The Vital Nature of Change and Repentance (Quotes)

Hello friends!

Lately I think about change often; at work my job is essentially focused on the act of helping others change and I have found that by seeking to change myself first, the positive change I desire in others seems to come more naturally. So, in praise of change, and in the spirit of the Easter season, I present a list of inspiring and fun quotes about change (with some commentary).

Quotes and thoughts regarding change:

Be the change that you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi
This is the quote that came to mind throughout my recent trip with my wife to Sedona. We meditated and prayed and studied the gospel a lot on the trip, especially in the car and during our evening devotionals/studies and I felt the Lord’s spirit sinking this line (the one above) as well as the following one from Moroni (Book of Mormon) deep within my psyche. “Be an example of the peaceable followers of Christ.”

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy

These first two quotes contain truths which have taken root deep within me thanks primarily to my current leadership position at work. I did the math the other day and I serve and support nearly three hundred people and I started this position with the intent and belief of making people change (their behavior). Oops.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

People underestimate their capacity for change. There is never a right time [easy time] to do a difficult thing. – John Porter

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. - Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point
(see the later quote by Shaw as an example of the paradoxes change forces us to confront)

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. – Henri Bergson

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. - Anatole France
This one is particularly poignant, in my opinion because there is an inherent “death” that must take place in the process of change and the ego is very afraid of death, indeed it finds ways to repel and avoid change. Fear is the enemy of change.

All great changes are preceded by chaos. - Deepak Chopra
This describes the state of education right now as we’re on the precipice of great change so there is a collective fear and clinging to the old mingled with a sense of wonder and excitement. Strange times.

The best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing. - Theodore Roosevelt
This stands out to me as a manager. Everyone loves to steer from the back seat but few are willing to come up front and take the wheel. Inevitably you make a wrong turn as a leader as you well know from your many leadership roles current and past.

I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.... - Erica Jong

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them. - Andy Warhol
This is a hard truth for me to accept. I want to bend people, to change them, to help them “see” the truths that have opened my own mind and expanded my horizons and provided me greater depth and breadth of experience and happiness. This, I have found after much introspection, is one of the roots for my desire to use language to help others; I have found, however, that it is impossible to help people change unless they are willing and motivated. It is better to listen and ask questions, rather (as any therapist knows). But there is also truth in preaching and lecturing of truth. It’s the balance that is hard to strike. This is why I write.

“A year from now you will wish you had started today.” -Karen Lamb

“In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” -Warren Buffett

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” –Life’s Little Instruction Book


“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” -Mark Twain
My mother-in-law recently said I have “alternative views.” I’d agree. I think conforming to a profoundly sick society is a sign of a profoundly sick psyche. 

“By changing nothing, nothing changes.” -Tony Robbins

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” -Tony Robbins
I’ve found this is particularly true with our beliefs. If what we have are a bunch of beliefs, rather than truths which have been tested, we have very little.


“Each person’s task in life is to become an increasingly better person.” -Leo Tolstoy
It’s sort of hard to accept this truth. It also means not allowing others to persist in wrong behaviors. If we love one another we will speak up, we will, at times, reprove with sharpness but afterward show an increase in love. Sarah and I worked through this a lot in the first 5-6 years of our marriage and I now find we can be quite honest and blunt with one another without excessive emotional responses. When I try this with others, however, it does not always go over so well (especially, I think, with many of those whom I love the most such as my family members).


“As soon as anyone starts telling you to be “realistic,” cross that person off your invitation list.” –John Eliot


“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -George Bernard Shaw

I love that one! It seems to contradict some of the other lines on change but—and this is another line that sunk into my psyche many times in Sedona—we have to become comfortable with the paradoxes the truth requires us to confront and accept.

FINAL WORDS:
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” -Mary Anne Radmacher

Twenty years from now you will be disappointed more by the things you didn’t do than by the one’s you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain

Some additional thoughts about change and how it pertains to repentance:
Change has been on my mind a lot lately. I can only speak for myself, but I have many things about myself that need to be changed and I know that at the heart of our spiritual practice, change is vital. In other words, I feel the need to repent. The word repent, if we go back far enough, means the following:
c.1200, "to repair," from a shortened form of Old French amender (see amend). Meaning "to put right, atone for, amend (one's life), repent" is from c.1300; that of "to regain health" is from early 15c. Related: Mended; mending.

Going back to the root languages we find the following:
In Biblical Hebrew, the idea of repentance is represented by two verbs: שוב shuv (to return) and נחם nicham (to feel sorrow). In the New Testament, the word translated as 'repentance' is the Greek word μετάνοια (metanoia), "after/behind one's mind", which is a compound word of the preposition 'meta' (after, with), and the verb 'noeo' (to perceive, to think, the result of perceiving or observing). In this compound word the preposition combines the two meanings of time and change, which may be denoted by 'after' and 'different'; so that the whole compound means: 'to think differently after'. Metanoia is therefore primarily an after-thought, different from the former thought; a change of mind accompanied by regret and change of conduct, "change of mind and heart", or, "change of consciousness".

What is the True Meaning of "Intelligence?"

While I do pretend to submit to you an authoritative definition of this term since its use is highly debatable and subjective, my personal definition is something like this: The term "intelligence" is one linguistic symbol we can use to describe the individual idiosyncratic beings, or points of consciousness (sometimes called "spirits" or "spirit children" in my spiritual tradition) that inhabit reality; in other words, you and I are "individual intelligences" with the capacity to create and develop eternally.

Below you'll find a statement about the word "intelligence" from a neo-gnostic source which I think adds a valuable dimension to my own definition. I hope you find this uplifting and helpfulin some small way:

"...intelligence is synonymous with the capacity to create. When understood in this way, our modern understanding of the word “intelligence” is revealed as being flawed. Real intelligence is creative power. Genuine intelligence is the ability and the means to create. But this is not the entire definition of intelligence. If we were to state a definition for intelligence, we would say: Intelligence is the intention and the ability to act in a beneficial way.

In other words, intelligence is the capacity to act, to create; but true intelligence—transcendental intelligence, superior intelligence—is creative power that is beneficial. In whatever scenario, in whatever situation, it is the ability to act in a beneficial way.

Another way of looking at this is to say that intelligence is the understanding of how to convert energy into a useful consequence, a result—how to work with matter and energy in order to produce the desired result.

When we look at the miracle of this physical body that we have, we see that it implies the existence of tremendous intelligence. The awe-inspiring sophistication of the many interdependent systems that sustain the moment to moment life that we enjoy, is so enormous that our simple mind cannot grasp it; we cannot comprehend it. Even the top scientists and doctors of these times cannot explain the physical body that we have; they have a limit to how much they can understand.

This is also true when we look at nature as a whole. In the entirety of nature we see an enormous, sophisticated, delicately balanced system of interlocking and interdependent laws, whose beauty and sophistication is beyond the capacity of our simple intellect to truly grasp."

Source:
http://gnosticteachings.org/the-teachings-of-gnosis/lectures-by-gnostic-instructors/689-intelligence.html