Monk Meekness

In the words of an anonymous fourteenth-century British monk and spiritual teacher, "Meekness in itself is nothing else than a true knowing and feeling of a man's self as he is. Any man who truly sees and feels himself as he is must surely be meek indeed."
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Parents Need To Learn From Children

Parents who are unwilling to risk the suffering of changing and growing and learning from their children are choosing a path of senility - whether they know it or not - and their children and the world will leave them far behind. Learning from their children is the best opportunity most people have to assure themselves of a meaningful old age. Sadly, most do not take this opportunity."
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Desertion Syndrom

One of the problems that people commonly have in their adult relationships if they have never received a firm commitment from their parents is the "I'll desert you before you desert me" syndrome."
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Commitments continued

a cessation of parental love through death, abandonment or chronic rejection, has the effect of making the child's unrequited commitment an experience of intolerable pain."
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The Risk of Commitment

Anyone who is truly concerned for the spiritual growth of another knows, consciously or instinctively, that he or she can significantly foster that growth only through a relationship of constancy. Children cannot grow to psychological maturity in an atmosphere of unpredictability, haunted by the specter of abandonment. Couples cannot resolve in any healthy way the universal issues of marriage - dependency and independency, dominance and submission, freedom and fidelity, for example - without the security of knowing that the act of struggling over these issues will not itself destroy the relationship."
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Leap

Finally, it is only when one has taken the leap into the unknown of total selfhood, psychological independence and unique individuality that one is free to proceed along still higher paths of spiritual growth and free to manifest love in its greatest dimensions.
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The Risk of Independence

Growing up is the act of stepping from childhood into adulthood. Actually it is more of a fearful leap than a step, and it is a leap that many people never really take in their lifetimes. Though they may outwardly appear to be adults, even successful adults, perhaps the majority of "grown-ups" remain until their death psychological children who have never truly separated themselves from their parents and the power that their parents have over them."
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