Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path: Living at the Heart of Paradox

Based on more than 30 years of experience and research, the truths in Roadsigns will help you keep your balance on the razor's edge of the spiritual path, whether you travel independently or within an established tradition. The book is organized around four paradoxes that challenge all seekers:

1. You're on your own / You can't do it alone. We want to chart our own individual path, but we know that we don't know everything. We're dependent to a certain extent on teachers, traditions, sacred texts, and the companionship of our fellow seekers.
2. Lose yourself / Improve yourself. We're supposed to transcend the egoic self, but at the same time we have our bodies, personalities, and psychological issues, and sometimes there's a tendency to avoid that stuff.
3. Embrace the world / Escape the world. Many seekers feel pulled between embracing the world as part of the spiritual life and wanting to go off to a monastery, but very few of us are really cut out for monastic life. A lot of great spiritual wisdom comes from the monastic traditions, often from a culture in which life was very different from contemporary America.
4. You're already there / There's a long way to go. Some teachings tell us that there's nothing to do, you're already enlightened, just be in the moment. This has validity, but it's also deceiving. We often have setbacks and life gets difficult at times. We experience things that seem to impede our progress but, when taken a different way, are stepping-stones to greater progress if we use them properly.

Praise for Roadsigns 

Goldberg’s travel tips, drawn from a wealth of experience and insight, are as practical as they are wise. —Deepak Chopra

This is one of the wisest books to appear in recent years about the perils and promises that are routinely encountered by all spiritual seekers. At a time in history when people are desperately grasping for security and certainty, Roadsigns is an invaluable contribution from a very wise spiritual teacher. Beautifully written and compellingly insightful, Roadsigns deserves to become a classic in the spiritual literature of our day. —Larry Dossey, MD, Reinventing Medicine and Healing Beyond the Body

Phil Goldberg offers us a deeply wise and practical vision of the spiritual journey that, drawing on the metaphors of travel, guides us through the paradoxes of inner experience we all encounter. This is a wonderfully useful book. —Brother Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart and A Monk in the World

If you feel lost on the journey toward a more fulfilling spiritual life, Roadsigns will be your treasure map. Filled with practical advice, invaluable wisdom, and the experience of a seasoned traveler, you’re sure to find your own unique path to spiritual happiness. —Cheryl Richardson, Stand Up for Your Life, Life Makeovers and Take Time for Your Life

Roadsigns is a wise and practical guide for anyone trying to find a way through the maze of spiritual pathways to what is truly meaningful and rewarding. —Frances Vaughan, Ph.D., Shadows of the Sacred, The Inward Arc and Beyond Ego