The poet Wordsworth aptly wrote that we come into this world trailing clouds of glory. We are born whole, and, God willing, we die whole. . . .
In childhood we have innocent wholeness, which then is transformed into informed separateness. If one is lucky, a second transformation occurs later in life, a transformation into informed wholeness. A proverb puts it this way: in life our task is to go from unconscious perfection to conscious imperfection and then to conscious perfection.
— Robert A. Johnson, Balancing Heaven and Earth