The system supporting the evolution of human consciousness cannot fail you. It’s built into existence on Earth. Eventually, everyone goes back home to conscious reunion with the Divine.

That doesn’t mean you get a free pass. You have to work the system. You must diligently choose to align yourself with God. When you do, you are shown the way, step by step. Your commitment is tested, but you receive lots of help. God wants you to succeed.

These things will slow down your spiritual advancement:

The wrong stage at the wrong time

If you’re baking a cake, you know to follow a precise order to achieve good results. You grease the pan, cream together the eggs and sugar, add the dry ingredients, mix, then pour the batter into the greased pan.

If you mix up the recipe sequence, you won’t get a cake. Put the flour directly into the pan, drop the eggs and a stick of butter into it and you’ll get a mess. You’ll also waste your ingredients.

The same goes for spiritual evolution. Apply the principles of surrender to the early stages when you’re supposed to be developing the “I Am,” and all you’ll get is angry, depressed or sick, because you’re obeying a lot of “shoulds” instead of getting on with your life as, somewhere inside, you know you yearn to be.

Similarly, while a healthy dose of self-assertion helps you get to the Declaration stage, self-assertion is the last thing you need after you’re in the Purification stage. In fact, maintaining a self-assertive stance in Stage 5 will create a lot of tough drama for yourself. Your willfulness will require a much bigger Almighty Hammer than a graceful submission to God’s will.

Seek to understand the stage you’re in and apply the lessons and tasks appropriate to that stage.

Addiction

Becoming addicted to anything – alcohol, drugs, food, sex, gambling, a relationship, status, money, etc. – dramatically slows your progress.

When you are addicted, you are honoring that “thing” to which you are addicted (fill in the blank) before God. It, not God, becomes the most important thing in your life. Aligned that way, you are breaking the commandment brought to human consciousness by Moses: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

That’s why all twelve step programs begin with two steps that restore the correct relationship to God. In Step 1, you come to accept that you are powerless (i.e., you aren’t the one in control); then in Step 2, you “come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity.” You turn it over to that Higher Power, setting yourself up correctly for true spiritual growth.

If you don’t feel you are growing spiritually, ask yourself, “What false god am I honoring?” How you can restore a true, Higher Power to its appropriate, supreme role?

Failing to tolerate tension

The spiritual path brings you to expanded consciousness… again and again. What you once thought was true gets transcended.

Each breakthrough in consciousness comes when you reach the limits of your previous understanding. You break through to something that, before, you had not realized. That’s how consciousness grows.

Working to embrace a bigger idea is challenging enough conceptually. You may feel very confused by having your previous assumptions challenged. But tougher still is tolerating the inevitable tension that accompanies this process. Our minds are very fond of certainty, thank you. We resist letting go enough even to consider new possibilities.

So a big part of true spiritual mastery is learning to tolerate the tension of not knowing, and for letting yourself be guided. Invariably, my biggest breakthroughs came when I was absolutely frying inside and, in agony, implored God to “show me.” Then God did.

Tolerating tension is particularly difficult because our biggest lessons are often delivered through human conflict. Our biggest teachers are often our adversaries. When adversaries get in our faces, instinct makes us want to dig in and insist that we’re right.

Violence: A Spiritual Dead End

At humankind’s worst, this insistence can take the form of violence. I am so sure I’m right, I’ll hurt you if you defy me. Violent actions stop spiritual growth by:

• diffusing spiritually productive inner tension. The minute you act or react against another human being to uphold your certainty, the beneficial tension of that moment is gone. With the tension gone, you’ve lost the opportunity to break through to your next “aha.”
• compounding karma. If you violate another individual, that act has to be balanced out, atoned for. It’s like going back to “start” in a board game. Before you make any further spiritual advancement, you have to work that karma off.

In short, violent actions really bog you down.

Next time you’re “frying inside,” simply “sit with” the tension. Observe it. Breathe into it. Ask to be shown by your Higher Power what lesson you are meant to learn.

Unkindness

Amid all the challenges of conflict, it is also easy to fall into the trap of being mean. Resorting to unkindness is another form of defensively falling back on the illusion of personal power. Remember that all deeds are balanced out karmically. Treating another human being in an unkind, cruel or inconsiderate way only revisits the insult upon you in exactly equal measure. Which, of course, slows things down for the person committing the deed.

Feeling frustrated by a relationship? How would you respond to the situation if being unkind were simply not an option? How would that affect your inner experience?

Judgment and Superiority

Another defense that gets in the way of spiritual growth is judging someone else in order to feel superior. I’m better than so-and-so because that person is… (fill in the blank)--something I’m not.

In these instances, honest evaluation and/or the passage of time typically reveal that the quality being judged is actually the same quality struggling to come to consciousness in oneself – that’s why it’s being projected out onto someone else in the first place.

What do you judge in other people? Ask your Higher Power to show you the deeper lesson for you at the root of your judgment.

Speaking of judgment, here’s an important caution against creating false judgments based on the information in this website:

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