“Know what’s weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything’s different.”
— Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
Introduction
The Inevitability of Growth
One does not grow with experience.
Instead, one grows by reflecting on and integrating experiences.
Yet without experiences, one would have nothing to reflect on and grow from.
In our physical universe and some of its astral layers, we are bound by a linear flow of time.
As long as we exist in time, we will inevitably interact with the cosmos and others.
And when we do, we will always gain some form of positive or negative experiences.
However, experiences are merely experiences. What is “positive” or “negative” is a mere judgment passed by our minds, which are shaped by our biology, psychology, culture, and social upbringing.
Whether experiences are “good” or “bad,” both provide the fuel and resources for us to reflect on and integrate them.
Once we gain a new piece of experience, we cannot undo it. According to NDE accounts, souls remember everything perfectly.[1]
And when we do, given an endless amount of time, we will almost certainly reflect on them and grow.
Thus, even souls that grow the slowest will eventually grow and evolve.[2]
This is the law of growth: all beings bound by a linear flow of time in our universe eventually grow into something broader.
Tetris as an Analogy
In Tetris, experiences are just experiences.
One can play for a long time, sometimes for up to a decade, yet remain a novice or intermediate player.
I have seen many Tetris 99 players who were at the highest level (level 99 double star) and had played Tetris for five years.
However, when I view their gameplay, they fail to understand even basic Tetris concepts, such as managing the field’s jaggedness or stacking flatly.
This is because, in Tetris, you do not simply play to improve. Instead, one must review their past gameplay clips, find mistakes, learn setups, and apply them in future matches.
In Tetris, many players make the following mistakes:
| Diagram Set 28-1 | |
| 1 | 2 |
| The Z placement makes the field uneven. | This means subsequent pieces do not fit well over the Z piece, resulting in uneven stacking (red circle). |
A player who reviews their mistakes will instead do this:
| Diagram Set 28-2 | |
| 1 | 2 |
| The player places the L piece this way instead. This leads to a smooth stack. | All subsequent pieces fit well over it, leading to balanced and safe stacking. |
If a player simply plays without recognizing their mistakes, they will be doomed to repeat them in future games, per the law of cause and effect.
How I improved in Tetris was simple: I streamed Tetris for a good reason. I did it to review my past videos and identify my core weaknesses and mistakes.
Then I reviewed how I could have done better in some areas, incorporated new setups, and played until I encountered the same mid-game situation so I could handle it.
Without reflecting on and consolidating experiences, one cannot grow.
This is why, according to many NDE and afterlife studies, many souls have had hundreds or thousands of lifetimes yet remain as a beginner soul.[3]
They simply have not cultivated the self-awareness to introspect, identify, and work through their past mistakes and weaknesses.
Personal Applications
Adopting a Growth-Oriented Mindset
When I was a budding creative writer nearly ten years ago, I feared writing my first novel.
I attended many creative writing seminars and workshops, including one led by bestselling author Kirstin Chen.
However, none of them was as crucial as attending an Irish writer’s workshop, Julian Gough’s.
He told me the main lesson in writing was not about plot structure theory, craft, prose, or experience.
Instead, it was about how to make the best use of your creative writing journey’s experiences.
Many budding authors start out with the fantasy that they can create the best book of all time.
Then, when they write, they produce the most unrefined pieces of fiction ever. They then lose hope and give up writing.
This is why only an estimated 1% of people who aspire to write a book eventually publish one.
Julian Gough’s lesson was simple: we do not approach creative writing from a static point of view. Instead, we approach it from a growth-oriented perspective.
So he advised me to write the first few novels, even if they were as bad as possible, to get the fluff out.
My first few unpublished novels were science fiction and fantasy, with atrocious stories and over-the-top purple prose.
Then he advised me to see each novel as a way to gain experience, reflect, and grow.
Hence, I learned to moderate my prose and find a delicate balance between simplicity and complexity, elegance and floridness.
Every step eventually got me to publishing many books, including my How-to-Tetris guidebook series and this book (which deliberately uses minimalist prose for accessibility).[4]
The same can be said about life: we can approach it not with staticity, but with a growth-oriented mentality, growing from our successes and failures.
The Use and Misuse of Experiences
Experiences are just experiences. We can use them well or misuse them.
When we get a successful experience, we might sometimes fall into complacency, as I did in my first year of junior college.
I scored the highest in further mathematics across the entire cohort and grew complacent, eventually studying less, which took a toll on my second-year results.
When we get a negative experience, we can use it as a harness to propel ourselves forward.
My master’s thesis involved studying cancer patients who grew from overcoming their experiences.
Many originally depressed ones were materially successful but were spiritually empty.
Their cancer experience forced them to evolve beyond the material and see the value of social relations and communities.
Hence, we can value our experiences and grow from them, or conversely, choose not to.
[1] Bruce Greyson, “Near-Death Experiences and Claims of Past-Life Memories,” Journal of Near-Death Studies 39, no. 3 (2021): 212–226. Greyson reports that many NDErs described life reviews as more vivid than ordinary memories, with some reporting exceptionally detailed recollection.
[2] Victor J. Zammit, A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife, “The Laws of the Afterlife,” where he discusses the Law of Growth.
[3] Michael Newton, Journey of Souls (1994); Destiny of Souls (2000). Newton’s regression subjects revealed that the number of lifetimes alone does not determine soul advancement. Spiritual growth requires reflecting on and integrating experiences. See also Shepherd Hoodwin, Journey of Your Soul (1995).
[4] Some of my novels deliberately use maximalist, literary prose. I cannot stand commercial fiction prose.
