What is wisdom and why do we need it? For thousands of years, we've tried to answer those two questions. Yet even the most dedicated students often find the path to wisdom daunting. The Seven Stone An Everyday Journey to Wisdom explores seven archetypal ideas found throughout the world's wisdom traditions, turning them into tools anyone can use to deepen and enrich their lives. The seven ideas are acceptance, surrender, engagement, allowance, enjoyment, love, and integration. The goal of this book is to broaden our understanding of these crucial ideas and root them deeply into our everyday lives. Moving toward wisdom is not an esoteric practice reserved only for specialists and insiders. Cultivating wisdom, like breathing, is an innate, natural process available to everyone. Discover how following the seven stone path will allow you to emerge from a cave of conditioned consciousness a little wiser, a little freer, and a lot happier.
Having attended Peter Bolland's OASIS classes for the past 15 years, I'm delighted to have his book. It brings the wide variety of my past learnings into focus in one place. The book links wisdom to spirituality, philosophy, and world religions. I can savor, reread...concentrating on living a life with focus and meaning.
Throughout his career Peter Bolland has impacted thousands of others like myself, so humbly, where he has been called—a professor, lecturer, singer-songwriter, musician, writer, and now debut author. I was fortunate to take several classes with him at my local community college nearly twenty years ago. His teaching inspired me to change majors to philosophy. Needless to say I'm absolutely revered by the release of his first published book, and you should be too.
Composed with some of my most favored class discussions, The Seven Stone Path: An Everyday Journey to Wisdom is a collection of historical knowledge, philosophical insight, and personal life reflections. He's basically done all the work for us in answering the fundamental questions: What is wisdom and how do we become wise? Bolland creates imagery with words and masterpieces through thought, guiding his readers through seven stones—acceptance, surrender, engagement, allowance, enjoyment, love, and integration. It is through these archetypal ideas and edifying guided meditations one can elevate from the ordinary and integrate wisdom in life.
One of the very odd things that begins to happen as you study differences is that you see similarities. When you expose yourself to a wide variety of philosophies and cultures, you begin to see how much is strangely similar. In The Seven Stone Path: An Everyday Journey to Wisdom, Peter Bolland shares seven key ideas that lead to lasting wisdom. His seven ideas are acceptance, surrender, engagement, allowance, enjoyment, love, and integration.
A beautifully written examination of the commonalities of world religions. How they gel as cohesive expressions of the Perennial Philosophy and how they are all gateways to wisdom when viewed beyond layers of dogma and literal interpretation. Peter Bolland, manages to distil the core themes of the great religions and when coupled with his own insights, experiences and career as a philosophy professor, and artist, has written a easy to follow, step by step (or stone by stone) guide to the path to wisdom and spiritual understanding.
I won't write a review of my own book--that seems weird. (Five stars seems about right. ;-) But I will say thank you to everyone reading The Seven Stone Path: An Everyday Journey to Wisdom, and an extra special thank you to anyone who's written a review here or on Amazon. That really helps!
One of the best books I ever read! Especially the last chapter was the best summary of what it is all about in one's life. 'The Seven Stone Path' is highly recommended for all the seekers in this material world.