Tonight I meet with my Spirituality Book Club. We were supposed to meet early summer, but the meeting was postponed until now. Fortunately, I underline significant passages in the spiritual-type books I read. This one, Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, has more lines with pencil marks than lines without. I dedicated three mornings to “review” the book so I can discuss it but still cannot finish. There is so much to discuss.
One of the names Quakers give to themselves is ‘seekers’, which is one of the things that attracted me to them. People who are always going to spiritual or psychological conference, reading self-help books, or attend groups like this one, are seekers They are also a little crazy, like someone who tries to climb a mountain with roller skates. Here is a paragraph from the book for my fellow seekers:
“Any attempt to engineer or plan your own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. You will see only what you have already decided to look for, and you cannot see what you are not ready or told to look for. So failure and humiliation force you to look where you never would otherwise. What an enigma! Self-help courses of any type, including this one, will help you only if they teach you to pay attention to life itself. ‘God comes to you disguised as life,’ as my friend Paula D’Arcy so wisely says.”
Rats!
I love this! Much food for thought…