self-transformation...

The goal of self-transformation is to remove all the veils between us
and God. The final veil is the "I," the sense of separateness we
each carry. To remove this is far from easy. Ask yourself, "How can
I take the "I" out of me?"
The great Sufi philosophers insist that our sense of
individuality is an illusion, that there is only one Reality, which
is God. So self-transformation is to remove all illusions, including
the final illusion, self, in order to experience Reality. Those who
see Sufism as a path of love say the same thing in other words. For
them, the goal is for the beloved, lover, and love to become one.
Most of us believe that we are basically all right as we are.
We just need a little more money, a little more love, a little more
free time--then we would be just fine. The Sufis believe that this
is far from the truth. We all need fundamental change; we need to
hatch into a whole new level of being. Unless we recognize the deep,
tranformational nature of the work we need to do, we are fated to
waste all our efforts. We have devleoped the psychology of the
chicken when what we really need is the psychology of the egg.
The metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly is a
particularly good metaphor for self-transformation. At a certain
point the caterpillar feels impelled to wrap itself into a cacoon.
Immobile, it begins to dissolve. There is no sense of a marvelous
new life that is coming; there is only the dissolving of the old, and
the deep fears that accompany this. The caterpillar literally turns
into a kind of goo, and only from that annihilation of the old form
can the magnificent new form of the butterfly emerge.
We can get a sense of this radical process of self-
transformation from those who have been through it, and be guided by
those who can help us through this process.

James Fadiman & Robert Frager