Quotes About Growth

But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up.

A page a day is a book a year. Listen to that again: a page a day is a book a year.

the ordeal of developing new selves will not be seriously entertained, much less embarked upon, until [people] are forced into it by the partial destruction of their former selves.

And most generally and profoundly: "The very fact that knowledge is itself the basis for civilization points directly to openness as the way to overcome the present crisis.

By 1879, national hay production totaled 35 million tons, a figure that had nearly tripled to 97 million tons by 1909. More than half the land in New England was devoted to hay by 1909 as well, and at least twenty-two states harvested more than a million acres a year of hay and forage.11 The mechanization of American agriculture with horse-drawn or horse-powered machinery supported this vast expansion.

But the great mast trees took 80 to 120 years to grow to sufficient diameter. A landowner who planted an acorn could hope his grandchildren or great-grandchildren might harvest it for profit—if the intervening generations could wait so long. Many could not; many did not. Selling timber was an easy means to raise cash; landowners from the king on down took advantage of the opportunity whenever their purses emptied.

The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.

I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then, I must watch my reaction to it. I have no other way of spotting both my denied shadow self and my idealized persona.

The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.

The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there.

Life is all about practicing for heaven. p 101.

If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise, just bogus self-improvement on our own terms.

You ironically have to have a very strong ego structure to let go of your ego. You need to struggle with the rules more than a bit before you throw them out. You only internalize values by butting up against external values for a while.

In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us.

We all remain who we are. But on the way to healing or liberation we have to do what the Romans called agere contra: we have to act against the grain of our natural compulsions. This requires clear decisions. Because it does not happen by itself, it is in a way unnatural or supernatural . . . (we) simply have to cut loose now and then, and in the process . . . make mistakes.

One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions, and making friends with their own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting. We tend to endure them more than communicate with them, because they have little to communicate.

Yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, which is why the religious traditions call it "conversion" or "repentance.

Our wounds are the only thing humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self.

all mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning.

Basically, the first half of life is writing the text, and the second half is writing the commentary on that text.

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.

We are usually on bended knee before laws or angrily reacting against them, both immature responses.

Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners.

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.