Book excerpt: Building True Community explores how to build a sense of community as an antidote to divisiveness and distrust. Based on more than thirty years of working with the community building model developed by M. Scott Peck, M.D., bestselling author of The Road Less Traveled and co-founder of the Foundation for Community Encouragement, this book provides a detailed description of the community building experience, how to facilitate the experience, and how to integrate its principles and practices into daily life. Learn how to: • deepen and restore relationships, resolve conflicts, and experience the freedom to be your authentic, best self; • dissolve fixed mental perceptions that reinforce the “optical delusion” of our separateness; • confront what keeps divisions in place that separate people and lead to conflict. Other topics include the underlying principles and conditions that make a sense of community possible, how to create conditions for communities to take root and flourish, how the stages of community play out in daily life, and how to integrate community building practices into daily life. The book also looks back at the origins of community and considers the community building experience as a fusion of spiritual practice with a scientific foundation.