The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

“Ultimately love is everything. […] When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it.”

Fostering genuinely loving relationships requires desire and effort. Peck encourages people to cultivate loving dynamics by investing in the people they care about. You can do so by devoting time to your intimate relationships; this will show that you value your loved ones.

“To willingly confront a problem early, before we are forced to confront it by circumstances, means to put aside something pleasant or less painful for something more painful.”

Delaying gratification is one of Peck’s key techniques for practicing self-discipline. If you confront life’s challenges as they come up, you are exercising your agency and taking control of your life. Saving more enjoyable tasks for later is one way to Use Self-Discipline as a Path to Freedom.

“Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will get lost.”

Everyone proceeds with a self-created “life map” that teaches them how to respond to their present reality. People develop such maps in childhood, but it is important to edit life maps in adulthood so that they match life’s changing circumstances. Be aware of how your life is changing so that you can alter your map accordingly. A map that matches your current life will guide you well.

“What does a life of total dedication to the truth mean? It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination. We know the world only through our relationship to it.”

Peck holds that avoiding falsehoods and embracing truth is essential to spiritual growth. When people obscure, withhold, or manipulate the truth, they are more likely to create confusion in their relationships. Dedication to the truth requires self-reflection, as those who are honest with themselves will find it easier to be honest with others.

“By virtue of the fact that their maps are continually being challenged, open people are continually growing people. Through their openness they can establish and maintain intimate relationships far more effectively than more closed people.”

Pursuing constant growth is difficult, but this endeavor will facilitate a happier life and healthier relationships. If you are dedicated to self-care, self-love, and self-improvement, others will respect you. Respecting yourself is paramount to maintaining equally respectful, intimate relationships.

“Self-discipline is a self-enlarging process. The pain of giving up is the pain of death, but death of the old is birth of the new. The pain of death is the pain of birth, and the pain of birth is the pain of death.”

Life is defined by cycles of death and birth. When people let go of outdated parts of themselves, they create room for more effective, realized versions of themselves to develop. This can be a painful process, but it is one way to find spiritual growth in suffering. If you are uncomfortable with this process, it means you’re challenging yourself to grow.

“When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion—through the fact that for that someone […] we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.”

To Approach Love as a Committed Action, Peck holds that people must exert energy and attention in their relationships. He emphasizes that love is not static or passive. It doesn’t happen to people; instead, it is a choice that people make every day. It is therefore vital to dedicate the effort to showing others that you love and value them.

“While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody greater universal truths […] the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. […] as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters.”

Peck argues that romantic love is not real, lasting love because this initial period of lust and infatuation sets unrealistic standards for intimate relationships. Be aware of the myths that society taught you in your childhood, and realize that these myths may have set impossible expectations for your interpersonal relationships. Some stories that people learn as children may not apply to or accurately reflect their adult reality. It is logical to question these myths and assume a more skeptical, scientific mindset.

“What transpires then in the course of many years of loving, of extending our limits for our cathexes, is a gradual but progressive enlargement of the self, an incorporation within of the world without, and a growth, a stretching and a thinning of our ego boundaries.”

Love is an ongoing process that requires reciprocity, equanimity, and attention. When people approach love as a committed action, they acknowledge that they have a choice about how and to whom they demonstrate love. This choice is a demonstration of their agency and thus their willingness to let love transform them.

“Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”

To approach love as a committed action, grant your partner and yourself room to grow. Peck acknowledges that every individual desires love, care, attention, and support. However, it is important to create balance in one’s interpersonal relationships. If you’re too dependent on your partner, you might be limiting both them and yourself.

“The liberated woman is right to beware of the man who affectionately calls her his ‘pet.’ He may indeed be an individual whose affection is dependent upon her being66 a pet, who lacks the capacity to respect her strength, independence and individuality.”

Healthy and sustainable intimate relationships are founded on mutual respect and therefore require a balance of power. If your partner is condescending to you, they may not value your “independence and individuality.” Conversely, remember to give your partner the same independence and respect that you desire.

“In a real sense love is as selfish as nonlove. Here again there is a paradox in that love is both selfish and unselfish at the same time. It is not selfishness or unselfishness that distinguishes love from nonlove; it is the aim of the action.”

As is true of self-discipline, love requires balance. To foster sustainable loving relationships, you must take care of yourself, too. Without a healthy dose of selfishness in your relationships, you might risk ceding your power, independence, and mental health. You’re not being unloving if you need to set boundaries. Self-love contributes to interpersonal love.

“The principal form that the work of love takes is attention. When we love another we give him or her our attention; we attend to that person’s growth. When we love ourselves we attend to our own growth.”

To pursue and foster love, Practice Genuine Listening Within Your Relationships, as the ongoing act of loving someone requires effort and attention. Listening is an essential way to attend to your loved one’s needs. The same is true of self-love, so be sure to listen to your own needs and feelings so that you can grow.

“When we extend ourselves, our self enters new and unfamiliar territory, so to speak. Our self becomes a new and different self. We do things we are not accustomed to do. We change.”

Love and growth require courage. It may feel uncomfortable to enter new relationships, but doing so is an important part of evolving. When you face your fears, you become stronger. Engaging with new people and investing in new relationships are effective ways to facilitate spiritual development.

“Finally, it is only when one has taken the leap into the unknown of total selfhood, psychological independence and unique individuality that one is free to proceed along still higher paths of spiritual growth and free to manifest love in its greatest dimensions.”

Spiritual growth means taking responsibility, risking comfort, and exploring new experiential terrains. Growth is thus a form of freedom. You are exercising your agency when you acknowledge your need to change and take action to better yourself. In turn, you open yourself to joy, revelation, and love.

“If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating. If we are to love we must extend ourselves to adjust our communication to the capacities of our beloved.”

To practice genuine listening within your relationships, be in tune with your loved ones. You must adapt your communication style to fit the reality of each of your relationships. If you don’t listen and speak in a way that is meaningful to your loved one, you may risk isolating them. Remember that love and listening require attention and openness.

“Since everyone has some understanding—some world view, no matter how limited or primitive or inaccurate—everyone has a religion. This fact, not widely recognized, is of the utmost importance: everyone has a religion.”

Peck defines religion as any system of beliefs that people might hold about themselves and the world around them. This definition suggests that everyone has the power to develop and claim their own religion. Your view of the world need not be limited by organized religious system; it is your own spiritual map.

“To escape from the microcosm of our childhood experience, from the microcosm of our culture and its dogmas, from the half-truths our parents told us, it is essential that we be skeptical about what we think we have learned to date.”

Peck urges people to question the beliefs with which they were raised in order to develop a more authentic understanding of the world. It is good to be skeptical because skepticism helps you to remain aware of both external events and internal changes. Questioning your “childhood experience” is an essential aspect of growing up and freeing yourself from limiting beliefs.

“If there were but one thing I could hope for from the reader of the remainder of this book, it would be that he or she possesses the capacity to perceive the miraculous.”

Peck suggests that transformation occurs when people View Grace as Unearned Assistance. Instances of grace may appear mysterious, but it is this very mystery that might allow for an inner spiritual revolution. While it is important to be skeptical, not every aspect of life should be held to scientific logic or standards.

“The unconscious, however, knows who we really are. A major and essential task in the process of one’s spiritual development is the continuous work of bringing one’s conscious self-concept into progressively greater congruence with reality.”

Peck identifies the unconscious mind as the source of all wisdom and truth. If people quiet their conscious, logical minds, their create room for their unconscious mind to guide them. You can listen to your unconscious mind by paying attention to your dreams and attuning yourself to linguistic slips or instances of serendipity.

“But for the moment let me suggest that one of the reasons we fail to take full advantage of grace is that we are not fully aware of its presence—that is, we don’t find valuable things not sought for, because we fail to appreciate the value of the gift when it is given us.”

To view grace as unearned assistance, Peck insists that people must first open themselves to its existence. Grace can happen or appear to anyone. However, if people do not pay attention, they may “fail to appreciate” the enlightening gifts that grace has to offer. Attune yourself to life’s mysteries and surprises; they may be the collective unconscious trying to communicate with you.

“Spiritual competence may increase […] until the moment of death in advanced old age. Our lifetime offers us unlimited opportunities for spiritual growth until the end.”

To find spiritual growth in suffering, be open to change, no matter what stage of life you’re in. Being alive requires attention, care, and action. You can grow and evolve at any moment in your life; each life challenge is an opportunity for spiritual advancement.

“Love, the extension of the self, is the very act of evolution. It is evolution in progress. The evolutionary force, present in all of life, manifests itself in mankind as human love. Among humanity love is the miraculous force that denies the natural law of entropy.”

Like grace, love has mysterious elements. Peck holds that grace is the life-force that allows humans to resist entropy (the state of utter chaos toward which the universe is constantly moving). When people embrace love, they are resisting chaos and pursuing discipline and growth.