Quotes about Self-discovery

The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are.

The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, "the will to be oneself."5

way. Part of the sanctification process of the Holy Spirit is to strip away the false constructs we have accumulated and enable our true selves to emerge.

The vast majority of us go to our graves without knowing who we are. We unconsciously live someone else's life, or at least someone else's expectations for us. This does violence to ourselves, our relationship with God, and ultimately to others.

For this reason the famous Hasidic story of Rabbi Zusya remains so important for us today: Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?

even the worst and most painful family experiences are part of our total identity. God had a plan in placing us in our particular families and cultures. And the more we know about our families, the more we know about ourselves—and the more freedom we have to make decisions how we want to live. We can say: "This is what I want to keep. This is what I do not want to bring with me to the next generation.

The late Dag Hammarskjöld, once the secretary general of the United Nations, suggested that we have become adept at exploring outer space, but we have not developed similar skills in exploring our own personal inner spaces. He wrote, "The longest journey of any person is the journey inward."4 Most of us feel much more equipped to manipulate objects, control situations, and "do" things than to take that very long journey inward. Painful Honesty

As the wise, old Abbot Moses said when a brother came to him for a good word, "Go, sit in your cell [a monk's room], and your cell will teach you everything.

I loved the seventies.

I do say all I've ever written about is being alone. And most people take that as, 'Oh, that's so sad.' And I always say, 'No. No, all I ever write about is being alone, and sometimes that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.'

But waking up is ultimately something that each one of us can only do for ourselves. When it comes down to it, wherever you go, there you are

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.