Sorry, and no problem.
@PureX wrote, "Too often religions dress their idealism up in mythical, metaphorical, symbolic robes so thick that the average person has no sense at all as to how these ideals might be applied in real life. It ends up being a lot of empty artifice and people feel dejected. After all, what good is a God that has no practical function?" I agree. I wanted whatever you could provide to help me rule out that it would be something like that.
With all due respect, you are recommending a philosophical treatise that you describe in terms that you weren't able to define: wisdom, spiritual growth, and enlightenment. I'd be happy to explore any intriguing perspective, but too much of this type of material has turned out to be a disappointment in the past. My best guess is that your source contains nothing of value that isn't already a part of my humanist worldview simply because this has virtually always been the case in the past with others, so I need more than just a title and a link to want to look further. I was hoping you could identify a couple of specific examples of what it is in that resource that makes you recommend it. You called it profound - why?
I'm going to digress a bit into what I call rigorous thinking and soft thinking. Rigorous thought - or critical thought - is focused and concentrated, and based in evidence and rules of inference. Soft thinking is more diffuse. I liken them to the times I studied guitar and music in mathematical terms (scales, intervals, chords, tempos and times, keys, and the like), and the times I was playing. One focuses thought like a laser to study and understand, then changes to a different mode of thought to create.
Soft thinking is an important part of conscious experience - the most important. It includes feelings and intuitions, fears and desires, a sense of security and belonging, and the like. Lose that, and you lose meaning and purpose, as well as the ability to experience enthusiasm in a connection to one's surroundings (spiritual experience) - the anhedonism of depression that sometimes leads to suicide. I want to emphasize the importance I place in this type of thinking EXCEPT when trying to determine what is true about the world. If one is not rigorous when drawing his mental map of what is real and how the world works, he risks making costly mistakes.
When studying philosophy, I am in rigorous thought mode, just as when studying the foundations of harmony and melody. This is no time for soft thinking, which requires changing focus from sharp to fuzzy, and from concentration to a more receptive and passive state of thinking. That great for art, but not intellectual pursuits. So, I was looking for something from you to suggest that you were like-minded, and that I might find interesting what you find interesting. Or, is your approach more like what I am accustomed to - somebody read something that made them feel like it was important, but can't say how or why. You used the word enlightenment. What light do you see, and what is it illuminating?
So, I ask you to provide something that would justify reading the book you recommend, something to pique interest besides your enthusiasm, something that shows me that our thinking is enough alike that I would find value in your recommendation, and perhaps a few representative examples. A good start would be what you consider wisdom to be. I've now given you my definition of what that is as well as an understanding of what I mean by a spiritual experience, and enlightenment. You might enjoy trying to do the same. See if you can come up with short, clear descriptions of what these words mean such that one could easily decide if a given idea meets them as I did for wisdom - knowledge of what will bring relatively lasting satisfaction in life, that is, knowing what to pursue and what to avoid to be satisfied - perhaps in a mate, or a career as I suggested. This is no place for soft thinking and fuzzy definitions.
