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Personal Growth


Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyse you; they are supposed to help you discover who you are.’
Bernice Johnson Reagon

'The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.'
Julien Green

'Our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.'
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

'Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.'
John F. Kennedy

'Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.'
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

'As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.'
Henry Van Dyke

‘At present mortals progress slowly for fear of being thought ridiculous.’
Mary Baker Eddy

‘Mediocrity is self-inflicted, genius is self bestowed.
Walter Russell 

‘The gem cannot be polished without friction nor the man without trials. Confucius

‘Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their carvings.’
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

'When difficult situations become easy,
growth is taking place.
When problems are seen to contain their own solutions,
intelligence is increasing.
When all situations, problems and limitations are seen as being self-made and changeable,
then the mysteries of life unfold.'
Wholestic Health and Living Yoga. Malcolm Strutt.

‘The measure of a person’s real character is what he would do if he knew that he would never be found out’.
Thomas Macaulay

'Happiness is a state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.'
Ayn Rand

‘It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that you cannot sincerely try to help another without helping yourself.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson

'Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. If the structure of the human mind remains unchanged, we will always end up recreating the same world, the same evils and the same dysfunction.'
Eckhart Tolle

'By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.'
Confucius

THE INITIATION

'It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
      It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
      It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine and your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
      I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
      It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
      I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the moon, ‘Yes!’
      It doesn’t interest me where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
      It doesn’t interest me who you know, or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
      It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains, you from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.'

Oriah Mountain Dreamer