Quotes About Transformation

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 have to let go of the passing names by which we have tried to name ourselves and become the "naked self before the naked God." That will always feel like dying, because we are so attached to our passing names and identities. Your bare, undecorated self is already and forever the beloved child of God. When you can rest there, you will begin to share in the universal Christ consciousness, the very "mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16).

grace is found at the depths and in the death of everything. After these smaller deaths, we know that the only "deadly sin" is to swim on the surface of things, where we never see, find, or desire God and love.

If something comes toward you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can trust it as the voice of God.

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 think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

The significance of Jesus' wounded body is his deliberate and conscious holding of the pain of the world and refusing to send it elsewhere. The wounds were not necessary to convince God that we were loveable; the wounds are to convince us of the path and price of transformation. They are what will happen to you if you face and hold sin in compassion instead of projecting it in hatred.

People who have been initiated broke through in what felt like breaking down.

Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.

I believe contemplation shows us that nothing inside us is as bad as our hatred and denial of the bad. Hating and denying it only complicates our problems. All of life is grist for the mill. Paula D'Arcy puts it, "God comes to us disguised as our life." Everything belongs; God uses everything. There are no dead-ends. There is no wasted energy. Everything

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

The New Testament called it salvation or enlightenment, the Twelve Step Program called it recovery. The trouble is that most Christians pushed this great liberation off into the next world, and many Twelve Steppers settled for mere sobriety from a substance instead of a real transformation of the self. We have all been the losers, as a result—waiting around for "enlightenment at gunpoint" (death) instead of enjoying God's banquet much earlier in life.

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.

you are often most gifted to heal others precisely where you yourself were wounded, or wounded others.

The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver.

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.

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.

You normally have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing or confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity.