Most novices picture themselves as masters - and are content with the picture. This is why there are so few masters.
No eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight.
Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own.
One may receive the information but miss the teaching.
We never know we are beings till we love. And then it is we know the powers and potentialities of human existence.
The only way to seek God is to seek God first. Deny the nayward, affirm the yeaward, be true to those stirrings and motions which He starts in us, refuse priority to all else, and be faithful to the sacred.