The truth is that few wish to trouble themselves with following such a way of regeneration, and most prefer the comfortable sloth of accepting their deficiencies as normal qualities of the human being. Therefore they allow one thing after another, one event after another, to detain them from making the mystical ascent and so waste a whole incarnation before they are even aware that it is wasted. Is their spiritual life to wait like a whining beggar on those intervals of leisure which a materialistic existence throws them like sops to Cerberus? Some aspirants have even turned away from the quest because other things claimed a stronger interest. Others have given up its goal simply because they believe it to be unattainable. And then there are those who are literally afraid of devoting themselves to the quest. It seems in their eyes to demand too much or give too little.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 2 : Living in The World > # 52
