Neurotics talk about their quest but too often fail to apply its disciplinary principles, live in a perpetual muddle because they consider reasoning and planning to be anti-spiritual, and remain indecisive and unsettled because they are swaying from one emotion to another. They are easily excited, elated, or depressed. The fact is too often ignored that they have to go through a first stage in which they simply prepare themselves as grown-up human beings before trying higher flights. This is as much in their own interests as in society's, for they will then be better able to deal with others and help themselves. Surely it is more prudent to take up an ideal which is not too far off, which may be an intermediate one that seems reachable and realizable. But they must recognize this situation for what it is, practise a humble patience, and not try to put the burden of duty elsewhere. They are really looking for someone to nurse them out of their neurotic condition which, of course, means a passage from emotional adolescence to adult responsibility.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 4 : Healers of The Body and Mind > # 112
