In this thought-provoking volume, an educator of independent, self-directed learning shares his years-long spiritual journey, undertaken outside of traditional religious practice, drawing on a wide variety of texts.

Author Robert Letters was reared as a Roman Catholic and even spent a brief time in a Franciscan seminary, but found himself unsatisfied by institutional religion. He sought to craft his own spiritual practice, hoping to recover the blissful sense of contentment he used to call as a child “being delirious.” He immersed himself in the Bible, the Gnostic Gospels, Buddhism, the writings of monks and Einstein, the Tao Te Ching, and more. He collected his favorite passages in a notebook, using them regularly for meditation.

In this volume, he includes those quotations and his interpretations of them. For example, about Jean Pierre de Caussade’s quote “Realize all you have to do to achieve the height of holiness is to do only what you are already doing…,” he explains: “Everything you can possibly hope for is available to you in the present moment… You learn by doing, over and over.”

Such quotations and thoughts follow his valuable practical advice on how to build a practice of reading, praying, sanctifying everyday activity, and discovering one’s own ethical principles and living by them. Through these activities, anyone can “read the Scripture of the Present Moment, the gospel of the astonishing Mystery of existence.”

Whether readers are lifelong churchgoers or agnostics, Letters’ devotion to self-improvement, his humility and clear, lean writing will convince them to go deeper in the search for spiritual truth. While it would have broadened this book’s perspective to include quotations by women (e.g, Hildegarde of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, or Karen Armstrong), Letters encourages readers to search for what is most meaningful to them.

Letters’ own voice is as profound as any of the sages he quotes: “Salvation, enlightenment is nothing more than your own nature. It is already within you.”

Readers will savor his perspective.

Also available as an ebook.