My sponsor turned me on to Richard Rohr and I’ve been receiving the daily reading for a couple of weeks now. Generally, it’s quite good, but every once in a while there’s a gem like this:
Until the mind is freed from the multitudes of thoughts, and has achieved the single simplicity of purity, it cannot experience spiritual knowledge.
—Isaac of Syria
Sometimes a person like Isaac of Syria (?) reaches for that quote that just knocks it out of the park… and ends up saying something so dumb, it’s a wonder he was ever quoted in the first place.
This is akin to saying, “you can’t achieve true recovery unless you perfectly work all twelve steps for a period of 20-years or more without relapse”. To even utter such gobbledygook should require wearing a bumper sticker on the back of one’s jeans that says, “Don’t Listen To A Word I Say… I’m An Idiot” until the person recants.
Should one be required to be freed from the multitudes of thoughts and achieve simplicity of purity to be able to experience spiritual knowledge, every alcoholic and addict who has ever recovered would have been doomed before we started.
It’s not as saucy, but a better version of what Isaac of Syria said is, “Achieving clarity of spiritual knowledge is increasingly glorious as one learns to free one’s mind from the multitudes of thoughts that cloud that spirituality”.
If you’re a bit lost, watch the Olympics, specifically figure skating or gymnastics coverage. All of that platitudinous bullshit is what I’m referring to. We call that diarrhea of the mouth.
Fit Recovery 
This reflection is pure gold. Thank you. Spiritual superiority is the ultimate form of absurdity. Thank you for the reality check.
Thank you!