Growth Journey Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Growth Journey. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.
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Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
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Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
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Edward Abbey (The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West)
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We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
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Henry Ward Beecher
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The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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She remembered who she was and the game changed.
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Lalah Delia
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You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.
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Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
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No matter what happened yesterday it is insignificant when compared to what lies within the core of your being today.
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Sandy Brewer (Pursuit of Light: An Extraordinary Journey)
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A competitive and insecure woman will tell you that β€œtrue love” is never giving up on someone you're in love with. A confident and spiritual woman knows that β€œmoving on” doesn’t mean you never loved someone. She realizes that letting go is what God needs her to do because both your happiness and hers requires taking different journeys for spiritual growth. Letting go is sometimes the hardest thing, but it is the most β€œreal love” you will ever experience.
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Shannon L. Alder
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If you are a future donor recipient, remember: your family should be a part of your transformative journey. Both parties will experience growth as they find balance in your new life stage.
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Gregory S. Works (Triumph: Life on the Other Side of Trials, Transplants, Transition and Transformation)
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How to win in life: 1 work hard 2 complain less 3 listen more 4 try, learn, grow 5 don't let people tell you it cant be done 6 make no excuses
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Germany Kent
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True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.
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David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
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Blessed are those with cracks in their broken heart because that is how the light gets in.
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Shannon L. Alder
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The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.
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Josh Waitzkin (The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence)
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Self-care is how you take your power back.
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Lalah Delia
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When you think this pain is all you deserve, you are right. You are the only one that can decide how long you will walk in hell.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Your inner growth is completely dependent upon the realization that the only way to find peace and contentment is to stop thinking about yourself.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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There is a wide world out there, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth and the latter makes the journey tolerable.
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R.A. Salvatore (Sojourn (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #3; Legend of Drizzt, #3))
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Don't pour a lifetime of effort into a seasonal relationship. Not everyone from the pilot belongs in the finale.
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Mandy Hale (The Single Woman–Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass: Embracing Singleness with Confidence)
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Let the darkness find you if it must. Throw off the quick and tempting escapes, and seek help only from those who would teach you to grow, feed your soul, embrace your heart, but would not steal away your journey.
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Jennifer DeLucy
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If experience is the best teacher, there's nothing that comes close to the experience of life.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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Meditation is a journey from effort to effortlessness, from activity to stillness, and from stress, anxiety and frustration to a state of peace and tranquillity.
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Purnachaitanya (Looking Inward: Meditating to Survive A Changing World)
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Some people can’t be in your life because they don’t have the power to help you improve it. That doesn’t mean you don’t wish them well, it just means that you are on Chapter ten of your life, when they are on Chapter five. Maybe, it is just enough to meet at the crossroads in life and agree to take separate paths, then with a cheshire grin you both look back and shout, β€œBeat you to the top of the mountain”, followed by the funnest sprint of both of your lives.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Growth comes at the point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities.
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Josh Waitzkin (The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance)
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Everything that seemingly happens externally is occurring in order to trigger something within us, to expand us and take us back to who we truly are.
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Anita Moorjani (Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing)
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I always wondered if they’d change you.
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Kiera Cass (The One (The Selection, #3))
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The journey itself is going to change you, so you don’t have to worry about memorizing the route we took to accomplish that change.
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Daniel Quinn (Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Ishmael, #1))
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Self discovery is the most empowering time of your life, you remember who you are and you become the best version of yourself but what they forget to tell you is, to get to a point of pleasure you must face the pain.
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Nikki Rowe
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You're growing and that scares people, it frightens the shit out of them because they know if they don't step up within themselves you'll move forward with out them. When this happens, don't you dare settle to suit the mould - have courage to live without one.
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Nikki Rowe
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Advice to my younger self: 1 Start where you are with what you have 2 Try not to hurt other people 3 Take more chances 4 If you fail, keep trying
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Germany Kent
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Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually cultivates it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.
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M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
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She was a gypsy, as soon as you unravelled the many layers to her wild spirit she was on her next quest to discover her magic. She was relentless like that, the woman didn't need no body but an open road, a pen and a couple of sunsets.
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Nikki Rowe
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Let's not grow with our roots in the ground.
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Criss Jami (Venus in Arms)
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Everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them... Once you've made the commitment to free yourself of the scared person inside, you will notice that there is a clear decision point at which your growth takes place.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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I think that churches would be places of greater intimacy and growth in Christ if people stopped lying about what we need, what we fear, where we fail, and how we sin.
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Rosaria Champagne Butterfield (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey Into Christian Faith)
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Spiritual Partnership ... The new female and the new male are partners on a journey of spiritual growth. They want to make the journey. Their love and trust keep them together. Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other. They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals. That is what a spiritual partnership is: a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth.
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Gary Zukav (Soul Stories)
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The path of development is a journey of discovery that is clear only in retrospect, and it’s rarely a straight line.
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Eileen Kennedy-Moore (Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential)
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Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? While the soul, after all, is only a window, and the opening of the window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep.
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Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems, Volume One)
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No two persons can learn something and experience it in the same way.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Repentance in the heart and soul of Christian conversion.
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David A. Fiensy (The Journey: Spiritual Growth in Galatians and Philippians)
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But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.
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James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain)
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There is a moment in our healing journey when our denial crumbles; we realize our experience and it's continued effects on us won't "just go away". That's our breakthrough moment. It's the sun coming out to warm the seeds of hope so they can grow our personal garden of empowerment.
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Jeanne McElvaney (Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children)
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It hurts to let go, to say goodbye for the final time and remain distant in your closure, it may even tear your heart out to the point of insanity; but somehow in it all you find the pieces of your worth and you start creating yourself again, and in that journey of transformation you find the essence of what truly matters, inner happiness. It's life, we all fall at some stage but it's up to you, to decide how long you want to stay there.
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Nikki Rowe
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The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won’t happen if you compromise away the entire process.
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Yvon Chouinard (Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman)
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Evil originates not in the absence of guilt; but in our effort to escape it.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us. ...Hope sweetens the memory of experiences well loved. It tempers our troubles to our growth and our strength. It befriends us in the dark hours, excites us in bright ones. It lends promise to the future and purpose to the past. It turns discouragement to determination. Samuel Smiles
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Samuel Smiles
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Don’t ever stop believing in your own personal transformation. It is still happening even on the days you may not realize it or feel like it.
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Lalah Delia
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You know those plants that are always trying to find the light? Maybe they were planted in a location that didn’t necessarily facilitate growth, but inexplicably they make a circuitous route to not only survive but bloom into a beautiful plant. That was meβ€”my whole life.
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Jonathan Van Ness (Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love)
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In honor of Oprah Winfrey: Even greater than the ability to inspire others with hope is the power to motivate them to give as much to the lives of others as they would give to their own; and to empower them to confront the worst in themselves in order to discover and claim the best in themselves.
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Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
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I have danced too deeply in my shadows, to ever fear the walk of my sunshine.
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Nikki Rowe
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Healingβ€”takes time, andβ€”so doesβ€”not healing. Choseβ€”how you spend your time β€”wisely.
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Lalah Delia
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Our eternal spiritual self is more real than anything we perceive in this physical realm, and has a divine connection to the infinite love of the Creator.
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Eben Alexander (Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife)
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Give yourself permission to let it hurt but also allow yourself the permission to let it heal.
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Nikki Rowe
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Your life is a sacred journey & it is about change, growth, discovery... You are on the path & from here you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, beauty, wisdom & love!
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Caroline Joy Adams
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Every journey taken always includes the path not taken, the detour through hell, the crossroads of indecision and the long way home.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Self-transformation commences with a period of self-questioning. Questions lead to more questions, bewilderment leads to new discoveries, and growing personal awareness leads to transformation in how a person lives. Purposeful modification of the self only commences with revising our mind’s internal functions. Revamped internal functions eventually alter how we view our external environment.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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You are here, alive and awake and for whatever reasons you have fought your battles, it's time to start focusing on what strengths pulled you up when the entire world had knocked you down. That's where the virtue in self grows.
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Nikki Rowe
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In this journey called life, the prize of eternity is to get back home with God, to the place we started from.
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John Ramirez (Conquer Your Deliverance: How to Live a Life of Total Freedom)
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Give your all to every experience, feel it breathe it appreciate it, nothing lasts forever, when it's gone you'll remember the feeling it once gave you and sometimes that's enough.
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Nikki Rowe
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Sometimes… Sometimes doubt is the opposite of faith, but sometimes doubt can be a pathway to faith. Sometimes weakness is the opposite of strength, but sometimes weakness can be the pathway to strength. Sometimes addiction is the opposite of sobriety, but sometimes addiction can be the pathway to sobriety. Sometimes infidelity is the opposite of fidelity, but sometimes infidelity can be a pathway to fidelity. Sometimes failure is the opposite of success, but sometimes failure can be the pathway to success.
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David W. Jones (Enough: and Other Magic Words to Transform Your Life)
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Om is the things, Om is the ingredient, Om is the container and the content of this universe.
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Banani Ray (Glory of OM: A Journey to Self-Realization)
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The person who has to boast or brag all the time is probably the last person you want as your spiritual mentor.
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David A. Fiensy (The Journey: Spiritual Growth in Galatians and Philippians)
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Transmutation: β€’ Grapes must be crushed to make wine β€’ Diamonds form under pressure β€’ Olives are pressed to release oil β€’ Seeds grow in darkness Whenever you feel crushed, under pressure, pressed, or in darkness, you’re in a powerful place of transformation/transmutation.
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Lalah Delia
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Some journeys take you farther from where you come from, but closer to where you belong.
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Ron Franscell (Sourtoe Cocktail Club: The Yukon Odyssey Of A Father And Son In Search Of A Mummified Human Toe ... And Everything Else)
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focus your intention on what your building, not whats already fallen away.
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Nikki Rowe
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PATH TO SUCCESS: DREAM. PLAN. DO. FAIL. NEVER GIVE UP. FAIL. NEVER GIVE UP. FAIL. NEVER GIVE UP. ACHIEVE! IT'S A MESSY JOURNEY.
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Tom Giaquinto (Be A Good Human)
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...letting go of attachment to any way of believing or thinking has made me feel more expanded and almost transparent so that universal energy can just flow through me.
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Anita Moorjani (Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing)
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The Christian commitment is a journey inviting multiple conversions.
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David A. Fiensy (The Journey: Spiritual Growth in Galatians and Philippians)
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Growth requires movement. And often, the only way forward is through an exit door.
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Alicia Keys (More Myself: A Journey)
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To love those who love us and are good to us is easy. To love those who are indifferent to us is workable, but to love those who have harmed us, intentionally or not, is true growth and realization.
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Patsie Smith (Awaken Our Spirit Within: A Journey of Self-Realization and Transformation)
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God doesn’t put that much prep into something that is insignificant.
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Shannon L. Alder
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If you have been raped or sexually assaulted and you have been blamed, or fear that you may be blamed, I just want you to understand this: You are not to blame. There is nothing you did to make someone hurt you, nor is there anything you could have done differently to prevent or stop it.
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Robert Uttaro (To the Survivors: One Man's Journey as a Rape Crisis Counselor with True Stories of Sexual Violence)
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Do not rely on the outer world as your measuring stick for your own spiritual growth. Rely on your response to the outer world to determine how much you have grown.
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Bashar
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When you feel pain, simply view it as energy. Just start seeing these inner experiences as energy passing through your heart and before the eye of your consciousness. Then relax. Do the opposite of contracting and closing. Relax and release. Relax your heart until you are actually face-to-face with the exact place where it hurts. Stay open and receptive so you can be present right where the tension is. You must be willing to be present right at the place of the tightness and pain, and then relax and go even deeper. This is very deep growth and transformation. But you will not want to do this. You will feel tremendous resistance to doing this, and that’s what makes it so powerful. As you relax and feel the resistance, the heart will want to pull away, to close, to protect, and to defend itself. Keep relaxing. Relax your shoulders and relax your heart. Let go and give room for the pain to pass through you. It’s just energy. Just see it as energy and let it go.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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There is beauty all around us, and the light finds us when we realize, we are all part of that beauty and worth the cherishing. If we despise any, we journey to despise ourselves. See all as beautiful, even if they choose to see themselves through you, as being less than so. We have the power to see for each, and be the reflection of what they may yet see.
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Tom Althouse
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If I get up just one less time than the number of times I’ve been knocked down, I have done one of the most devastating things possible; I have halted my life at that very spot.
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Craig D. Lounsbrough (An Autumn's Journey: Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life's Seasons)
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Your personal growth is the only thing that matters. You own and write your story; no one else does. Believe in your unique steps up the mountain.
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Brittany Burgunder
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Step out on faith and walk into your purpose.
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Germany Kent
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Cultural speciation had been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth. It had hindered freedom of thought, limited our thinking, imprisoned us in the cultures into which we had been born. . . . These cultural mind prisons. . . . Cultural speciation was clearly a barrier to world peace. So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the β€˜global village’ we would propagate prejudice and ignorance.
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Jane Goodall (Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey)
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Eventually it will become quiet enough so that you can simply watch the heart begin to react, and let go before the mind starts. At some point in the journey it all becomes heart, not mind. ... The mind doesn’t even get a chance to start up because you let go at the heart level.
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Michael A. Singer (The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself)
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I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternative routes present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world.
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Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)
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Somewhere along the journey i lost myself; i learnt to be who they told me to be, i lived that girl for decades until their truth showed me; the words they were preaching didnt match the the steps they were walking, so i was done with their opinion and went on my unique way.
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Nikki Rowe
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There are some souls who develop a penchant and an unhealthy appetite for a certain kind of experience. So, they experience an awful lot of those experiences. These souls are addicted, just like a smoker is, to cigarettes. But it does not make them any less inferior or bad. It just delays their journey.
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Abhaidev (The Gods Are Not Dead)
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The world which men have made isn’t working. Something needs to change. To change the world, we women need first to change ourselves – and then we need to change the stories we tell about who we are. The stories we’ve been living by for the past few centuries – the stories of male superiority, of progress and growth and domination – don’t serve women and they certainly don’t serve the planet. Stories matter, you see.
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Sharon Blackie (If Women Rose Rooted: A Journey to Authenticity and Belonging)
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Jesus-shaped spirituality hears Jesus say "believe and repent," but the call that resonates most closely in the heart of a disciple is "follow me." The command to follow requires that we take a daily journey in the company of other students. It demands that we be lifelong learners and that we commit to constant growth in spiritual maturity. Discipleship is a call to me, but it is a journey of "we.
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Michael Spencer (Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality)
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Evil was necessary because without it free will was impossible, and without free will there could be no growthβ€”no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be. Horrible and all-powerful as evil sometimes seemed to be in a world like ours, in the larger picture love was overwhelmingly dominant, and it would ultimately be triumphant.
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Eben Alexander (Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife)
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Since the tapestry of all time has already been woven, everything I could ever want to happen in my life already exists in that infinite, nonphysical plane. My only task is to expand my earthly self enough to let it into this realm. So if there's something I desire, the idea isn't to go out and get it, but to expand my own consciousness to allow universal energy to bring it into my reality here.
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Anita Moorjani (Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing)
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Her stare fixed me. Without rancour and without regret; without triumph and without evil; as Desdemona once looked back on Venice. On the incomprehension, the baffled rage of Venice. I had taken myself to be in some way the traitor Iago punished, in an unwritten sixth act. Chained in hell. But I was also Venice; the state left behind; the thing journeyed from.
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John Fowles (The Magus)
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If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Everyone is in a process of spiritual formation. We are being shaped into either the wholeness of the image of Christ or a horribly destructive caricature of that image--destructive not only to ourselves but also to others, for we inflict our brokenness upon them . . . The direction of our spiritual growth infuses all we do with intimations of either Life or Death.
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M. Robert Mulholland Jr. (Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation)
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When we live completely from the mind over a period of time, we lose touch with the infinite self, and then we begin to feel lost. This happens when we'are in doing mode all the time, rather than being . The latter means letting ourselves be who and what we are without judgment. Being doesn't mean that we don't do anything. It's just that our actions stem from following our emotions and feelings while staying present in the moment. Doing, on the other hand, is future focused, with the mind creating a series of tasks that take us from here to there in order to achieve a particular outcome, regardless of our current emotional state.
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Anita Moorjani (Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing)
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WONDERLAND It is a person's unquenchable thirst for wonder That sets them on their initial quest for truth. The more doors you open, the smaller you become. The more places you see and the more people you meet, The greater your curiosity grows. The greater your curiosity, the more you will wander. The more you wander, the greater the wonder. The more you quench your thirst for wonder, The more you drink from the cup of life. The more you see and experience, the closer to truth you become. The more languages you learn, the more truths you can unravel. And the more countries you travel, the greater your understanding. And the greater your understanding, the less you see differences. And the more knowledge you gain, the wider your perspective, And the wider your perspective, the lesser your ignorance. Hence, the more wisdom you gain, the smaller you feel. And the smaller you feel, the greater you become. The more you see, the more you love -- The more you love, the less walls you see. The more doors you are willing to open, The less close-minded you will be. The more open-minded you are, The more open your heart. And the more open your heart, The more you will be able to Send and receive -- Truth and TRUE Unconditional LOVE.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
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The purpose of a pilgrimage is about setting aside a long period of time in which the only focus is to be the matters of the soul. Many believe a pilgrimage is about going away but it isn’t; it is about coming home. Those who choose to go on pilgrimage have already ventured away from themselves; and now set out in a longing to journey back to who they are. Many a time we believe we must go away from all that is familiar if we are to focus on our inner well-being because we feel it is the only way to escape all that drains and distracts us, allowing us to turn inward and tend to what ails us. Yet we do not need to go to the edges of the earth to learn who we are, only the edges of ourself.
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L.M. Browning (Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations)
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The depressed person’s therapist was always extremely careful to avoid appearing to judge or blame the depressed person for clinging to her defenses, or to suggest that the depressed person had in any way consciously chosen or chosen to cling to a chronic depression whose agony made her (i.e., the depressed person’s) every waking hour feel like more than any person could possibly endure. This renunciation of judgment or imposed value was held by the therapeutic school in which the therapist’s philosophy of healing had evolved over almost fifteen years of clinical experience to be integral to the combination of unconditional support and complete honesty about feelings which composed the nurturing professionalism required for a productive therapeutic journey toward authenticity and intrapersonal wholeness. Defenses against intimacy, the depressed person’s therapist’s experiential theory held, were nearly always arrested or vestigial survival-mechanisms; i.e., they had, at one time, been environmentally appropriate and necessary and had very probably served to shield a defenseless childhood psyche against potentially unbearable trauma, but in nearly all cases they (i.e., the defense-mechanisms) had become inappropriately imprinted and arrested and were now, in adulthood, no longer environmentally appropriate and in fact now, paradoxically, actually caused a great deal more trauma and pain than they prevented. Nevertheless, the therapist had made it clear from the outset that she was in no way going to pressure, hector, cajole, argue, persuade, flummox, trick, harangue, shame, or manipulate the depressed person into letting go of her arrested or vestigial defenses before she (i.e., the depressed person) felt ready and able to risk taking the leap of faith in her own internal resources and self-esteem and personal growth and healing to do so (i.e., to leave the nest of her defenses and freely and joyfully fly).
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David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men)
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It is lonely behind these boundaries. Some people-particularly those whom psychiatrists call schizoid-because of unpleasant, traumatizing experiences in childhood, perceive the world outside of themselves as unredeemably dangerous, hostile, confusing and unnurturing. Such people feel their boundaries to be protecting and comforting and find a sense of safety in their loneliness. But most of us feel our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from behind the walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of falling in love allows us this escapetemporarily. The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness is no more! In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act of falling in love is an act of regression. The experience of merging with the loved one has in it echoes from the time when we were merged with our mothers in infancy. Along with the merging we also reexperience the sense of omnipotence which we had to give up in our journey out of childhood. All things seem possible! United with our beloved we feel we can conquer all obstacles. We believe that the strength of our love will cause the forces of opposition to bow down in submission and melt away into the darkness. All problems will be overcome. The future will be all light. The unreality of these feelings when we have fallen in love is essentially the same as the unreality of the two-year-old who feels itself to be king of the family and the world with power unlimited. Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old's fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn't. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn't. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn't like his friends; he doesn't like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other's. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving.
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M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
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The healthy, dynamic, and above all else truthful personality will admit to error. It will voluntarily shedβ€”let dieβ€”outdated perceptions, thoughts, and habits, as impediments to its further success and growth. This is the soul that will let its old beliefs burn away, often painfully, so that it can live again, and move forward, renewed. This is also the soul that will transmit what it has learned during that process of death and rebirth, so that others can be reborn along with it. Aim at something. Pick the best target you can currently conceptualize. Stumble toward it. Notice your errors and misconceptions along the way, face them, and correct them. Get your story straight. Past, present, futureβ€”they all matter. You need to map your path. You need to know where you were, so that you do not repeat the mistakes of the past. You need to know where you are, or you will not be able to draw a line from your starting point to your destination. You need to know where you are going, or you will drown in uncertainty, unpredictability, and chaos, and starve for hope and inspiration. For better or worse, you are on a journey. You are having an adventureβ€”and your map better be accurate. Voluntarily confront what stands in your way. The wayβ€”that is the path of life, the meaningful path of life, the straight and narrow path that constitutes the very border between order and chaos, and the traversing of which brings them into balance. Aim at something profound and noble and lofty. If you can find a better path along the way, once you have started moving forward, then switch course. Be
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Jordan B. Peterson (Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life)