Quotes about Transformation

Narcissus lays his head on the grass by the pool, and then he quietly disappears into the underworld, where he continues to gaze at the image in the waters of the river Styx. Our images, especially those that appear in life and play important roles in episodes of transformation, stay with us forever. Once we have entertained an image, it is always potentially present to our gaze. You visit the Uffizi Gallery and see Botticelli's "Primavera," and then for a lifetime you dream of it or you talk about it frequently as a measure of beauty. Unexpectedly it presents itself in a moment of thought or in a discussion, reminding you of its eternal presence. This fragment of the myth suggests that we might continually make soul out of our narcissism by preserving and tending to the images that have come to us throughout our lives. This is the basis of art therapy or journal-keeping: making a home for certain images that have been transforming. Certain photographs or old letters might be related to the pool of water. Culturally, of course, we are constantly invited into the depths of ourselves by the plays, paintings, sculptures, and buildings of past centuries. Art can be a cure for narcissism. The words "curator" and "cure" are essentially the same. By being the curator of our images, we care for our souls.

Transformation of any kind always exacts a holy tussle. The newborn butterfly struggles to open its wings so it can conjure up the strength to fly. So, too, with artists, inventors, mystics, and entrepreneurs.

The time is now for transformation. It is a new era and we are poised with the opportunity to bring in a new consciousness, and co-create a new reality.  Why?  Because the light within each of us has been turned on, and it's our job to turn that light on brighter and brighter until all false thought forms dissolve in the light of our Truth.---Dr. Michelle L. Casto

Morphing Happens.

"The caterpillar trusts his maker that all is well. He does not cling to his old garment and thus is transformed into a magnificent bettergly. There is no pain, it is a natural transmutation. So it is with us. As the chrysalis is the bridge between caterpillar and butterfly, so is True perception the bridge between separation and Oneness. We are transmuting into a new state of Being. Clinging to our caterpillar stage, our old ways of judgment, we shall never learn to fly into the dawn of a new day."

"The caterpillar trusts his maker that all is well. He does not cling to his old garment and thus is transformed into a magnificent bettergly. There is no pain, it is a natural transmutation. So it is with us. As the chrysalis is the bridge between caterpillar and butterfly, so is True perception the bridge between separation and Oneness. We are transmuting into a new state of Being. Clinging to our caterpillar stage, our old ways of judgment, we shall never learn to fly into the dawn of a new day."

Being rich/wealthy is being in touch with the fullness of life. When you are open to the present moment, what comes in, is a gratitude for "what is". When you are aligned with the present moment, there is a peace that comes, so it is like you are experiencing life for the first time, when you become present. When you are in a state of gratitude for what is ... that is really what being wealthy means

We have a choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place or not to bother.

Eventually, as we become more fully aware of our problems, another critical point is reached, when insights really have occurred and we try to act upon them. We then discover to our dismay that our attempts to solve them by an effort of will avails us nothing, that our good intentions, as the saying goes, merely pave the way to hell. Good intentions all too readily can foster the illusion that we have settled an issue, when actually it is far from settled and seems to have not the slightest intention of ever being settled. This leads to a deadlock in which we see we need to change but cannot, try as we may. We know we need to renounce our egoistic controlling attempts but we cannot even make ourselves do that. We are up against the paradox that discipline and conscious effort are indispensable but do not get us far enough in our really critical areas. We reach the point where we are tempted to give up in despair because after all, what's the use? We begin to feel that analysis is like deliberate, organized torture; the most problematic things are rubbed in again and again and no matter how we exert ourselves there is no way to change them.

This state has its meaning too. As Dante puts it, the entrance to purgatory is at the deepest point of hell. A resolution of this seemingly hopeless impasse eventually occurs by virtue of the awareness that the ego's claim of a capacity to control rests on an illusion. Without the actual experience of this sort of impasse the ego cannot renounce its claim to the central position. It is only when we have come to our wits' end, and this in the face of our most sincere and extreme efforts, only when we realize that we are hopelessly incapable of changing ourselves, can we begin to accept our real existential position in the life drama. When we are able to say. "this is I, this is my being, and nothing can save me from or free me from being this sort of person," then we have come to the point of acceptance that initiates a fundamental transformation of which we are the object, not the subject. Transformation of our personality occurs in us, upon us but not by us. The unconscious changes itself and us in response to our awareness and acceptance of our station, of our cross.

When one has learned to live with manifestations of the "not-I" in an attitude of concrete acceptance, bearing one's seemingly inferior personal characteristics as a burden rather than identifying with them and at the same time humbly remaining open to the demands of hitherto unrealized transpersonal powers, a new phase of psychological transformation is initiated. The instinctual drives themselves may change character and consequently the needs for suppressive discipline or sublimation can be lessened. Much of what formerly seemed evil, or at least compulsively disturbing, reveals itself as merely primitive and therefore capable of constructive growth. The instinctual drives thus transformed and matured cease to be sources of moral danger, temptation or sin; instead they become the originators of new creative impulses and possibilities of expression which eventually widen the scope of the personality and with it the whole life.

For most women, beauty and body issues are the easiest path to awakening, because the pain is so very close to the surface and the inner critic’s voice is the easiest to hear. The beauty of awakening is getting this, down to your bones, so that the world no longer needs to play our internal dramas on the backdrop of life. We can watch the drama as it comes and goes, maybe making a genuine wise crack, or just laughing at our own antics.

We stop looking to manifest abundance; we are abundance. Even without a job. Even when you give away the majority of what you create. Even when there is no one but ourselves standing at the finish line to thank us for doing out part to help save the world.

To wait, to patiently sit in the dark without knowing what the outcome will be, to protect and respect that which has yet no clear form -- all these are aspects of the womb.

Many ancient traditions worldwide maintain that humans not only inherently possess the potential for fully incarnating light at the physiological level, but that some have already achieved it, and millions more will do so in the very era in which we live. The historical literature “suggests that there are unusual physical, as well as psychological, consequences in humans to the attainment of the exalted state of mind known as enlightenment,” writes biochemist Colm Kelleher. “These reported changes include, but are not limited to, sudden reversal of aging, emergence of a light body and observed bodily ascension.” While many of these descriptions associate the lightbody with death, Kelleher makes it clear that a number of reports indicate that “transformation of the body can happen independently of death.”

What you are the world is.  And without your transformation there can be no transformation of the world.

My Soul’s Marriage

A commitment to your own and
the world’s transformation.

For the Benefit of myself and All Beings.

I,            (my ego & personality)

Do solemnly swear
to love, honor and obey my soul,
my path to realization  and
relationship with a higher,
deeper creative power,
for better or worse,
for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health,
from now and forever more.

I don't want to use the word reorganization. Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.

If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

"Self-Observation is itself the Beginning of Transformation"

The person susceptible to "wanderlust" is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky,
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
Carl Jung

Consciousness creates form to reflect itself, and form transforms to reflect consciousness.

"If we truly want to create a life that is grounded in basic well-being, we must decide to commit ourselves to learning what it takes to thrive instead of merely survive."

As in creating some significant work the artist first experiences something akin to dream awareness that becomes clarified in the creative process itself, so we must first have a vision of the future sufficiently entrancing that it will sustain us in the transformation of the human project that is now in process.

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly...Suddenly I awoke...Now, I do not know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man.

The best artist has that thought alone which is contained within the marble shell; the sculptor's hand can only break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone.

Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart...
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."

True enlightenment, in addition to being a mental state, appears to have physical consequences.

The supramental transformation, the supramental evolution must carry with it a lifting of mind, life and body out of themselves into a greater way of being in which yet their own ways and powers would be, not suppressed or abolished, but perfected and fulfilled by the self-exceeding.