Growing Together

I thought of this book as my dissertation, a chance to write for the sake of learning, to advance original thought, and to establish a specialization (in my case, practical philosophy).

Each chapter offers something I want for my kids:

1. How can we become wise?
2. How can we become truly free?
3. How can we have the deepest love?
4. How can we be at peace with one another?
5. How can we gain spiritual experience?
6. How can we discover purpose in life?

The major theme is that the answers to these questions require being social, so it is written as a series of one-hour "gatherings". Testing revealed that they don't work as planned--there might be something interesting to discover from thinking about why they don't work, so I am linking to them as they were.

The questions are religious, so I tried to appeal to all faiths, including atheism; I supported every answer with both science and scripture. That might have contributed to the ineffectiveness. Feedback also suggested that people don't like to move through these ideas so quickly (maybe people slow down in interfaith situations).