Quotes About Growth

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.

If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselves walked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back, and verbal debate.

God brings us—through failure—from unconsciousness to ever-deeper consciousness and conscience.

The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey.

We moved from wondering to answering, which has not served us well at all.

One has to wonder, do we really want people to grow, or do we just want to be in control of the moment?

It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE – IS – HARD.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

Frankly, Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its early stages.

Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept that reality is what it is.

We always become what we behold; the presence that we practice matters.

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A "perfect" person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.

In this book I would like to describe how this message of falling down and moving up is, in fact, the most counter-intuitive message in most of the world's religions, including and most especially Christianity. We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it. I actually think it is the only workable meaning of any remaining notion of "original sin.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

If your prayer is not enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not an occasional "threat," you probably need to do some growing up and learning to love.

What the ego (the False Self) hates and fears more than anything else is change. It will think up a thousand other things to be concerned about or be moralistic about—anything rather than giving up "who I think I am" and "who I need to be to look good.

Resurrection" is another word for change, but particularly positive change—which we tend to see only in the long run. In the short run, it often just looks like death.

You do not think yourself into a new way of living as much as you live your way into a new way of thinking.

Perfection, rather, is the ability to incorporate imperfection! There's no other way to live: You either incorporate imperfection, or you fall into denial. That's how the Spirit moves in or out of our lives. —from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

the Twelve Steps, however, believes that sin and failure are, in fact, the setting and opportunity for the transformation and enlightenment of the offender

Being informed is different from being formed, and the first is a common substitute for the second.

Self-help courses will only help you if they teach you to pay attention to life itself.