The Inner Landscape

Our bodies are mere outlines of a vast and complex interior world, a landscape of contradiction and immense mystery. This Celtic view of the human condition predates Christianity, yet survives to this day as part of Ireland's unique spiritual tradition. On The Inner Landscape, poet and Catholic scholar John O'Donohue explores the themes of self-exile and hardship, and the Celtic way of welcoming paradox and finding precious light in the darkest valleys of our inner terrain.

Instead of fearing the contradictions of the outer world, O'Donohue begins, the Celtic people welcomed them. They developed special blessings for times of suffering in the belief that hardship leads to a special insight or gift of the spirit. When you learn the Celtic “secret of equilibrium”—how to see every difficulty as a threshold of possibility—you renew your life with unending possibilities. Despite our vast technologies, O'Donohue says, our real knowledge is minimal. Only within “the inner landscape” with which we are each blessed can true knowing take place.