《The Road Less Travelled》是一本由M. Scott Peck著作，Arrow出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：78.00元，页数：320，特精心从网络上整理的一些读者的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

　　《The Road Less Travelled》精选点评：

　　●The book itself is the serendipity.

　　●Dilige et quod vis fac. --Saint Augustine

　　●THE GOD WANTS US TO BE GODS

　　●肯定会再读。有些书大概就是会陪伴自己走过很长的人生旅程的吧。

　　●心智开启的必读之书

　　●Styling is not particularly impressive and the volume could be significantly thinner. Sophisticated wording is employed in bizarre contexts, and too much repetition. But it does provide the opportunities to go down quite a few paths of imagining psychotherapy. Specifically, I like the way he defines and describes love and laziness.

　　●Life is difficult. Falling in love is not love. Dependency is not love. Love is an action. Cathexis is not love.

　　●一口气读完了，写得还可以，如果我是老外完全可以给四颗星，不过一句话，我们的老祖宗走过了这条（the road less traveled），中国的经典里有着更深刻，更精彩的描述。

　　●第五本英文原著

　　●读了以后感觉教育孩子好难呦。

　　《The Road Less Travelled》读后感(一)：理解爱的真谛

　　在读过的所有心理学著作中，这本书无疑是出类拔萃的。趋利避害是人的本能，但作者通过大量的临床经验告诉我们，“规避问题和逃避痛苦是心理疾病的根源”，“人生的问题和痛苦具有非同寻常的价值”，痛苦是人心智成长的阶梯。作者继而提出解决人生问题的首要任务—— 自律(self-discipline)，以及基于自律的四种积极的人生态度，即延迟满足感、承担责任、尊重事实以及保持平衡。作者同时揭示了父母在孩子成长过程中所给予的“无条件的爱”、“对待痛苦的正确态度”以及“自律精神”对孩子的心智健康具有重大影响。作者将“爱”定义为“为促进自我和他人心智的成熟，而具有的一种自我完善的意愿”。爱是心灵滋养，爱是自我完善，为自己，为他人。

　　《The Road Less Travelled》读后感(二)：Life Journey is about Spiritual Growth

　　The road means spiritual growth road, on which only a few are traveling.

　　Life is difficult, you are alone in this journey, hopefully not lonely. How to make the most out of your one-time only life？ There are some techniques we get from modern science such as psychology subject. We know intuition, motivation system, how sometimes we are deceived by our brains, etc. Naturally, we are all lazy and inclined to luxury enjoyment. We need to pull ourselves up and on the way to spiritual growth.

　　Discipline, love, Religion, and Grace.

　　Actually, I read this book as an English improvement tool, instead of focusing more on the content. I should give it a second read and align my own experience and feelings with author's thoughts in the reading process. How to read a book effectively？ it is not about memory, it is about the reflection and thinking.

　　《The Road Less Travelled》读后感(三)：That makes all difference

　　翻开这本书读下去，才知道和我预期的完全不一样。以为是基于两个成年人的relationship探讨怎么去爱如何去爱的，在痛苦的过程中怎么经历面对解决问题促进自身和爱的成长，结果发现更多的是在阐述父母之爱养育之道对孩子一生的性格情感的影响的，当然，后面的章节就开始不再局限于养育之法，延伸拓展开来，尝试从目的论角度去阐述什么是discipline, 什么是爱，成长和宗教的关系，什么是仁慈恩典，观点还算新颖，至少关于“fall in love”的解释是我闻所未闻的，而且，掩卷细思，有点意思。

　　关于爱：

　　首先，什么是爱？爱不是不费力气的一见钟情，相反，是贯穿了努力付出的灵魂成长的过程。

　　其次，他细辩了desire和will的微小差别：愿望(desire)不一定会付诸于行动，而will是愿望强烈到一定程度不得不通过行动来诉求的，它也暗示了出于自身意愿的一种选择。想爱的愿望不是爱的本身，爱应该是实施愿望的一种行动，自然的就包括了意愿和实际行动。

　　再次，无论我们爱上的是谁，如果这样的感情关系维系有足够久的话，我们迟早会在其中丧失当初的那种新鲜热辣的爱，也就是说，当时让我们欣喜若狂，心醉神迷的爱上一个人的感觉总是会消逝的。这里，用英语似乎更形象，更生动：fall in love, fall out of love。

　　绝大多数的人类会觉得孤独是痛苦的，渴望从我们自身标识特质所筑起的高墙后逃离，为能融入外界的世界而努力。爱上一个人的感觉和经历其实就是这样一种暂时的自我逃离，爱上一个人的实质其实是一个人自我边界的突然坍塌瓦解，惟其如此，这个人的特质个性才可以和所爱之人的相互融会，用中国人的古话叫“水乳交融”。

　　坠入爱河不是意愿的具像，不是一种有意识的选择。

　　爱上一个人也不是人自身边界或者极限的延伸拓展，而仅仅是部分或者临时的瓦解。

　　爱的确是对自身的一种改变，但不应该是一种对自我的牺牲，而是对自身能力极限的一种延伸一种进化。

　　爱的感觉是可以不受限的，但是去爱的能力是也应该是受限的。因此，我们应该选择一个人去专注，专一的爱而不应以爱的名义泛滥自己的情感。True Love 不是无法抵抗的情感洪流，而应该是负责任的，深思过的，有承担的决定。

　　激情是一种强烈的情感，但是没有任何事实显示不加控制的情感要比克制的情感更深刻，相反，静水才会深流。

　　关于潜意识：

　　Freud和他的追随者倾向于将潜意识描述为原始的，反社会的，邪恶的思想的储藏室，他对潜意识的定位是负面的，认为它扮演了恶意的怀恨的恶作剧的角色，企图给我们制造障碍使我们失败。而Jung却持不同意见，认为潜意识是智慧的，它象一个好心的仙女非常努力的力图使我们更诚实。所以不难理解为什么Freuidan Slip代表了“无意中说出心里话”的意思，为什么潜意识是通向更加真实的自己的隐秘通道。

　　至于我们的决定，我们的所作所为，Mr Scott认为，其实我们的理智意识存在着很大的盲点，往往在我们最确信的时候最迷糊最无知，在我们最困惑的时候恰恰是最受启迪最易开导。

　　关于易遇奇缘的运气：

　　“The miracle of serendipity”说明了，奇迹，意外发现珍宝的运气其实不止一次发生在每个人的一生中，当它们发生时，并没有号角在响宣布它们的降临，相反，是润物细无声的。关键是有些人意识到这是一个奇迹，并且珍惜它，感恩于自己的所得，而有些人并没有意识到，失败于用他们自己的眼，智慧之眼，心灵之眼去发现，而以为不过是平常小事罢了。

　　关于原罪：

　　原罪(Original sin)一词来自基督教的传说，它是指人类生而俱来的、洗脱不掉的“罪行”。圣经中讲：人有两种罪——原罪与本罪，原罪是始祖犯罪所遗留的罪性与恶根，本罪是各人今生所犯的罪。。“原罪”被认为是人思想与行为上犯罪的根源，是各种罪恶滋生的根，会把人引向罪恶的深渊，又是使人难以自拔的原因。

　　Mr Scott 认为人类的原罪是懒惰。其中之一的表现形式是害怕，害怕对现状的改变。

　　关于“The Alpha and the Omega”

　　刚接触这个短语，很迷惑，只知道Alpha 和Omega是希腊字母表里的第一个和最后一个字母，不明白在这里怎么和上帝扯上了关系，查了一下，才明白它的来源：启示录里上帝的代称就是The Alpha and the Omega，也就是”开始和终结” the beginning and the end，”最初和最终” the first and the last 之意。因此，它也常常被用来做为基督教的耶稣的代表，从创世之始存在，并且永恒存在。

　　最后，想用诗人Frost Robert的诗也是该书书名的出处来做这篇读后感的结尾：

　　Two roads diverged in a wood

　　And I took the one less traveled by

　　And that has made all the difference

　　《The Road Less Travelled》读后感(四)：一本让我相信 神 的书

　　这是我第二遍读这本书。

　　第一遍读的时候，觉得第一章讲discipline对我的帮助最大。其中列举了四种成长的工具，delaying gratification, responsibility, dedication to reality以及balancing。我当时看完后觉得：哇，正因为自己没有办法做到这四点，所以我没有办法成长，所以我才一直痛苦，我以后要按照这个来要求自己。然并卵，自己合上书原来怎么样现在还是那样，一点都没变。

　　而后面的三个部分（love, growth and religion以及grace）我印象是不深刻的。我当时觉得这东西有点玄乎，飘在空中摸不着头脑。

　　以至于第二遍翻看之前，我一直有一种错觉，觉得这本书一般内容是在讲discipline，一半内容是在讲这些玄之又玄的东西。

　　但是第二遍看的时候，对于这本书的感受就大大发生了变化。我刚才统计了一下，这本书discipline这一章一共是写了57页，love这一章100页，growth and religion写了40页而最后grace写了48页。也就是说，实的东西（具体技巧）写了57页，而虚的东西（爱，宗教，精神以及神等）则写了将近200页。

　　很多人觉得这本书摸不着头脑，大概也是因为这个原因吧。他们觉得玄的原因，是因为自身还没有体会过后面所说的一些内容，所以抓了个空。就像第一遍读这本书时候的我一样。

　　我查了一下，这本书的出版日期是1978年。应该说Scott Peck博士能够在那个时候在西方社会写出这样一本富有前瞻性的书，真的是非常了不起的。

　　我想罗列一下书中给我带来深刻印象的几个观点：

　　1 爱的本质：爱是一种愿意为了自身/别人的精神成长而不断努力地意愿。The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth

　　2. 意识的重要性：作者在78年的时候就已经深刻意识到了自我意识（awareness）的重要性。而将近40年后今天的西方社会，Jon Kabat Zinn博士在默默耕耘了30年之后，终于用科学的方式向西方社会证明了meditation对于人的重大的转变作用（强烈推荐Full Catastrophe Living），从此冥想内观开始变成了心理治疗的一个重要部分。而冥想内观的核心，其实就是自我意识。所以我说，这本书在心理学领域是非常超前的。

　　3. 解释了神的含义：在这本书之前，我是一个无神论者。在这本书之后，我变成了一个有神论者。当然了，这里的神的含义，并不是仅仅局限于所谓的Christ, Buddha等。佛教里面的佛陀，基督教里面的耶稣等等，其实都是神的一个万千载体中的一个，是“道可道，非常道”中“道”的传播者。其中对于serendipity(中文翻译：有意外发现珍宝的运气)的定义是：a learned capacity to recognize and utilize the gifts of grace which are given to us from beyond the realm of conscious awareness. 而正是超出我们意识之外God,给了我们这些“意外的珍宝”。具体的文字，强烈大家去看原版的书。

　　4. 神给与我们这些意外珍宝的目的是为了让我们能够成为神意志的载体。我惊讶于这个观点和佛教佛陀的观点是惊人一致的。佛教存在的真正目的，并不是要人们偶像崇拜佛陀。它的真正目的，是希望所有人通过自己的修行，成为佛陀，从而贯彻佛陀的意志：解救众生脱离苦海。

　　果不其然，在书的最后。Scott Peck博士写下了这么一段话：

　　One way or another, these concepts have been set forth before--by Buddha, by Christ, by Lao-tse, among many others.....If you require greater understanding than these modern footnotes have to offer, then by all means proceed or return to the ancient texts.

　　5 更新了潜意识（unconscious）和意识（conscious）之间的关系。当然这一点其实并非是来自于Scott Peck。 对于意识和潜意识之间的关系最开始是由弗洛伊德提出来的，他认为潜意识是导致人们产生各种精神问题的根源，是意识压制住了潜意识的各种冲动以及欲望才会导致人们精神出问题。但是后来荣格是反对这个观点的，他认为人的潜意识其实蕴藏了无数的智慧。反而是人很多时候都在忽略潜意识传递给他的信息，这才导致了精神问题的产生。比如说：人们因为某件事情烦恼了，这其实是潜意识在传送信息给意识层面，想要告诉它：出问题了，出问题了，你要去正视这个问题，然后予以解决。但是每个人的反应都是趋利避害的，所以很多人会采取各种防御机制(defending mechanism)来回避痛苦以及痛苦背后的问题。但是问题是不会消失的，渐渐不断的积累，最后潜意识没有办法了，它发出了最强的信号：让人陷入抑郁等情绪。其实抑郁反而是在告诉人：赶快正视这个问题吧，再不解决你就要大难临头了。在这里抄录一段荣格关于潜意识的描述：

　　Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away--an ephemeral apparition.When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilisation, we cannot escape the imppresion of absolute nullity. Yet I have a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

　　最伟大的智慧，是不分西方和东方的，因为它们都是来源于“道”。

　　《The Road Less Travelled》读后感(五)：《少有人走的路》， Scott Peck

　　01/20/2019

　　拿起来的时候本以为会像其他心理学书籍一样框框地就看完了，没有想到总是看着看着就看得很细很久，然后意识到是因为作者写的比较深，句子用的也比较复杂，所以没有办法总是跳着看。有时候跳着看又不得不回到前面看。有时候一个个故事连着还蛮好看的，自己也忘了想快点看完的计划。

　　所以这本书看了整整一周。上周一到这周一。我觉得还蛮值得。

　　其实大概几年以前在北京的时候就听说了这本书，不记得第一次听说是从冬吴那里还是从灵修相关的书籍里，总之是很早。一本1978年的书，几十年之后却突然之间火了起来。作者后续又写了两本，据说大多是演讲集的合编。我曾经在几年前不止一次地拿起这本书的中英文版本，却都没能看下去。只记得反复看到那个士兵因为在荒僻的军营没事干而酗酒，作者就问他为什么不能自己找点事情干，他便反复找理由，每一个建议和对策都能被他找出一个理由否定。作者的意思是，这个人就是不想自己take responsibility。这是一种病，心理疾病，不想自己负起责任的毛病。他又说到另一种相对的毛病是把别人的责任都take 过来，一些不能左右的事情也都觉得是自己的错。然后说，每个人其实都多多少少这两种病都有，不能同意更多。

　　这本书的主旨在讲人要想成长就要有疼痛和suffer，可是人总是很懒，总是以为世界是美好的，成长是简单的，因此每每抄近道避险阻，殊不知在这样做的同时也避掉了成长的机会。所以很多成人依然保持着孩子的心智，没有成熟，没有长大。

　　作者说宇宙的规律是能量从多的地方向少的地方流动，苹果放在那会腐败，水流从高到低，宇宙从大分解到小，这是宇宙规律。可是人的身体和心灵成长却是上行的，某种程度上是逆规律而动，所以必然会觉得困难，必然会觉得痛苦。

　　这种为了成长而承受痛苦的勇气来源于“爱”，这里的爱又被作者定义为愿意帮助自己或别人灵性成长的努力。作者有一段特别好的描述爱的文字，说爱不是脸红心跳的简单生理反应，不是占有，不是出于自己心安的一味保护，而是为了灵性成长的目的，有保留的给与，有权衡地付出，总是从别人灵性成长的角度。

　　讲到不愿意承受痛苦和成长，作者最后统统归结为人的原罪：懒惰。懒得早起，懒得学习，懒得接受现状，懒得改变自己的观点，懒得从自己的世界跳出来，懒得疼痛，懒得付出。这大概真是植入所有人类基因的原罪吧。可是，即便人豪不成长，其实也无法safely define it as a sin。那么这样讲，也许原罪这一称呼也并不恰当。但我理解作者要表达的意思。懒是植入人类身体的天性。而人活得目的又是成长，所以说非常paradoxy.

　　其实以前看得不止一本书说成长是人类的最大目的或唯一目的，但是这本书在很多问题上探讨得更深。我真的不得不佩服西方教育下很多人的思考和表达能力：缜密不失逻辑，表达清楚言辞到位。书里问道，如果我们的目的是成长，我们要成长成什么样子才算好啊？照着什么方向成长下去呢？Without explanation，作者给的答案是，成长成God/Godness 自己的模样。而这种God/Godness该有的样子，其实在我们的潜意识里面或者无意识里面。Unconciousness在我们睡眠的时候通过梦跟我们沟通，在白天有意识的时候通过胡思乱想和天马行空跟我们沟通。—--所以，反复出现的想法或梦境需给予注意和倾听。

　　看书的时候觉得所讲的好多病例都非常有意思，也不停地想到自己高中到大学期间那段常常的depression. 照着作者的意思，第一depression是好事，是成长的起点，因为depression让你意识到你需要有改变，有些东西不对了，需要放弃一些什么了。第二，depression是神性和我沟通的迹象，是conciousness 和unconciousness在打仗，而unconciousness想帮我们成长。

　　书里只是没有说，我们是不是必须遵从unconciousness，潜意识是不是永远是神的意愿，我们能不能改变潜意识，能不能跟潜意识协商？因为假如我们不想变成潜意识希望我们变成的人呢？是不是就一定会出现冲突和挣扎？

　　问题留待后续阅读，想看《梦的解析》和其他心理治疗累书籍。

　　再次从一进2019年就出现的主题：努力成长，不要逃避suffer. No pains, no gains.

　　摘抄：

　　Life is difficult.

　　This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

　　Whenever we attempt to circumvent an obstacle, we are looking for a pth to our goal which will be easier and therefore quicker: a shortcut. Believing that the growth of the human spirit is the end of human existence, I am obviously dedicated to the notion of progress. It is right and proper that as human beings we should grow and progress as rapidly as possible. It is therefore right and proper that we should avail ourselves of any legitimate shortcut to personal growth.

　　Depression—since mentally healthy human beings must grow, and since growing up or loss of the old self is an integral part of the process of mental and spiritual growth, depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon.

　　In other words, patients are frequently already involved in a giving-up, or growth, process before considering psychotherapy, and it is the symptoms of this growth process that impel them toward the therapist’s office.

　　Many people are either unwilling or unable to suffer then pain of giving up the outgrown which needs to be forsaken. Consequently they cling, often forever, to their old patterns of thinking and behaving, thus failing to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity. …let me simply list, roughly in order of their occurrence, some of the major conditions, desires and attitudes that must be given up in the course of a wholly successful evolving lifetime:

　　The state of infancy, in which no external demands need be responded to;

　　The fantasy of omnipotence;

　　The desire for total (including sexual) possession of one’s parent(s);

　　The dependency of childhood;

　　Distorted images of one’s parents;

　　The omnipotentiality of adolescence;

　　The “Freedom” of uncommitment;

　　The agility of youth;

　　The ssexual attractiveness and/or potency of youth;

　　The fantasy of immortality;

　　Authority over one’s children;

　　Various forms of temporal power;

　　The independence of physical health;

　　And, ultimately, the self and life itself.

　　It is in the giving up of self that human beings can find the most ecstatic and lasting, solid, durable joy of life. And it is death that provides life with all its meaning.

　　The pain of giving up is the pain of death, but death of the old is birth of the new. The pain of death is the pain of birth, and the pain of birth is the pain of death.

　　“Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live,” said Seneca two millennia agao, “and what will amaze you eve more, throughout life one must lear to die.”

　　Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.

　　I define dependency as the inability to experience wholeness or to function adequately without the certainty that one is being actively scared for by another.

　　eople with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love. They are like starving people, scrounging wherever they can for food, and with no food of their own to give to others…They tolerate loneliness very poorly. Because of their lack of wholeness they have no real sense of identity, and they define themselves solely by their relationships.

　　y so doing, in the name of what they call love but what is really dependency, they diminish their own and each other’s freedom and stature.

　　Loving is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. the word “judicious” means requiring judgement, and judgment requires more than instinct; it requires thoughtful and often painful decision-making.

　　Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.

　　The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another we give him or her our attention; we attend to that person’s growth.

　　y far the most common and important way in which we can exercise our attention is by listening. True listening, total concentration on the other, is always a manifestation of love.

　　Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear, the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.

　　Who is the woman？ we don’t know the secretes of her heart. What we do know is that her whole life is devoted to avoiding risks and that in this endeavor, rather than enlarging her self, she has narrowed and diminished it almost to the point of nonexistence.

　　The price of cathexis is pain. If someone is determined not to risk pain, then such as person must do without many things: having children, getting married, the ecstasy of sex, the hope of ambition, friendship—all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant. …In avoiding the experience of death she had to avoid growth and change. …If we can live with the knowledge that death is our constant companion, traveling on our “left shoulder,”then death can become in the words of Don Juan, our “ally", still fearsome but continually a source of wise consul. …When we shy away from death, the ever-changing nature of things, we inevitably shy away form life.

　　Many never take any of these potential enormous leaps, and consequently many do not ever really grow up at all. Despite their outward appearances they remain psychologically still very much the children of their parents, living by hand-me-down values, motivated primarily by their parents’ approval and disapproval (even when their parents are long dead and buried), never having dared to truly take their destiny into their own hands.

　　“I’ll desert you before you desert me” syndrome: “Not everyone in this word is like your mother. You’re not my employee. You’re not here to do what I want you to do. You’re here to do what you want to do, when you want to do it. I may push you, but I have no power over you. I will never fire you. you’re here for as long as you want to be. "

　　Any genuine lover behaves with self-dicipine and any genuinely loving relationship is a disciplined relationship.

　　While one should not be a slave to one’s feelings, self-discipline does not mean the squashing of one’s feelings into nonexistence. I frequently tell my patients that their feelings are their slaves and that the art of self-discipline is like the art of slave-owning. First of all, one’s feelings are the source of one’s energy; they provide the horsepower, or slave power, that makes it possible for us to accomplish the tasks of living.

　　The proper management of one’s feelings clearly lies along a complex (and therefore not simple or easy) balanced middle path, requiring constant judgement and continuing adjustment. Here the owner treats his feelings (slavers) with respect, nurturing them with good food, shelter and medical care, listening and responding to their voices, encouraging them, inquiring as to their health, yet also organizing them, limiting them, deciding clearly between them, redirecting them and teaching them, all the while leaving no doubt as to who is the boss. This is the path of healthy self-discipline.

　　How was it that this had happened？ Why had she allowed herself to buy this bill of goods, lock, stock and barrel？ How was it that she had not been able to think more for herself and had not until now challenged the church in any way？ “But not until now challenged the church in any way？” “But Mother told me I should not question the church, “ Kathy said. And so we began to work on Kathy’s relationship with her parents.

　　Kathy then had to deal with why she had allowed this to happen. Rejecting her mother’s domination, she had to face the process of establishing her own values and making her own decisions, and she was very frightened. It was much safer to let her mother make the decisions, much simpler to adopt her mother’s values and those of the church. It took much more work to direct her own existence.

　　…”So I guess you’re still ten years old,” I remarked, “and your brothers are still around.”

　　I have firmly stated that it is essential to our spiritual growth for us to become scientists who are skeptical of what we have been taught—that is, the common notions and assumptions of our culture. But the notions of science themselves often become cultural idols, and it is necessary that we become skeptical of these as well.

　　We can therefore say the same thing about physical disorders that we said about mental disorders: There is a force, the mechanism of which we do not fully understand, that seems to operate routinely in most people to protect and encourage their physical health even under the most adverse conditions.

　　In my experience, dreams that can be interpreted invariably provide helpful information to the dreamer. This assistance comes in a variety of forms: as warnings of personal pitfalls; as guides to the solution of problems we have been unable to solve; as proper indication that we are wrong when we think we are right, and as correct encouragement that we are right when we think we are probably wrong; as sources of necessary information about ourselves that we are lacking; as direction-finders when we feel lost; and as pointers to the way we need to go when we are floundering.

　　The unconscious may communicate to us when we are awake with as much elegance and beneficence as when we are asleep, although in a slightly different form. This is the form of “idle thoughts” or even fragments of thoughts.

　　I have come to conclude that mental illness is not a product of the unconscious; it is instead a phenomenon of consciousness or a disordered relationship between the conscious and unconscious.

　　ut why were these desires and feelings located in the unconscious in the first place？ Why were they repressed？ The answer is that the conscious mind did not want them. And it is in this not-wanting, this disowning, that the problem lies. The problem is not that human beings have such hostile and sexual feelings, but rather that human beings have a conscious mind that is so often unwilling to face these feelings and tolerate the pain of dealing with them, and that is so willing to sweep them under the rug.

　　One of the basic natural laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which staes that energy naturally flow from a state of greeter organization to a state of lesser organization, from a state of higher differentiation to a state of lower differentiation. In other words, the universe is in a process of winding down...The natural downhill flow of energy toward the state of entropy might be termed the force of entropy. We can now realize that the “flow” of evolution is against the force of entropy. The process of evolution has been a development of entropy. The process of evolution has been a development of organisms from lower to higher and higher states of complexity, differentiation and organization.

　　Again and again I have emphasized that the process of spiritual growth is an effortful and difficult one. This is because it is conducted against a natural resistance, against a natural inclination to keep things the way they were, to cling to the old maps and old ways of doing things, to take the easy path.

　　God wants us to become Himself (or Herself or Itself). 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.

　　(It is a terrifying idea because) it is one thing to believe in a nice old God who will take good care of us from a lofty position of power which we ourselves could never begin to attain. It is quite another to believe in a God who has it in mind for us precisely that we should attain His position, His power, His wisdom, His identity. ..But we do not want this obligation. We don’t want to have to work that hard. We don’t want God’s responsibility.

　　Ultimately there sonly the one impediment, and that is laziness. If we overcome laziness, all the other impediments will be overcome. ..So this is a book about laziness.

　　o original sin does exist; it is our laziness.

　　A major form that laziness takes is fear. ..But while all fear is not laziness, much fear is exactly that. Much of our fear is fear of a change in the status quo, a fear that we might lost what we have if we venture forth from where we are now.

　　An essential part of discipline is the development of an awareness of our responsibility and power of choice.

　　If you want to know the closest place to look for grace, it is within yourself. If you desire wisdom greater than your own, you can find it inside you. What this suggests is that the interface between God and man is at least in part the interface between our unconscious and our conscious. To put it plainly, our unconscious is God. God within us. We were part of God all the time.

　　Most people want peace without the aloneness of power. And they want the self-confidence of adulthood without having to grow up.

　　o words can be said, no teaching can be taught that will relieve spiritual travelers form the necessity of picking their own ways, working out with effort and anxiety their own paths through the unique circumstances of their own lives toward the identification of their individual selves with God.