There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus to our growth.
03837 – No Pain-free Living
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03414 – What I Believe is…
I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished." What I believe is alive...and open to growth.
03160 – Personal Growth
"Personal growth" is misleading, because it sounds like it's going to be fun. But if we called it "deliberately making yourself so uncomfortable it'll feel like you're dying," nobody would do it and we'd be totally screwed.
01977 – Love will Return in Another Way
At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park one day in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully. Kafka told her to meet...
01852 – Your Frame of Vision
There is a beautiful complexity of growth within the human soul. In order to glimpse this, it is helpful to visualize the mind as a tower of windows. Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real...
01467 – Live Each Day as a Holy Adventure
[Re: 2020 Covid-19 pandemic] This is not lost time in which nothing happens. This is the time of your life and you need to live it fully each day. If we take each day as an opportunity for growth, we’ll always remember this time and the values we learned during this...
01253 – Worshiping the Status Quo?
If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal...
01251 – Sacrifice Goes with Spiritual Maturity
Some growth experts…have said those who pursue blended styles merely take turns “insulting different segments of the congregation.” But we believe otherwise; blended styles are the result of shared sacrifice and spiritual maturity. Traditional congregations committed...
01240 – The Spiritual Effects of Clinging
One year I decided to plant English ivy as a border around my flower garden. I dipped the small vines in some pH-balanced enzyme powder and planted them around the flowers. Some weeks later the ivy had grown into a small jungle, clinging around the flower stems and...
01225 – Growing in Grace
I am certain that I never did grow in grace one-half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.