Quotes About Perspective

No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it in the first place.

We don't think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into a new way of thinking.

What is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age. —CARL JUNG No wise person ever wanted to be younger. —NATIVE AMERICAN APHORISM

We see what we are ready to see, expect to see, and even desire to see.

It seems that human beings cannot see what they are not readied to see. We cannot hear what we have not been prepared to hear. The "obvious" seems to have little correlation with our acceptance of it. We all have an amazing capacity for missing the point.

As physicist Albert Einstein frequently said in a different way: No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused the problem in the first place.

light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else.

Yet historically, the teaching of original sin started us off on the wrong foot—with a no instead of a yes, with a mistrust instead of a trust.

Even with all the best intentions in the world, given our different temperaments, backgrounds, and the way we process our data and information, we are going to step on one another's toes. Two people with absolutely good will can deeply hurt one another. Good people hurt one another because we all come at reality in different ways. That's why, for Jesus, the only way to achieve union is through forgiveness, not through making sin impossible.

The concern was about getting the beginning right, and then life and eternity would take care of themselves. We have been preoccupied with getting the end right, for some reason.

The unprayerful heart will always twist reality to its own liking.

this preoccupation with order, control

What passes for morality or spirituality in the vast majority of people's lives is the way everybody they grew up with thinks. Some would call it conditioning or even imprinting.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." I

Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Such a down-and-then-up perspective does not fit into our Western philosophy of progress, nor into our desire for upward mobility, nor into our religious notions of perfection or holiness.

you never think yourself into a new way of living. You invariably live yourself into a new way of thinking.

Remember, light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else.

What Richard does is more like what Jesus did when he spoke in parables: He takes you to see from one angle, and then backs up and brings you to see from another angle, and then another, and then another, until a whole new way of seeing begins to dawn on you.

Juniors" on the first part of the journey invariably think that true elders are naive, simplistic, "out of it," or just superfluous. They cannot understand what they have not yet experienced. They are totally involved in their first task, and cannot see beyond it.

The joyful acceptance of a limited world, of which I am only a small moment and limited part—this is probably the clearest indication of a man in his fullness.

We would have helped history and individuals so much more if we had spent our time revealing how Christ is everywhere instead of proving that Jesus was God.

To those who cling to Anselm's understanding, I would say, as J. B. Phillips wrote many years ago, "Your God is too small.

First of all, you can only see and understand the earlier stages from the wider perspective of the later stages. This is why mature societies were meant to be led by elders, seniors, saints, and "the initiated." They alone are in a position to be true leaders in a society, or certainly in any spiritual organization. Without them, "the blind lead the blind