The Road Less Traveled
    A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

Renunciation and Rebirth

- Giving up one's self and one's life
    - Seems like a cruel joke on the part of God or fate
    - In Western culture, self is held sacred, and death considered an unspeakable insult
    - Exact opposite is reality:
        - In giving up of self, humans can find the most ecstatic and lasting, durable joy
    - Death provides life with all its meaning
        - This "secret" is central wisdom of religion
- Bracketing is one for of temporary giving up
    - Absolute requirement for significant learning during adulthood
    - It is the act of balancing the need for stability and assertion of the self with the need for new knowledge and greater understanding by temporarily giving up one's self so as to make room for the incorporation of new material into the self
    - Bracket preconceived ideas long enough to welcome strangeness and novelty into perceptual world
    - Requires sophisticated self-knowledge and courageous honesty
- Pain of giving up is pain of death, but death of the old is birth of the new
    - This life is a series of simultaneous deaths and births
- Possible to become free from emotional pain in this life?
    - Yes--once suffering is accepted, it ceases to become suffering
    - Yes--unceasing practice of discpline leads to mastery
    - Yes--spiritually evolved individual is loving individual, and has extraordinary joy
    - No--vacuum of competence in the world that must be filled
        - They are called to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call
- Making decisions with total awareness is infinitely more painful than making decisions with limited or blunted awareness
- One measure of greatness is the capacity for suffering
- You must forge an identity before you can give it up
    - Develop an ego before you can lose it
    - Cannot imitate goodness or virtue
    - Must start at the beginning and go through the middle
- Discipline is a SYSTEM of techniques, because these techniques are very much interrelated
- Strength, energy, and willingness to use these techniques are provided by love

In order to grow, we must be able to practice "bracketing", which is the technique of temporarily setting aside all of our beliefs in order to make room for the incorporation of new material.    In doing this, we use the techniques of discipline to give something up in order to learn something new.