*GROW/*GROWTH - also see TRANSFORM, SYNTHESIS, OPEN, EVOLVE, CREATIVITY, HEAL, CONSCIOUSNESS, DESTINY, COMPLETE, PERFECT
If we are open to the new, we are growing. Seek and you will find enough pieces of truth to be able to start fitting them together. (p81) Four stages of spiritual growth are: 1) "chaotic/antisocial", pretending to be loving, manipulative 2) "formal/institutional" ie. military, business, church 3) "skeptic/individual" 4) "mystical/communal" (p121-5) It is only through suffering and crisis that we grow. (p148)(Further)
St. Paul felt that suffering is necessary to bring about vital spiritual growth. (Prayer, p221)
The true process of asking to grow differs from the kind of prayer that strikes a deal, which aims at using God instead of knowing God and giving as a means of getting. Asking to grow reverses all the polarities we ordinarily experience, since growing involves transcending all duality. What expands or grows is our understanding or recognition of the universal "I" which gradually submerges all sense of "other." (Stillness, p17,21)
A REAL TEACHER WILL NOT GIVE US THE ANSWERS. Any person who is dogmatic about anything and who claims to have the answers is not a real teacher. Authentic growing takes us beyond the need for answers. (Stillness, p96)
We simply are Life, just as we are. There is no need for us to look outside ourselves for anything. Consciousness itself has brought us to this point and consciousness will carry us on. Nothing else is necessary. This means that, just as we are, we are complete. Maybe the range of our creative power has not yet been fully expressed, but nothing external is necessary to satisfy the situation. If our individualized consciousness is infinite and divine in nature, we can come to realize and experience it now. We need only to surrender, to open, to flow, and to realize. This is what it means to grow. (Stillness, p243)
Symbolic death is a means of passing from one attitude of life into
another. Often one must die to one's standpoint, his old ego adaptation, if
he is to grow. "He who would find his life must lose it." (Transcend, p219)
Story of 2 seeds, one wanted to grow and the other wanted to stay a seed, which got eaten by a hen. Moral of the story - Those of us who refuse to risk and grow get swallowed up by life. (Soup, p220)
When Adam and Eve outgrow the world of animal existence and entered the complicated world of human moral expectations, they became uncomfortable at being judged and scrutinized. Like reaching adolescence, we begin to take responsibility for difficult moral choices (having tasted the fruit) and become exquisitely self-conscious, convinced that everyone is watching and evaluating them. (How Good, p25)
It is in the testing of our faith that we can experience the greatest growth. Often that development follows suffering, because we grow when we have lived through a painful experience. (Awakening, p130,154)