Who is Guiding Your Search?

C.S. Lewis

Reading is a miracle. Imagine the worlds that would be closed to you  if you didn’t know how to read. In the search for a deep and robust spirituality, it’s hard to overestimate the value of reading. Finding guidance in our search comes, at one level, when we open ourselves to the thoughts of others. And reading is one important way to do that. In fact, reading is the only way to do find guidance if your guide is dead. And we should all have a few dead guides.

Exploring the ideas from the past is essential in the search for a deep spirituality.

 

Ep. 45: On the Reading of Old Books — Anselm SocietyIt’s easy to believe that our current technology, including the vast amounts of knowledge we possess, makes us superior to those who lived in earlier times. But knowledge and wisdom are not the same things. The accumulation of knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate into the accumulation of wisdom, love, compassion, and other transformative behaviors. There’s nothing wrong with advancing knowledge. It’s a good thing. But for a spiritual seeker, the knowledge of the present is incomplete unless its refined and reformed by the wisdom of the past.

This week in our look at what it means to be a seeker, we’ll explore the value of finding and listening to guides from the past. How can we identity a guide that resonates? How should we read their words? What do we do read with openness but also discriminate the ideas we read? How do we let the author guide us even though they lived so long ago?

As we consider these questions, and this important topic, we’ll provide and post:

You can also join us each week in April 2021 for a live zoom gathering that explores the weekly topic. These gatherings occur Sunday’s at 10 a.m. PST time. You can also watch the gathering on our stream here on our website at 10 a.m. PST.