The Road Less Traveled Summary By M. Scott Peck

The Road Less Traveled Summary By M. Scott Peck

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Blog Title: The Road Less Traveled Summary By M. Scott Peck
Name: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
Author: M. Scott Peck
Download The Road Less Traveled For Free at: Audible
Buy The Road Less Traveled at: Amazon
Book size: 315 pages

Overview:

The Road Less Traveled
The Road Less Traveled Summary

Before talking about the book the Road less Traveled Summary let’s first discuss the author of this book, M. Scott Peck. He was an American Psychiatrist and the best-selling author of the book The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth, published in 1978. Pecked served in Administrative posts in the government during his career as a psychiatrist and also served in the U.S Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Let’s have a short discussion about The book The road less traveled, This is one of the best-known books of Peck’s, and this book has made his Reputation. This book is a description of attributes that make for a fulfilled human being, based largely on his experience as a psychiatrist and a person, This book consists of 4 parts:

1. Discipline
2. Nature of Love
3. Growth and Religion
4. Consist of Grace

And at the end of the book, Peck concludes that THE MIRACLE DESCRIBED INDICATE THAT OUR GROWTH AS HUMAN BEINGS IS BEING ASSISTED BY A FORCE OTHER THAN OUR CONSCIOUS WILL.

So let’s begin with The Road Less Traveled Summary:

The Road Less Traveled Part 1: Discipline

Under Discipline, author has shared many sub points

A. Problems and Pain

Here author want us to understand that there are various problems and pains in everyone’s life, and its discipline which helps us to deal with them, author also says that because of problems and pains and struggles we able to grow and improve mentally and physically, but there are many people in this world who run from such problems and pain or can say who avoids it instead of dealing with it, but they should deal with it and hence there are various tools to deal with.

Author says without discipline we can’t solve anything, with some discipline we can solve some problems and with all disciplines, we can solve all problems,  Author says lack or responsibility will damage us in other ways

And those tools are:

i. Gratification

Here author says to meet or face that necessary pain and then get over it and after you get over it you’ll experience the pleasure, the author says that this is the best or can say the decent way to live, and this is often not understandable by an adolescent.

ii. Sins of father

Here author says that some parents set wrong discipline in their children and hence this set their children to the wrong path. Here author says good discipline requires time and love and this time and love will make a child feel worthwhile and increase self-discipline in them.

iii. Time

Author says its ok if you take time to develop effective solution, author says if you wait and think that problems will go by its own then it will not going to happen because problems never go by its own accord, hence it will be better if you don’t ignore them and children often do not “GROW OUT OF IT.”

iv. Responsibility

The author says lack of responsibility can create problems in various ways, author say the very first thing a person should do is to accept the problem before facing it or before solving it.

v. Neuroses and character Disorder

Here the author has spoken about neurotic(mentally ill) and character disorder, here the author has said that neurotic assumes too many responsibilities, neurotic says “I ought” “I should” and character disorder says I can’t, I couldn’t.

And the big problem author say is to distinguish between what we are and in what all things we are not responsible for, and in order to do this differentiation there is a requirement of self-examination,  and author says character disorder people make poor parents.

vi. Escape from Freedom

Here author says sometimes we people refuse to face our responsibilities and we give our power in the hand of fate, government, corporation and boss. We never understand our own power towards our own responsibilities.

vii. Dedication to reality

Here author says that Truth is a reality the more clearly we see the reality the more nicely will able to deal with the world, but there are many people who lack in the good map of the world. Because it’s too difficult to make the map or it’s too small or incomplete.

The author says that the world is changing, hence in order to match a map with that changing reality, many are destroying the new reality.

The Road Less Traveled Part 2: Love

Under love, there are many sub points such as:

A. Love defined

Here Author says that Love is the force which provides motive and enthusiasm energy for the disciple,  As per Peck’s definition, Love is the will which extends one’s self for the purpose for nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Author says many acts which seem to be love is basically not, we need to distinguish the purpose of conscious and unconscious mind of the lover author says that when we love someone the act of loving helps the lover to evolve to a higher state and our spiritual developments is not only important for ourselves but for others as well. The author says love is effortful; love is an act of will.

B. Love is not a feeling

Here author says love is an action and activity, not a feeling. Author says that love is a feeling is a misconception which exists because we confuse loving with Cathecting.

C. Love is disciplined

Here author says that we must learn to manage our feelings, author says that if we are fortunate and we are in the position where many people asked for our attention then we must choose among them whom we must actually love and should give attention, and to do this many things needs to be considered.

The Road Less Traveled Part 3: Growth and Religion

Under Growth and Religion, author has shared many sub points:

A. World Views and Religion

Here author says Everyone in this world has religion no matter how inaccurate, limited and primitive it is but everyone has a religion, But author says that the fact of the matter is that everyone has implicit and explicit detailed or not so detailed view  ideas and belief as to the essential nature of the world, Author says usually persons religion or world view at their best is only an incompletely conscious, author says that what we actually learn about the world and views we form about the world is actually because of our experience which we had determined from the society or from community of our family,

Author says that the religion development happens because of one’s culture, we believe what people around us believe, And the most important part of our culture is our family. And it plays a vital role in developing our religious beliefs and views, and most of us people have no idea or we are not even aware about our own views towards the world and we are also not aware of the uniqueness of the experience from which they have been derived.

B. The Religion of Science

Here author says that the road of spiritual growth comes when we start distrusting things what we had already believed,  and this we can be done by actively seeking the threatening and unfamiliar and by deliberately challenging the validity of what we have been previously taught, author says that the path of holiness comes when we start questioning for everything, author says that there is not better thing than a good hand me down religion, as per science peck says, our beliefs should be grounded on trusted repeatable, and experience which can be verified by other people.

Here author has shared the case of Kathy, here peck says Kathy was a young woman but she was so terrified that God might punish her for her sins, she had developed a system of chanting abbreviated prayers, this nervousness and scared nature of Kathy was because of  narrow and misguided mothering and unsophisticated views of what the Catholic church considered sin and what to do about it,  and to remove Kathy from such wrong perception it took seven years therapy to make Kathy think about herself and become fully functional woman.

Here author has shared various more cases of other people and also explained about a baby and the bath water and scientific tunnel vision.

The Road Less Traveled Part 4: Grace

Under part 4 sub-topics are:

A. The Miracle of Health

Here author says that to some extent a predictable one but the reality of grace will remain unexplainable within the conceptual framework of science and natural law as we understand it, it will remain miraculous and amazing, author says,  that he was aware of so many cases of mental and physical health who were much more better than expected and this can be said as miraculous,  author says that there is some kind of force or mechanism which we can’t understand fully,  and that energy used to work as a routine in most of the people which encourage those people physical health even in the most adverse and bad condition.

B. The miracle of Unconscious

Author says Conscious is a small part of the mind and remaining part is unconscious, author says that our dreams reveal unconscious and therefore help psychotherapist with their work, author says that this unconscious can communicate with us when we are awake. For example idle thoughts.

Here author has discussed various other subtopics do go through it for proper understanding and to have a detailed knowledge.

This is the end of “The Road Less Traveled Summary”. This book can help its reader to change their views about life and also gives full of life-changing insights.

Download The Road Less Traveled For Free at: Audible
Buy The Road Less Traveled at: Amazon

Author of The Road Less Traveled want us to understand That “THE MIRACLE DESCRIBED INDICATES THAT OUR GROWTH AS HUMAN BEING IS BEING ASSISTED BY A FORCE OTHER THAN OUR CONSCIOUS WILL.” – Peck.

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