On this topic I will add that an interesting thing about contraction and release–of various sorts–is that the expansion following a contraction need not stop with the previous form and boundaries. The contraction creates the possibility of growth, which may seem paradoxical, but isn’t. You change form in one way, making a following change easier.
I felt too that most of what is done in the name of religion is in almost all cases social and not spiritual technology. Group ritual is no doubt comforting in many ways–people who go to church, for example, live considerably longer, making widespread failure to “prescribe” church all the more conspicuous–but it does not further inner growth.
It seems to me as well that you cannot do exactly the same thing for many years, and expect to continue growing. Just as you have to vary your routine in physical training, so too must you in psychospiritual training.
I will add, that it is very hard to see where emotional growth ends and spiritual growth begins. They are closely related. Neither has anything to do with intellectual growth, whose sole purpose is to create structures within which psychospiritual growth is made possible and/or more likely.