Quotes about Growth

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.

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

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.

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