Sacrifice does not mean that, by giving, we lose something. We sacrifice our limited self to our highest and largest Self, and at that time we immediately become the largest and the highest Self.
In a city, there's more room to be, where in a small town, you have to squish yourself down a little bit. And it's exciting for me to be pursuing a career where I don't have to be small.
There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being.
Because men have a history, it is difficult for them to imagine what it is like to grow up without one, or the sense of personal expansion that comes from discovering that we women have a worthy heritage. Along with pride often comes rage – rage that one has been deprived of such a significant knowledge.
Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth.
It's nauseating for me when I feel like I'm not growing or challenging myself.
The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.
It is so exhilarating to realize that this is all here for our expansion and for our pleasure.
But we are born to be happy, to be abundantly supplied with every good thing, to have fun in living, to consciously unite with the Divine Power that is around us and within us, and to grow and expand forever.
Society is to the individual what the sun and showers are to the seed. It develops him, expands him, unfolds him, calls him out of himself. Other men are his opportunity. Each one is a match which ignites some new tinder in him unignitible by any previous match. Without these the sparks of individuality would sleep in him forever.
… all human history is the struggle between systems that attempt to shackle the human personality in the name of some intangible good on the one hand and systems that enable and expand the scope of human personality in the pursuit of extremely tangible aims. The American system is the most successful in the world because it harmonizes best with the aims and longings of human personality while allowing the best protection to other personalities.
Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?
Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson. I have realized that failure, whether of the personal, professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.
I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.
The fundamental steps of expansion that will open a person, over time, to the full flowering of his or her individuality are the same for both genders. But men and women are rarely in the same place struggling with the same questions at the same age.
