The Seven Stone Path

This is a book about wisdom. Not my wisdom, but the universal wisdom that wells up through the soil of the world’s spiritual and philosophical traditions. When we search beneath the surface inflections of time, language, and culture a small number of universal concepts and practices emerge. When we get past the doctrinal debates we notice a deep and rich commonality that transcends all temporal, cultural, geographical, and ideological borders. I am not the first person to notice this. This truth is as old as philosophy itself. After teaching philosophy, religion, and mythology to college students for twenty seven years, leading bright and curious young people through the vast storehouses of the collective wisdom of humankind, an unmistakable realization began to take shape. Behind all the endless diversity and complexity of the world’s wisdom traditions lay a deceptively simple set of insights and suggestions. If we slow down, step back, and deepen our attention, seven key ideas come into view. If we learned to embody these ideas our lives would change for the better. These seven ideas constitute a transformational process that effectively moves us through our own evolution from earlier stages characterized by dependency, fear, and ego-protection to later stages characterized by freedom, compassion, and joy. In other words, if we follow the seven stone path, we will emerge from the cave of conditioned consciousness a little wiser, a little freer, and whole lot happier. 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. This book is not about the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. We’re already overwhelmed with information and ideas. What we need is a map that leads us out of our problem-enamored minds and toward the home we have always longed for, the realization of our own best lives. This book could be that map. Moving toward wisdom is not a once in a while thing; it is an everyday journey. It is a process deeply rooted in innumerable insights, shaped by countless choices, realized in action, and nourished by the voices of those who came before us. Buoyed by the wisdom of others, we sail toward the harbor of our own transcendent realization. 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. Wisdom cannot be transferred from one person to another. Instead, it is drawn out of us by questions, challenges, and our own unavoidable suffering. The best teachers are never concerned with content delivery. What they really want to do is shake us awake from the dream of unconsciousness.