Want spiritual growth? Read more fiction

[S.O.T.T]: Here's a simple fact of life: For the most part, you only have your own lived experience to reflect on. We don't have any way to get inside the minds of our family, friends or neighbors, aside from testimony. We can't truly understand their struggles and their victories from within. But when we read, we do exactly this.

And doing this often imbues us with empathy, because as we experience what others are experiencing (even fictional "others"), we become more aware of others' experiences.

There's another dimension to this, as well: Placing ourselves within another's experience can also illuminate our own experiences. By reading about characters who experience what we do or have experienced, authors give us the gift of fresh language to describe and reflect on our own lives.

This happens when we're reading about characters and their trials, and we get to a point when the words on our page correspond to our own thoughts and feelings, and we can say, I've felt this too. So reading increases our self-awareness - awareness of our own exemplary qualities, as well as our pitfalls and shortcomings...<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...