Growing Spiritually

We tend to think of spiritual growth as something we “work on” or “learn.” Some of us consider it a matter of how we feel our way through life, maintaining a steady balance of living in a way that is truthful to us. We could say that each interpretation is correct. As we seek, we find.

In our earliest steps during our quest for spiritual growth, we seem to first look for validation of what we are experiencing on many levels. We ask others for permission that it is acceptable to feel the way we are feeling. We then begin to develop self trust and listen to our inner voice. We learn to go within for truth about who we are and connect with Source.

As we become connected with ourselves, we begin developing more intimacy with our feelings. Often, if we experience something we don’t like, we may revert to a time when our perceptions seemed more fitting for our path. In most cases, this involves using our mind’s evaluation of our situation, which we use to interpret and analyze our feelings. This is completely natural, yet our mental efforts can occasionally cause us to experience some limitation. Eventually, we begin to recognize that working on anything spiritual can be helpful to us as long as our efforts help us “release” and move forward versus “identify” and remain mental.

Spiritual growth is the process by which we lose what is not real in us, and recognize what is real in us.

Losing Identity

A common misperception about spiritual growth is that we “become more” than what we once were, or “build upon” who we are. It is only natural to feel that we would grow spiritually in the way that we have lived our physical lives. We tend to measure our success in the physical by what we’ve gained. Spiritual growth, however, is not a subject-object dichotomy, nor is it a process by which we “build more” onto our identity. Spiritual growth, rather, is the relinquishment of ego-identification. Spiritual growth is not a process by which we become more; it is a process by which we “strip away” who we are not. It is the process by which we lose what is not real in us, and recognize what is real in us.

The denuding of our perceived identity is a natural process which is taking place in our consciousness. It is a natural step in consciousness evolution, and it is a process which is occurring more rapidly now due to the Quantum Leap and the onset of the New Energy. As consciousness continues to support us, we are experiencing a stripping away of our old identity. We feel that we begin to lose our mental ideas about ourselves; of what we believe ourselves to be and do. The nature of this change can cause confusion, multiplying our emotional responses and causing us to question our feelings and personal truths. As we naturally make our way through the confusion, however, we begin to understand that spiritual growth is not something meant to be “learned” so much as it is experienced as something that we “recognize” as we “unlearn” what is not true about ourselves.

We have taught ourselves untruths about who we are, and we often live our lives with those untruths as our template for living until we spiritually awaken. As we wake up to the truth of who we are, we understand that there is nothing in us that is not perfect or not whole. We simply continually evolve our beliefs and perceptions about who we are as we naturally move into a clearer awareness and consciousness.