M. Scott Peck Quotes
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In thinking about miracles, I believe that our frame of reference has been too dramatic. We have been looking for the burning bush, the parting of the sea, the bellowing voice from heaven. Instead we should be looking at the ordinary day-to-day events in our lives for evidence of the miraculous, maintaining at the same time a scientific orientation.
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Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.
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I am dubious as to how far we can move toward global community-which is the only way to achieve international peace-until we learn the basic principles of community in our own individual lives and personal spheres of influence.
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The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.
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Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.
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How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.
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When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.
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I make no distinction between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the process of achieving spiritual growth and achieving mental growth. They are one and the same.
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When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.
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Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.
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If you wish to discern either the presence or absence of integrity, you need to ask only one question. What is missing? Has anything been left out?
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Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. What provides the motive, the energy for discipline? This force I believe to be love. I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.
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When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.
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When we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.
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What does a life of total dedication to truth mean? It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination. We know the world only through our relationship to it. Therefore, to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner.
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But I already saw no great difference between the psyche and spirituality. To amass knowledge without becoming wise is not my idea of progress in therapy.
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What people get admired and appreciated for in community are their soft skills: their sense of humor and timing, their ability to listen, their courage and honesty, their capacity for empathy.
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God wants us to become himself or herself or itself. We are growing toward Godhood. God is the goal of evolution.
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Sickness begets chaos, which, through hard work and a touch of grace, leads to growth and resurrection.
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Often the most loving thing we can do when a friend is in pain is to share the pain-to be there even when we have nothing to offer except our presence and even when being there is painful to ourselves.
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Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.
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I have learned nothing in twenty years that would suggest that evil people can be rapidly influenced by any means other than raw power. They do not respond, at least in the short run, to either gentle kindness or any form of spiritual persuasion with which I am familiar.
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The time and the quality of the time that their parents devote to them indicate to children the degree to which they are valued by their parents. . . . When children know that they are valued, when they truly feel valued in the deepest parts of themselves, then they feel valuable. This knowledge is worth more than any gold.
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The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability to be decisive.