Book Report: The Road Less Traveled – A new psychology of love, traditional values and spiritual growth by Scott Peck, MD
Scott Peck is a psychiatrist who writes a very philosophical and intellectual book on life, love, values and spiritual growth based around his own life experiences and those of his patients and their mental/life struggles.
I really chose this book to read because of the title. One of my favorite poems is Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Woods… by Robert Frost, so the title caught my attention.
Key Concepts:
Life – is a series of problems to solve through discipline, so welcome them and teach your children likewise. A full life will be full of pain…
Discipline – delayed gratification, do hard or painful things first before pleasure. Healthier children see this example.
Children – love is shown by parents suffering with them through life experiences, which creates value in them, and ultimately security. Empty parental promises produce distrust in kids.
Problems – require time to solve, with willingness to tackle and responsibility or ownership of issue. This is in contrast to hoping the problem will go away or is a world issue or any other excuse.
Lies – people lie to avoid the challenge or the problem and the resulting consequences. Lying requires more energy, honesty in contrast less energy.
Love – is about life long learning and spiritual development and evolution. It is not a feeling, but a choice, and an awareness of our laziness.
Marriage – healthy if capable of living without each other but chose to live with each other.
Commitment – is the willingness to attend to each other and nuture one’s own and another’s spiritual development.
Attention – active listening is a key to love and marriage. Teach your children to actively listen. Listening creates value and value shows love. Other ways to give attention are; playing games, helping with homework, and doing family activities.
Confrontation – your spouse should be your best critic, but adjust your communication to your beloved.
Grace – comes to us through a state of appreciation, gratefulness and thankfulness. Unconscious, a self knowledge, awareness, and revelation. Often a re-know…
Education – bring out of, lead forth.
Serendipity – the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things, not sought for.
God – joy, love and peace, our goal should be to be more like Him (righteousness), abide in Him. Man entered into sin after the enemy lied to them that if they ate from the tree of good and evil they would be like God. Also Solomon sought wisdom and in turn was highly favored and blessed by God.
Sin – a laziness to consult with God. The lack of effort is often a fear of God or a fear of change.
Evil – is extreme laziness revealed.
Holy Spirit – connected with our unconscious state, creates a state of higher spiritual awareness. There is no teacher only yourself, the Trinity and life experiences.
This book covers a lot of key concepts or ideas that I’m wrestling with, with God. I really liked his concept on a healthy marriage because my wife and I are definitely going through a transition in our relationship with the end of babies, hormonal changes, and adult children, all at the time of extreme stress associated with the investigation, case work, sentencing and incarceration, which has been almost 5 years. So now we have been separated because of the incarceration and realize we can function separately and will chose to live together moving forward, which is true love, and help each other towards greater spiritual development with God, and because of our marriage vows, a commitment to each other before God.
I also appreciated the thoughts on creating more value in your children, which creates more security and hopefully, with God’s grace healthier young adults ready to tackle the problems that the world and life present. This aligns with who we are as a family and being intentional with the children He has blessed us with.
