He said that between the spiritual ages zero and three, we are spiritually motivated by envy and frustration - we see things other can do, and we try to do it too, and we fail and we fall and we feel frustrated, and the envy picks us up and makes us try again and try harder. Some people stay in this spiritual age their entire lives.

But some people mature spiritually and between the ages four and seven, they experience jealousy and anger, and these two experiences drive them and motivate them to move forward. And like the infants they live their lives, spiritually remaining pre-teens to the day they die.

A few people make it to spiritual puberty, and find themselves doing stupid things and at the same time trying to prove they are always right and the others are always wrong. Charming from a distant, but too determined for their own good.

Only a handful grow up spiritually and get to adolescence. They go on quests, completely and naively confident in their spiritual capacity to change what can be changed, accept what cannot be changed, and wisely tell the difference.

It is very rare indeed to see a human being reach spiritual maturity, one who experiences Oneness, one who steps up into who he was meant to be and becomes his full potential.

This rare person, this spiritually mature individual, creates - through clarity and commitment - a focused intention, that turns into consistent action, that generates real and lasting results: A true transformation.

This person mastered 'responsibility' - the ability to respond maturely to ANY situation. We cannot control circumstances - because circumstances cannot be controlled. But we can control how we respond to them, and this response-ability is the trademark of a spiritually mature human being.

But then, that old teacher was indeed very old, and it was sometimes a little hard to understand him.

So he might have said something else.