The Soul Habit – a book outline

What we lack most in the modern world is a sense of a larger purpose to our lives. In the past, it was organized religion that often supplied this. But most of us now live in a secularized world. …without a sense of direction provided to us, we tend to flounder. We don’t how to fill up and structure our time. – Robert Greene in Mastery

I am writing a book about how we can learn from religion to improve our lives: to become more fulfilled, more engaged, even more successful. Think 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. But instead of studying successful people, I’ll study the world’s most effective and enduring religions.

The focus is on deed instead of creed, on what to DO and not what to believe. For example, how Buddhist meditation can help you feel more calm and improve your memory. Why pilgrimage is simply a deeper and more transformative way to travel. What are the benefits of daily prayer. Why almost every religion encourages its followers to tithe, to fast, to forgive. Even how to become a better lover (yes, really :-)

I call it The Soul Habit. As Aristotle said, excellence is not an act but a habit. A good life, then, is built on building and keeping the right habits. Most of us are convinced of the need for healthy diets and regular exercise and frequent social contact. But we forget the most important habit of all, the one that is fuel and foundation for all the rest: the SOUL habit. We must – must – nurture and grow and feed our spirit, our souls, our hearts. Corny, yes, but very important and very powerful.

The below is a working outline of the book. I’ll publish essays and excerpts here as I write the draft. I plan to film a documentary in parallel, by visiting religious communities like the Kyoto Marathon Monks, pilgrimage sites like Mecca, show how religion is practiced in homes around the world from Moscow to Mexico City. And I need and would love any help you can provide: feedback, introductions, resources, questions. Email me here!

  • A good life is all about good habits, but we ignore perhaps the most important one, and with it, most of the others fall into place: the Soul Habit
  • We need religion and spirituality. The developed world is running away from religion, but what replaces it can be worse: money, materialism, me, more
  • The Soul Habit: making religion a cornerstone habit in our daily lives (each habit will be accompanied by a couple detailed stories)
    • The Food Habit: Compassionate Eating (stories: fasting during Ramadan and Lent; how Hindus practice ahimsa and vegetarianism; Jews and halal; Christians and agape)
    • The Giving and Service Habit: Less Is More (stories: Mormon tithing and mission; Buddhist alms; Islam and zakat)
    • The Pilgrimage Habit: Travel with Purpose (stories: Shintoism and visiting shrines in Japan; Rumi’s Tomb in Turkey; the Camino de Santiago; Mecca and hajj; Amish and Mennonite rumspringa)
    • The Mindset Habit: Freedom is Discipline (stories: prayer across many religions; Gregorian chants; meditation across many disciplines including Buddhism and Kabbalah; the Quaker practice of silence)
    • The Love Habit (stories: everything from Kosher sex to tantra, Sharia law to Buddhist chastity)
    • The Body Habit (stories: the origins of yoga and qi gong; how the 7th Day Adventists became a Blue Zone; the Marathon Monks of Kyoto)
    • The Festival Habit: Celebrate Being Alive (stories: from kirtan to bacchanalia to Jubilee)
    • The Habit of Symbols & Signs: Because we are forgetful (stories: the 5 K’s of Sikhism; yarmulke & taqiyah; WWJD)
    • The Life Cycle Habit: Marking the moments (stories: coming of age events like Bar Mitzah and Quincenera; Greek memento mori; Jewish death cafes)
    • The Solitude and Rest Habit (stories: Plato’s theoria; Christian Sabbath)
    • The Social Habit (stories: the Golden Rule across all religions; Confucianism; Jewish minyan)
    • The Therapy Habit (stories: Catholic confession; Christian small group; Jewish atonement; Hindu swamis and pandits)
    • The Role Models Habit: Who do we want to be? (stories: David Brooks’s moral geniuses; Bodhis & bhakti; idols and polytheism)
    • Others: Environment and Mother Nature; Learning for Life

The below are points that I hope to make throughout the course of the book. I’ll probably weave them in, but let the above habits and stories be the book’s focus.

  • Imagine a future where we stop fighting over the “right” religion, and accept that they all have value. We incorporate religious knowledge to better ourselves, our communities, and the world. Followers of any faith are willing to learn from other faiths, to cooperate with each other, partner and work together. Balanced and thoughtful education in world religion is a basic part of our children’s education. The nonreligious and unaffiliated acknowledge religion as a source of life wisdom
  • Religion is human nature (as old as civilization, Jonathan Haidt’s axis of divinity, organized religion compared to universities and corporations,
  • Religion as universal wisdom (Houston Smith’s the wisdom traditions, Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, religion’s relationship with philosophy
  • Religion is the original Big Business (from Christian publishing to Halal food, the wealth and breadth and longevity of religious institutions)
  • Religion as a positive force to unite the world (a shrinking world, expanding human rights, FutureShock, religion’s original mission)
  • My experience: After a nonreligious childhood, how I came to appreciate and incorporate religion into my life. Three books that changed how I saw religion (Religion for Atheists, Life of Pi, and The Power of Habit)
  • The world is becoming more religious, not less. Even America. The secular is becoming spiritual, and vice-versa (Eric Hoffer’s True Believer, CrossFit & SoulCycle, Tony Robbins & Steve Jobs). For each element of religion, there are growing secular equivalents (from raves to Burning Man, therapists & life coaches, fad diets, self-help literature). Americans are deeply religious, but we prefer to ignore and hide our faith (Spiritual but not religious, Slavoj Zizek, transcendental meditation, yoga)
  • We quit and ignore religion, but for the wrong reasons. And it creates a vacuum which we struggle to fill. Why we quit (because it’s hard, because we dislike the “organized” / institution)
  • We become the lead actor in our life’s movie. Our character’s main goal is the pursuit of happiness (and secondarily: money, fame, youth). But we’re not meant to be the star of our own show
  • The vacuum is filled by other belief systems. We don’t recognize them for what they are: beliefs just like religion, and systems that continue to direct our lives. Examples: capitalism, materialism, technology. Money and fame: why billionaires and celebrities are our today’s idols.
  • Religion has many flaws. We shouldn’t hide or ignore them. Instead we should address them, understand them, try to fix them. Criticisms of religion as a belief. Criticisms of religion as an institution, as organizations

Whew, that’s a lot. Thanks for getting through it! And I’m sure the outline will change as I do the real work of writing it, heh.

If you have any feedback, any at all, whether questions or research recs, parts you like or don’t understand or hate, stories to share, please get in touch.

And if you sign-up for this here newsletter, I will send a sporadic email (somewhere between every 2 weeks and 2 months) with a Soul Habit update: notes, thoughts, essay drafts and more. Thank you!