Each spiritual tradition, in its own way, suggests a model of what it means to be a holy person. Each of them shines a light on the human ideal. Each of them talks about what makes it grow, to endure, to develop, to live a spiritual life in a world calculatingly material and sometimes maddeningly unclear.
Yet, most of the responses to these great life questions do not come from catechetical manuals or theological treatises. In each of the traditions, we find the kind of wisdom literature that transcends both spiritual techniques and sacred theory. This kind of wisdom literature sets out simply to illuminate those passing moments in life that too often seem to be transitory, even worthless, but in which, underneath it all, some of the most disturbing, most challenging personal themes of life—ambition, success, security, exhilarations, endurance, romance, abandonment, depression, failure—are crystallized.
It is an enlightening experience, this wandering into the spiritual insights of other whole cultures, other whole institutions of the spiritual life. It depends for its fruitfulness on openness of heart and awareness of mind. But the journey is well worth the exertion it takes to see old ideas in new ways because it can bring us to the very height and depth of ourselves. It can even bring fresh hearing, new meaning to the stories that come down to us through our own tradition.
A Sufi story defines the process clearly:
“Tell us what you got from enlightenment,” she seeker said. “Did you become divine?”
“No, not divine,” the holy one said.
“Did you become a saint?”
“Oh dear, no,” the holy one said.
“Then what did you become?” the seeker asked.
And the holy one answered, “I became awake.”
It is the task of becoming awake to our God, to our world, to the wisdom that even now lies within us, waiting to be tapped, that is the real meaning of our questions. It is, more than that, the one great task of life.
--from the Prologue to Welcome to the Wisdom of the World: Universal Spiritual Insights Distilled from Five Religious Traditions by Joan Chittister (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)