Audible tells me in it’s year-end report that my most-listened-to book of 2022 was the above, Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse.
I’m not surprised. It’s been both a multiple listen and a physical read. I love the narrative of spiritual coming of age — an important thread for me in my last 45 years of living.
I also love the theme of spiritual awakening, particularly when it is oriented through the self. My overall translation of that is an awakening that values the deeply inner.
Says the character Siddhartha, at one stage of his becoming…
“Yes, he thought, breathing deeply, I will no longer try to escape from Siddhartha. I will no longer devote my thoughts to Atman and the sorrows of the world. I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. I will not longer study Yoga-Veda, Atharva-Veda, or asceticism, or any other teachings. I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha.”
It is an important moment, I believe, when any of us turn to ourselves as the materials to be most intimate with.
I don’t the read the above as rejection of the many outer or communal resources — that is how most of us seem to populate our learnings. I do read it as a keen remembering to take the deeply inner journey, and know it for its richness, and to be held in such journey, and witnessed.
May there be wisdom found for any of us, in these deep journeys of becoming.