the Holy Trinity. I call it God’s discourse on mystical marriage. There are other mystics who have tried to describe this process, mystics like St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila. I personally find reading them difficult, not so the Odes. For example, in the Ode of the Father, He writes:Scriptures say: "happy the pure in heart, they shall see God;" today, Vassula, everyone sees as far as they are able to see, but I am telling you all, you too could be counted among My saints who are fit to see Me if you allowed My Holy Spirit to pass through you to shatter all your impurities, and once purity is acquired, the vision of Myself will be given you;It seems simple enough, invite the Holy Spirit to pass through us and shatter our impurities. How do we do that? What are our impurities? Maybe that’s what Scott was talking about, this work and struggle of life. Ah, but the reward is out of this world, to be one with God, to become Love itself. Veni Sancte Spiritus!

Great book, insightful, introspective, and extremely well-written. Although the final sections in the last chapter were extremely repetitive and just repeating the same thing to fill pages it seems, the ending was hard to read because it was just a repeat of what he’s already told us MANY times throughout the book, it seems he had to meet a certain character count or page count and he need to fill space to finish the book. Other than that, fantastic read full of multiple different components, it has such a wide range of material that it’s hard for me to even explain to people around me what the book is about when they ask me, which is a testament to the incredible amount of substance it contains.

"The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck is a book that I will read more than once, which is the highest compliment that I can give. It was first published in 1978 and has sold 7 million copies. This is a spiritual and intellectual masterpiece covering topics such as discipline, love, growth and religion, and grace. The fact that his very first fan letter was from someone who assumed that Dr. Peck was a life-long member of Alcoholics Anonymous is reason enough for the recovering addict or alcoholic to read this book.Dr. Peck has much to say about honesty in the section about discipline. He states that a life of total dedication to the truth means first, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination, second, a willingness to be personally challenged, and thirdly, it means a life of total honesty. Of people who live this life of total honesty he says, "Through their openness they can establish and maintain intimate relationships far more effectively than more closed people. Because they never speak falsely they can be secure and proud in the knowledge that they have done nothing to contribute to the confusion of the world, but have served as sources of illumination and clarification. Finally they are totally free to be. They are not burdened by any need to hide. They do not slink around in the shadows. They do not have to construct new lies to hold old ones. They need waste no effort covering tracks or maintaining disguises. And ultimately they find that the energy required for the self-discipline of honesty is far less than the energy required for secretiveness. The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again. By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear."In the section on love, Dr. Peck maintains that true spiritual growth can be achieved only through the persistent exercise of real love. And true love is not a feeling, it's an action. Most of what we call love is just plain dependency, a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But this type of love constricts and traps rather than liberates, and if you expect another person to make you happy, you'll be endlessly disappointed.Among many other illuminating ideas is his notion that God resides in our unconscious, that our unconscious mind is God, and that this is no different than the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Interesting.I could go on and on about this book. It's one that has significantly altered my view of life and my place in this world. I would like to thank Dr. Peck for sharing these illuminating insights with us.David Allan ReevesAuthor of "Running Away From Me"