Yesterday I hosted a discussion group for people who wanted to talk about the book a little more in depth.  This is the second of these I have done, and I’ve found that the discussion tends to be less about the book than about the personal struggles people have had with finding a healthy spiritual community and/or a trustworthy teacher.  Sometimes, people who have had a bad experience just need to tell their stories to others who understand just how easy it is to find oneself involved in something that was very different from how it first appeared.

 At one point, a woman who had spent decades in an intentional spiritual community made a comment about how stressful day-to-day living was in that community because of the pressure that came from the idea that any mistakes they made would be magnified because they were on the cutting edge of spiritual evolution.

And then we all dissolved into gales of laughter.