Spiritual Notes to Myself: Essential Wisdom for the 21st Century

By Hugh Prather

This follow-up to Notes to Myself touches on “gossip, money, marriage, parenting, prayer, and dying with thoughtfulness and humorous practicality” (Library Journal).

As an author, minister, and counselor, Hugh Prather had extensive experience sharing wisdom on worldly (and other-worldly) topics. His book, Notes to Myself, offers a treasury of thoughtful and eye-opening insights and reminders. And this spiritual-themed follow-up book masterfully accomplishes the same goal of guiding readers to greater awareness.

Throughout the book, Prather offers countless tidbits of wisdom. Each line is packed with powerful insight and inspiration that is sure to leave a lasting impact on readers. Though his words are written as “notes-to-self,” Prather’s gaze looks to and reflects on the outside world, and so he draws us all into his thoughts. Through this inner dialogue, we see the world more clearly.

Spiritual growth can be a slow but rewarding process if we devote the time to it. Prather’s words throughout this spiritual book remind us that we are not alone on our journey, and that it is through realizing our oneness with all living things that we find our way.

Check out Hugh Prather’s classic and find . . .

• A simple, easy-to-read guide for greater spiritual and self-awareness
• Powerful words of wisdom on each page
• A resource to return to again and again in your spiritual journey

“We all need to converse with the spirit. It is the only true guide we have. Read and then start taking notes.” —Bernie Siegel, MD, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Love, Medicine and Miracles

“A collection of brief musings, some lovely, others humorous.” —Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 1, 1998
• ISBN: 9781609252007

Hugh Prather

Hugh Prather was the author of more than 14 books, which have sold over 1.5 million copies. He lived with Gayle, his wife of more than 30 years, in Tucson, Arizona, where he was the resident minister at St. Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church. He died in 2010.

Book preview

Why Now?

In the late 1960s I wrote a book entitled Notes to Myself, which was published in 1970. I look back on it now as a writing that in some ways transcended its time but in many ways did not. Certainly we have all learned much since those days of self-examination, self-fulfillment, self-expression, and numerous other focuses on the individual or separate self. It was a time when even the word selfishness went from a negative to a positive. As a society, we still are cleaning up many loose ends from that period. In the groups my wife Gayle and I run for couples and parents, we continue to see individuals tenaciously holding on to myths such as You have to give to yourself before you will have anything to give to others and You can't make someone else happy; you can only make yourself happy and maybe the saddest of all: As parents we have to reclaim our rights; we are not our children's servants. Ironically, it is now two thousand years since Jesus said, Who is greater, the one at the table or the one who serves? Surely, the one at the table. Yet here I am among you as one who serves.

To some extent, Notes to Myself suffered from this type of preoccupation with the unconnected or unserving self. It was based on the premise that we learn about ourselves by studying our private feelings, patterns, thoughts, dreams, reactions to others, and so forth. I believed that by becoming more aware I could improve myself, the way I approached other people, and my life in general. My assumption was not so much wrong as it was incomplete. Certainly it's a good thing to look in our hearts and see what we believe. We all have layers of feelings that become more loving and unifying the deeper we go into them. But at the time, I still was thinking that I was made equally of love and fear, driven equally by the desire to heal and the desire to hurt. I saw the distinction, but I identified with both. This makes for a very slow journey. Today I see more clearly the great gulf between the little self or ego and the united or deeper self.

The 1970s marked the emergence of a general preoccupation with ego enhancement. We had sensitivity groups, consciousness-raising groups, encounter groups, and the beginnings of a tide of books and speakers urging us to love ourselves and honor our feelings. Although this movement did much good, its prominent feature was the ideal that, above all, we should define our ego's needs and devote ourselves to meeting them. Indeed, our ego's needs should not operate unconsciously, but when meeting them is our primary focus in life, we become preoccupied with all we haven't been getting and must get now. This attitude is quite separating and not at all as empowering as it is commonly believed to be.

Within us is a source of power that is far greater than our separate feelings, separate opinions, and separate agendas: our unity with other people. A selfish person is like a single power line attached to nothing. Making the line fatter and longer is impressive but accomplishes nothing. If we devote ourselves to our private differences, we journey down a dead-end road toward loneliness and loss. Far too many people today are ending their lives with a list of petty victories and meaningless gratifications that no one cares about—because they themselves cared about no one. And yet, entreaties to our oneness are distrusted and disbelieved. To much of the world, they are at best a joke; at worst, dangerous rantings.

The thing I lacked most when I wrote Notes to Myself was the experience of what connects us. I gave lip service to the concept of oneness, but it was still mere philosophy, just one idea among many. In another early book I posed the question of whether there is another way to go through life besides being pulled through it kicking and screaming. When I wrote that I was still in love with the question. Now I am in love with the answer.

But please understand, the answer does not lie in having to embrace Judaism, Buddhism, fundamentalism, Catholicism, or any other ism. Nor does it lie in mere belief in God. Believing is of limited use. Sacred scriptures and inspired writings can point the way, but finally you have to walk where they are pointing. This you can do with the aid of a system or by listening to the stillness within you. Either way is fine, but ultimately you must stop searching and simply do it.

There is a way to have a growing fulfillment, a deepening peace, and an unreasonable happiness free of circumstances and events. It lies in recognizing our oneness with all living things. To me God is what binds us together. This is another way of saying God is Love. We simply are not separate. We do not have little private thoughts that affect no one but ourselves. All of that is an illusion, albeit a powerful one. Yet it will remain the hard fact of life until we feel, experience, and immerse ourselves in the stream that runs through us all.

There is no evidence outside of us that this eternal, unchangeable stream exists. Yet we only seem to turn to this one thing our eyes can't see or judge when we have grown tired of the world's usual patterns and of our own small thoughts. I write this book because I assume that you, like me, now feel a yearning for a simpler life and for relationships that last. There is unquestionably a way for you to have the life you long for. I now know this beyond any doubt.

Clearly an ego is not all we are. Nor is the ego's puny range of experience all we believe in. Most individuals have had at least a moment when they felt joined with something greater than themselves. Perhaps they felt swept up in the strains of extraordinary music, or felt utter stillness before the magnificence of nature. Perhaps they experienced an instant of perfect love for a child or an animal and the joy they felt was beyond human description. Perhaps they sensed the existence of an order or a perfection and suddenly they knew that it included everything and everyone.