Almost everything in the usual guidelines for spiritual progress is based on the unspoken principle: I must grow.

When religion is not founded on security anxiety, the impulse towards “higher culture”, “spiritual refinement,” and so on, often plays the decisive role.

We can live our whole life without ever realising the meaning of: I must decrease. Not decrease exteriorly and grow interiorly; not decrease through mortification in order to increase in virtue according to the spiritual man; not decrease in “appearance” in order to grow in “essence”; but quite simply: he must grow, I must decrease.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat