Quotes About Transformation

Noisy aspens and remnant birches, forests of cottonwoods and poplars, take up the chorus: The world is turning into a new thing.

EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY turns her into someone else. Patricia blooms like something southern-facing. The air of the sixties crackles as she crosses campus, a change in the weather, the smell of days lengthening, the scent of possibility breaking the cast of outdated thought, a clear wind rolling down from the hills.

She must shepherd them back over that ultrafine line between numbness and awe.

People want a better story than they get." The wild-haired sadhu leans forward so fast he almost pitches out of his wheelchair. "Yes! And what do all good stories do?" There are no takers. Neelay holds up his arms and extends his palms in the oddest gesture. In another moment, leaves will grow from his fingers. Birds will come and nest in them. "They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren't.

The single best thing you can do for the world. It occurs to her: the problem begins with that word world. It means two such opposite things. The real one we cannot see. The invented one we can't escape. She lifts the glass and hears her father read out loud: Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things.

What frightens people most will one day turn to wonder.

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.

Alternating current won the War of the Currents. Even Edison grudgingly took up manufacturing the equipment to produce it. Motors large and small, all the way down to motors for individual sewing machines, began replacing the shafts and belts that transferred power inefficiently from steam engines. Country people still read and cooked with kerosene, but electric lights went on in the cities of the world.

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.

The boy who first entered a classroom barely able to speak English, twenty years later concluded his studies in the stately quiet of the reading room in the British Museum. Thus with one sentence I can summarize my academic career. It will be harder to summarize what sort of life connects the boy to the man.

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.

We all become well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot.

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.

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.

God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change.

Religion is lived by people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is lived by people who have been through hell.

Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

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

God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object.

The Risen Christ is the standing icon of humanity in its final and full destiny. He is the pledge and guarantee of what God will do with all of our crucifixions. At last, we can meaningfully live with hope. It is no longer an absurd or tragic universe. Our hurts now become the home for our greatest hopes.

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

Remember finally, that the ashes on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.