Reading too much

At a certain point in your life, you come across a great book. It speaks to you. The writer truly understands you. The words wrap themselves elegantly around a reality that you’ve been feeling but haven’t been able to intellectualise.

What a wonderful, affirming and enlightening experience. It transforms you.

Then quite some time goes by, and you find yourself in a similar place again in your life. Maybe the transformation wasn’t so permanent. Perhaps a familiar challenge or theme has arisen. And so you reach for that beloved book, thinking “I could use a reminder”.

Ah, yes, those same, soothing words. They give some relief. You just have to remember them this time.

Another cycle, another season or another year… and though some things have changed, others are the same. This same struggle seems to keep rearing its head. You wonder why you’re stuck in this loop… you must have missed something, surely.

So you dip into the book again. And again. You study it. You learn it. You find yourself quoting it around others, proud of your wokeness…

But part of you also feels silly. Like you’re a broken record. Re-reading takes the magic out of the book. It starts to feel like an instruction manual or school homework. You feel uneasy. The romanticism fades and you taste the faintest hint of resentment towards… the book, or yourself?

Why?

Because you’ve changed. The book served its purpose, but rather than making your own meaning of the words and consummating that knowledge with experience, you keep yearning for the past.

The book brought you into presence. It facilitated a moment of expansion. But you’d done the prior living that made that possible. You were in the trenches!

So trust the present version of yourself. Trust the trenches. Don’t sink with the treasure — let it go and keep swimming. Or, hold on… until you the limits of the intellect hit you like a brick wall, and you realise that meeting the unknown and unknowable in your own unique way is… the only way to live a life that feels “yours” or “worth it”.

If you’re really starting to become your own person (integrating) you’ll realise that others’ words are limited. So don’t let books get in the way of raw, first hand, balls-deep experience.

Direct inquiry is its own skill.

You are 1 of 1.

Step in.