Basics

It’s all a big system.

The opportunity to grow spiritually is built into being human. Everything we do either helps or hurts our spiritual growth. Here’s how it works:

  1. Practice makes perfect. Our spiritual growth occurs over many, many lifetimes. We circle through lifetimes (what the Hindus call the wheel of samsara, or delusion) until we have reached the main goal. Then we either move on to evolve in higher spiritual realms or return to Earth to help others.
  2. Everything matters. All of our deeds are recorded energetically. Particularly important are effects we have had on others. Everything anyone else has done to us is recorded, too.
  3. What goes around, comes around. Between lives, everything gets reviewed. Coming back into subsequent lives, we exchange the record of how we’ve affected others with how they’ve affected us. It’s kind of like swapping coats. So, always, we get to experience exactly how another person made us feel and vice versa. Balance is built into the system. So “eye for an eye” is not something we need to take upon ourselves.
  4. It’s like grade school. Evolution proceeds in consistent, developmental stages that recur in each life. There are exceptions to this, but they occur only rarely when we need to clear boatloads of karma or help others.
  5. You can’t skip grades. The tasks of each stage must be mastered before you can move ahead. For instance, you have to learn the foundations (moral wisdom) before you can start challenging the rules.
  6. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. We must develop strength and wisdom to get through the entire developmental sequence. The evolution of consciousness is just like the labyrinth game. labyrinth500We start at the beginning and go as far as we can down the path. When our ball falls down the hole, we put the ball back at “start” and see if we can get further next time. We always start at the beginning of the sequence, for that’s how we enter the game. But just as in the labyrinth game, there’s no guarantee we’ll get through all developmental stages in any given attempt. In fact, we only build up to completing the entire maze through many, many attempts, slowly but surely developing mastery with each try.
  7. Woman-on-Scale_CropFirst “aha!”, then heart, then actions. Growth always involves realization, commitment and actualization. We recognize our next step, then set our heart upon it, then make it so. Take losing weight, for instance. Only when our pants feel tight will we realize we’ve gained weight and need to lose. But realization alone won’t take our weight off. We’ve got to commit to weight loss emotionally enough to get through the painstaking efforts reduce portions, eat healthier foods, get more exercise–and bring the desired weight loss into actual fact.
  8. Stronger – in layers. Lifetime after lifetime, we build on the attainments of the preceding lifetime. Each lifetime literally builds spiritual strength to take on greater spiritual challenges later. We get to the highest level of realization we can, then live out the rest of our lives actualizing (expressing) that level. In our next lifetime, we attain a higher level of realization, then again spend the remainder of that lifetime expressing that level, and so on. Thus lifetime after lifetime, our growth looks a bit like this:
    GrowthChart
  9. Personal realization first; spiritual realization later. As we become spiritually more advanced, our realization “turning points” become true spiritual realization – when we become aware of our transcendent unity with the divine.
  10. Always a gift. When true spiritual realization comes, it always comes about through God’s grace. There is nothing we can do to make it happen. (Drug induced spiritual experiences don’t count.) We can work to make ourselves ready to receive God’s grace. God is more than generous in doling out the epiphanies as soon as is absolutely possible.
  11. TheScreamThere really are “twin souls.” They play a big role in helping us evolve. More about them later.
  12. No idolatry. Scriptures of many religions state that God is a jealous God; that the commitment to God must be total. This is true. To complete the evolutionary ride, our devotion and surrender to the Divine must be unconditional. When we reach this pivotal commitment, powerful spiritual forces move through our lives to support us the rest of the way.
  13. Spiritual growth is all about learning to hold tension. It’s about learning to be with the core anxiety (“mortal terror”) of the human condition. When we have learned – through all the spiritual growth stages and all our breakthroughs in awareness – to be able to stay calm, unattached and loving no matter what happens, we are Home.

Now I’d like to know about you.

Identifying your profile now will help you understand an important point about the Level Praying Field later on.

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