The Club of the Restless: A Spiritual Search in Modern Times

A warm book whose sincerity and courageous self-criticism set its spiritual search apart from “take care of yourself” clichés. For the reader taking a first step toward Sufism, it is a companion Cevvela recommends with an easy heart. Its opening promise is this: you will not read the teachings of a sage who climbed Mount Qaf and met the Simurgh, but the notes of a traveler who fell many times while climbing that mountain, lost the way and turned back — yet is more hopeful than before. That sentence is both the backbone of the book and what makes it lovable. The author drops the sage’s pose from the very beginning and says he wrote the text first of all to quiet his own restlessness. This honesty has a tone rarely found on the self-help shelf.

Its worldview is a reading of ancient wisdom centered on Sufism. Tanca sums up the bitter pill modernism made us swallow as putting reason first and rejecting the soul, and he argues that the ancient teachings point to the same single truth — unity. He builds his claims not on proof but on lived experience and tradition; this makes the book less a thesis than a traveling companion, which is exactly its intention. The language is warm and conversational, with plenty of rhetorical questions and personal memories woven in. His background as a columnist shows, but it gives each piece the flavor of an essay in its own right.

The real value lies not in the summit photographs but in the places where the author puts up a sign saying “this is where I twisted my ankle.” The chapter on “Spiritual Bypass” is exactly such a place. It takes rare courage for a book about spirituality to warn against spirituality. Tanca uses John Welwood’s concept of “spiritual bypassing” aptly: he describes how a person — even a traveler on the path — can instrumentalize spiritual practice to sweep real psychological pain under the carpet. This self-criticism earns the book a trust that is not easily won. Many people talk about the light; few also show the shadow.

He is looking for a “middle way” that can be walked within modern life, without retreating to the mountain. What he seeks is valuable — and so is the honesty with which he keeps the search.