Inside Or Outside

Do you grow from the inside or from the outside?  In a spiritual sense, we grow from the inside since that is where the soul resides, I believe.  But religion teaches us to grow from the outside.  It gives us outside rules to follow with our outside bodies.  It teaches us outside doctrines that we learn with our outside mind.  But the soul is fed from stillness and silence.  Ask yourself what changes you?  Did your catechism and rules change you?  Prayer of interior stillness and silence can change us.  We grow from the inside.  I have found it to be so.