# Soul Boom by Rainn Wilson - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? An amusing trip along the spiritual path

You’re probably wondering why the author Rainn Wilson, best known for his role as Dwight in The Office, has written a book about spirituality. Unless you read his 2015 memoir, The Bassoon King, which tells his complicated life story of becoming an actor, a member of the Baha’i Faith and a devoted spiritual seeker. In that case, you’re not wondering.

But if you didn’t read Wilson’s memoir, here’s the short answer: Wilson’s childhood revolved around art and spirituality. His father was an abstract painter and sci-fi writer. And both his parents were adherents of the Baha’i Faith, which preaches “unity through diversity” as its guiding creed. That meant when Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door they were invited in, and a Bible study and Baha’i discussion would follow – with pancakes!

That upbringing laid the groundwork for Wilson’s spirituality, and the mental health issues he experienced in his 20’s and 30’s pushed it to another level. He struggled with anxiety attacks, clinical depression and addictions of all kinds. He eventually hit rock bottom before finding a way to recovery along a spiritual path. Wilson doesn’t claim to be any kind of expert, but he has devoted himself to reading holy texts, meditating, studying religions and searching for the meaning of life.

Essentially, the author has been viewing life through spiritual lenses for a long time, and he’s worked hard to keep them clean. But what does he see? Well, in a nutshell, a world that’s in chaos and pain, a world that needs to heal by following the spiritual path. 

In his book, Wilson sidetracks into topics related to spirituality like death, God and sacred pilgrims. He even creates his own religion, also called Soul Boom. But this Blink won’t travel down those branches. We’ll stay focused on the spiritual revolution, and we’ll take the most direct route away from suffering and turmoil, and toward inner harmony and – the real goal – a better world.

From the Wild West to the Far Reaches of Space

The spiritual path runs in two directions – internally, toward our own peace and enlightenment, and externally, toward the greater good of humanity. The perfect way to illustrate these paths, at least for a wildly handsome actor who grew up in suburban Seattle in the 1970s, is with the television shows Kung Fu and Star Trek.

For the uninitiated, Kung Fu starred David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine (let’s call him KCC for short). KCC was the orphaned child of a Chinese woman and a white man, and he was raised in a Shaolin monastery. As an adult, he traveled alone in the American Old West, following his moral compass and the spiritual lessons he learned from his Shaolin teachers, Master Kan and Master Po. They also taught him to fight like a badass, which came in handy when some ignorant cowboys were causing trouble, and that was pretty much every episode.

The internal direction that KCC represents is the way most of us travel along the spiritual path. We seek serenity and wisdom to help make our own lives better. That’s a worthy pursuit, but most of us never travel in the opposite direction. Heck, a lot of us don’t even look that way, even though most major religions emphasize the need to serve others, especially those who need it most.

There are many stories of the Buddha feeding and educating the less fortunate, and he sent his original troop of monks into the world with these instructions: “Wander forth for the good of many, for the welfare of many, in compassion for the world.” This actually sounds a lot like pages from the Torah that say, “Give justice to the weak and fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.” It also sounds like these words of Jesus: “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay for his deed.” And how about these words from Mohammed: “The best of you is he who is most beneficial to others.”

You might be a bit wary of religious teachings. And you might have very good reasons for it. If it makes you more comfortable, you can follow the advice of a space traveler from the future – Captain James T. Kirk. He can show us the way along the external spiritual path and how to help the greater good. That’s exactly what Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise were doing on Star Trek. The original version of the show is set in the 23rd century, a time when the people of Earth have become intellectually and spiritually enlightened. They want to spread that enlightenment to the far reaches of the galaxy, no matter how strange the planet or alien.

While William Shatner has enjoyed a long acting career, not enough of us have emulated the character that made him famous, Captain Kirk. Yes, it’s tough to pull off the form-fitting space uniform look, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Humanity needs more Captain Kirks peering into the dark places and offering a helping hand. 

Why? Because we are surrounded by an angry mob of pandemics.

Troubles Abound

The human race is currently facing the kind of obstacle course reserved for ninjas, warriors and ninja warriors. Everywhere we look destructive trends are pulling at the fabric of society and threatening to tear us, and the planet, apart. It’s one pandemic after another.

We’re all too familiar with the COVID-19 pandemic that has taken 7 million lives and is still lingering at the time of writing. But pandemics come in all shapes and sizes. Like the mental health crisis in America among youth and young adults. Between 2008 and 2017, the rate of suicide-related thoughts and outcomes among young adults in the U.S. increased 47%, and that’s just one of the alarming statistics compiled by The Brookings Institute when it comes to this mental health pandemic. Here’s another: nearly 1 in 10 Americans experienced prevalent depression in 2020, but that number was almost 1 in 5 for adolescents and for young adults.

And how about our unchecked materialism and consumerism? Our culture sells us on products we don’t need and dreams that aren’t our own. We spend our lives chasing the wealth to buy it all and be depressed when we don’t get everything, all while polluting oceans with plastic and the land with landfills. That feels like a pandemic-level problem.

Riding alongside the plague of materialism is the unjust economic extremes of the haves and the have-nots. According to Oxfam International, the eight richest people in the world own as much as the poorest 50 percent of the population, about four billion people. And the top three wealthiest individuals own as much as the poorest 48 countries combined. This grotesque imbalance impacts healthcare, nutrition, child mortality, education and more.

We’re also seeing a rise in nationalism and militarism, and the wars that naturally follow. The increase in global conflicts and the potential use of nuclear weapons has us peering over the brink of existence. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is both an organization and a publication, measures the man-made threat to the human race and the planet by means of their “Doomsday Clock.” In 2022, the Doomsday Clock was the closest it’s ever been to midnight, aka extinction. The bulletin said there were two main reasons for that – the threat of nuclear war, and the elephant in the room, the granddaddy of pandemics, climate change.

The signs of climate change are everywhere. The planet shows them with melting glaciers, extreme weather and species extinction. Humanity is showing the signs, too, as tens of millions migrate away from excessive heat and drought.

On the surface, the cause of the climate crisis looks simple – man-made greenhouse gasses harm the atmosphere and lead to global warming. But there are deeper root causes. So let’s keep digging.

The Spiritual Revolution

All these pandemics may seem like political or social problems. But ask yourself, have our politicians solved them? Can they even? Have social structures like government, economic systems and political movements solved them? Can they?

When we look deeper, we see these are really spiritual problems calling for spiritual answers. This is why we need a spiritual revolution.

The root cause of the climate crisis is greed and an insatiable desire for economic growth. The same greed creates unjust economic extremes. The planet and the poor are both abused, subjugated and lied to so the rich can add another meaningless zero to the long line of zeroes at the end of their bottom line.

Greed and envy are also at the center of our materialism, which has roots in our human instinct to survive. Eons ago, gathering enough berries, furs and pointy sticks in your cave was critical for living through the winter. Today that instinct has been manipulated and perverted to make us ravenous consumers. The same goes for our fear of “the other.” Fearing or conquering the tribe in the next valley, “the other,” used to be a helpful survival tool. Now, it leads to the evils of nationalism, militarism and war, not to mention two horrible pandemics we didn’t even get into, racism and sexism.

How do we stop fearing and hating the other? Well, we employ understanding, compassion and love. And what’s the opposite of greed and deceit? Generosity and honesty.

We all recognize these as positive traits, but the truth is they’re not valued in most Western cultures where consumerism and nationalism reign supreme. That’s where the spiritual revolution comes in.

We need to change our society at its foundations so that we hold traits like compassion, generosity and honesty in the highest regard. We also need to base our governing systems and business models on those traits, instead of basing them on the worst traits of humanity, like aggression, tribalism and gluttony.

How do we do all that? The author admits he doesn’t have an action plan expansive enough to make it all happen, but he has a few key ideas. Like creating a new human mythology without the overriding “Us vs. Them” narrative. Like investing in education that teaches virtues such as empathy and selflessness. Like finding solutions and building new systems through grassroots movements, as opposed to just protesting and tearing down.

He also boils the revolution down to a single word: Unity. We need to connect with everyone, not just our family or our tribe, but everyone, everywhere. We need to treat others as we would want to be treated. We need to serve the greater good.

So there you have it, condensed instructions for a spiritual revolution. Follow the path set by Captain James T. Kirk and selflessly serve in the name of unity.

The Golden Rule

Unity. The secret sauce, the magic bean, the panacea for the world’s ills. 

The author isn’t the first to suggest this concept. Actually, unity is a concept shared by the world’s religions. Christians call it the Golden Rule. They base it on these words of Jesus from the Bible, “In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you.”

The Mahabharata, a Hindu holy text, declares, “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.” And Mohammed tells his Islamic followers, “Not one of you truly believe until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.” In the Talmud, Rabbi Hillel tells the Jewish people, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah; all the rest is commentary.”

The great Taoist philosopher Lao-tzu said, “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.” And Confucius tells us, “One word which sums up the basis of all good conduct… (is) loving-kindness. Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.” And Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i faith that the author follows, says, “Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things you would not desire for yourself.”

Okay, okay, that’s a lot of religions. Maybe you’re not religious at all. But you don’t have to be to participate in this revolution. All it takes is a little spirituality. 

Religion used to be the way to spirituality, but it doesn’t have to be for you. You just need to believe, even a little, that there is something more to us than our physical bodies. The existence of consciousness should take care of that for many of you. After all, scientists can’t explain what it is, how it works or why we have it. They can’t even explain why our memory appears infinite, or is located in different parts of the brain, or why we dream, or why we have emotions. So, there seems to be a lot more to us than just our physical bodies.

And that overriding concept of unity? That’s also not exclusive to religion. Just listen to a scientist and a naturalist, who it’s fair to say are pretty well regarded.

First up Albert Einstein, who said, “The greatest illusion in this world is the illusion of separation.” And now John Muir, widely known as the “Father of the National Parks.” He said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

The truth is, we are all connected, and we all need each other, like one big family. In the end, the spiritual revolution is that simple - taking care of your own.

Final summary

The world’s problems are spiritual problems, so the best way to solve them is by spiritual means.

We can follow the spiritual path to our hearts, like Kwai Chang Caine from the series Kung Fu, and foster serenity, inner peace and compassion. But to help humanity and the planet out of our current mess we must also walk the external spiritual path. We must put our compass and compassion to good use, just like Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise. We must serve others, especially those in the most need, and must treat them like we would want to be treated.

If enough of us start doing that, the spiritual revolution will begin. And who knows, it just might be televised.