A Basic Guide to Spiritual Growth

Getting the big picture of the spiritual path

Many spiritual people think the world is entering a new era of awakening. Thanks to jet travel and the Internet, mystical teachings hidden for millennia in small pockets of the world are now available to nearly everyone, resulting in widespread spiritual growth. In fact, we may suffer now from an overabundance of spiritual information. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and not know which way to go or whom to trust. If you seek deeper spirituality but aren’t sure how to make sense of it all, maybe this overview will nudge you in a helpful direction.

I have been fascinated by spirituality ever since learning to meditate and reading Autobiography of a Yogi around 50 years ago. During most of that time, I’ve wanted a simple spiritual roadmap that would explain to all of us how to awaken. For probably the last 20 years, I’ve wanted to write that roadmap myself, but I never felt qualified. After all, I’m not a spiritual leader. I’m just an ordinary guy obsessed with spirituality. I told a friend, I’m more of an “accidental yogi,” which is to say, I stumble into spiritual experiences not knowing what I’m experiencing. But it turns out those experiences follow a pattern and path yogis and other spiritually awakened people recognize.

Movie: Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds (2012)

Recently, I received a sort of vision of the path I’ve followed, almost like a spiritual life review. Now I’m trying put that vision into some simple words that would be easy for anyone to follow. The trouble is, even though there are elements of a common path, the walk we must take from point to point is unique to us and often circuitous. But I’ll try to do my best here to lay out what I know in the hope it will guide somebody else. I don’t want to ever presume that I know anyone else’s path, so I’ll give the overview in terms of what happened to me and the conclusions I drew. It will be up to you to extrapolate from these thoughts to your own special path. I guarantee you, if you doggedly pursue your path, it will become an astonishing inner adventure.

Meditation

Meditation was the very first thing I learned in spirituality. I loved it! It felt so peaceful! For those 20 minutes twice a day I felt emotionally pain free and calm. I was extremely lucky that I started first with that because it is the one essential practice, the one thread that runs the entire length of the spiritual path. Daily meditation changes your mind! Over the years I learned several methods, and my experience is it doesn’t matter what style of meditation you adopt; all methods can lead you to spiritual experiences.

The wonderful thing is that daily meditation is cumulative; it slowly builds your spiritual consciousness by bringing up psychological and spiritual insights from the subconscious that help you grow. You learn to become an observer of reality without reacting to it; you learn to accept whatever you perceive, and to be at peace with it.

I did meditate too much at times and ended up confusing myself and having a few of what are called spiritual “emerge-encies.” These are attacks of ego that cause you to feel psychologically out of balance or confused or afraid as the ego tries to protect itself from the changes in perspective meditation brings. It can be different for each person, but you will know this anxiety or confusion if it happens. The cure is simple: meditate less or take a break for a couple of weeks until your mind settles down; then return to meditation, but don’t overdo it.

Spiritual Reading

Next, after reading Autobiography, I was captivated by the possibility of being emotionally and spiritually free and having spiritual experiences. Frankly, I was psychologically very unhappy after a difficult and lonely childhood. I was terribly introverted and found even routine social activities painful—everything from making friends, to attending school dances (I never went to one), to looking for jobs. I saw the psycho-spiritual path as a way to find liberation from the pain and to rise above it to a place of peace and wisdom. Consequently, I read many spiritual and psychological classics from Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and psychology. I recommend that practice as a first step on the path. Broad reading showed me what’s possible psychologically and spiritually. It also helped me see which spiritual traditions seemed compatible with my personality and which were not.

Studying Various Religious Paths

I also tried a variety of religions. They were good learning experiences, but ultimately, I wish I had not joined any of them. Every religion includes buried within it the path to Oneness, but (in my experience) every single one of them contains its own quirky practices, annoying rules, and emotional abuse that obscures the actual path and makes it unnecessarily difficult to access. It took almost 50 years of exploration, but I finally found that I do better trusting my own Higher Self, not religion, to guide me.

That said, I did learn wonderful things from each religion, and had many wonderful experiences, so I recommend dropping in everywhere at services and retreats of all kinds without joining up. Learn what you can, but don’t get hooked! However, I know some may have greater social needs than I do and may want to be part of a community, so another way would be to sample everything thoroughly, and when done sampling, pick the community you like best. And don’t forget, you can leave any time!

I suggest especially avoiding any religion that is highly authoritarian and rule-oriented. Whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or whatever, authoritarian faiths will teach you to trust only their authority, rules, and scriptures, never the wise guidance of your Higher Self or any “outside” information sources. Many also include abusive practices. Look instead for loving, tolerant, open, kind spiritual groups that profess love and compassion for all without judgment. Ideally, they will encourage you to find your own way within their tradition and will even encourage you to explore and incorporate other traditions as you feel guided.

Finding Spiritual Guides

Another thing I did was find spiritual directors along the way to help me understand what I was learning. Because I am shy, this didn’t happen often enough. In each spiritual tradition I sampled, I found someone more mature in practice to advise me. Some were just friendly people I could ask questions occasionally, and others were bona fide credentialed advisors. If I were doing it again, I would directly ask in prayer and meditation to be led to a person who could guide me. What we ask for with clarity and intention will happen, and a guide will come to you. In the spiritual world, this is called being “magnetic,” which is to say, having the spiritual ability to synchronistically attract the friends and resources that will move you along on your path. Such an advisor should definitely be wise and compassionate to help you through the various meditation experiences you may have.

Many spiritual people also believe you can be assigned spiritual guides in the “heavenly” realms if you ask for them. Depending on the tradition, these might include angels, spiritual masters, and spirit animals, as well as direct contact with the divine. I have received such guidance and find it highly beneficial to be able to access universal wisdom in prayer or meditation.

Healing Emotional Struggles

Of all the difficulties I faced on the spiritual path, emotional struggles distracted me most. People may or may not intend to harm one another emotionally, but we are imperfect in our understanding and compassion, and we do hurt one another. I believe the entire purpose of our personal and spiritual journey is to heal our hurt emotions and soul so we can learn to love unconditionally. Ideally we learn from every situation we face in life, which means every situation, no matter how hard, is for our growth. Life is a big schoolhouse, and we are all here to learn and overcome.

Emotions from this life, and I believe also from my past lives, profoundly affected me. Because I am highly sensitive, intense emotional hurts and struggles, both from childhood and the present, slowed my growth path. I struggled with emotions all my life and often used meditation as a means to numb myself. After all, it felt so good, so serene, that I would rather meditate than address my emotional pain. That’s called “spiritual bypassing,” and I was a master at it.

Spiritual bypassing is also the source of a lot of misdirection I received from advisors who were “unhealed healers.” They suppressed their emotions too. The trouble is, suppressed emotions eventually come out, so both these unhealed advisors and I were emotionally out of balance. If your “enlightened” advisor regularly manipulates you with anger, guilt, shame or any other attitude that causes you to feel wounded or abused, consider finding someone else.

Late in life, I finally realized I was spiritually stuck because of unhealed emotions that became so intense I couldn’t bypass them. Finally, after an emotional crisis, I sought out a psychological counselor. I learned tools for healing my emotions, and as healing progressed, I felt better and better, and spiritual progress resumed because my emotions and my ego were no longer distracting me as strongly. I urge you not to wait if you have a lot of emotional struggles or if you know you are hiding your emotions. Go to therapy and deal with them! It will help your life, your happiness, and your spiritual growth!

Serving Others

I went through much of life seeking spiritual experiences and enjoying them, but as an introvert who prefers a lot of alone time (and has self-esteem issues), I avoided serving and helping others spiritually. I would say I lacked the confidence to share my journey, and I was also spiritually selfish. Eventually I found some of the ways I can help. You are reading one of the ways—writing about spirituality. I also found that I am a naturally empathetic listener who can help friends sort out their thinking, and occasionally even their spirituality. By writing, listening, and encouraging, I have been able to fulfill part of my calling to serve, to use the gifts I have to help others along on their journey. Whatever your gifts, look for ways to use them to benefit others; you will get as much growth out of it as those you serve.

Listening to Your Intuition

Intuition brings an indispensable richness and depth to the spiritual journey. It is that soft gentle voice of wisdom from my Higher Self which is in contact with my guides and the Loving Consciousness of god. When I meditate, I always have my phone nearby so I can open the notepad and make a quick note of any guidance or insights that come to me. I’ve learned it’s important to listen to that inner voice. After I got good at listening, I found that I hear guidance frequently, not just in meditation, on everything, from whether a car purchase is the right one, to what to say to a friend who needs encouragement, to how to pray for a friend. I don’t hear it perfectly, and sometimes I get my ego’s voice mixed up with my intuition, but my discernment about which voice is speaking is much better now than it was initially. If you hear that inner voice, listen to it, thank it, cultivate it, and your life will proceed more smoothly with greater wisdom. It’s one of those mystical gifts that everyone has to some degree and that can be so beneficial when you listen and act accordingly.

Working with Mindfulness, Imagination, Breathing, and Energy

An important step in living out my spiritual life in the world was mindfulness. This is simply being deliberately present in all that I was doing, not lost in thought. That’s a tough order for somebody who is very introspective and always thinking. I tried to practice focusing on whatever I was doing—savoring the tastes and smells of my food, looking around and observing nature when walking, listening intently and carefully in conversations. This is how I brought the meditative mindset and a spiritual focus into my daily activities. It is tough to do all the time, but I just keep coming back to it as much as I can every day. The cumulative effect of both meditation and mindfulness is the ability to rest in the moment and appreciate the beauty of life minute by minute. It’s easy to forget to breathe, so mindful breathing is important too. As I brought the focus on slower deeper breathing into my mindfulness, I felt an increase of peacefulness and joy. I’m very susceptible to stress, so believe me, my mindful presence is far from constant, but it brings me an improved sense of well-being to the extent I’m able to practice it.

More recently, I learned the importance of imagination in mindfulness and meditation. My belief is that my mind was not ready for immediate expanded consciousness. I had to expand my mind and accustom it to perceiving reality beyond my small limited self. I recently took seminars in breath work and energy work, which I will describe shortly, and the seminars taught me how to use my body and my imagination together.

For example, I grew my imagination by connecting with nature while hiking. As I would see water gliding down a hillside, I imagined how it must feel to be the water. I could feel myself gliding joyfully over the rocks. I imagined how it must feel to be the hawk riding the wind currents overhead or the butterfly floating ahead of me on the path. I imagined myself as a tree and what I would see and sense. I also practiced imagining the whole forest as a loving, welcoming village that I was entering where I was greeted by the trees, plants, flowers, insects, birds, and animals who were the “people” of the village. As I walked, I imagined them as my friends with whom I could converse and connect. What happens when you use your imagination that way is that imagination becomes your reality. I now step into the forest and instantly feel the joy of connecting with friends. I should also mention that love is a big component of these imaginary visions. You have to love the forest, the creatures you meet, people you meet, the earth, the sky, the universe, and the Loving Consciousness creating it all. A loving connection should always be your intention no matter what you are doing.

This might be sounding a little weird about now, but trust me, this is part of the path to inner peace, joy of living, and expanded consciousness. Another way I learned to use imagination was moving energy through my body, a technique used by yogis to awaken experiences of oneness and god consciousness. Kundalini and Kriya yoga both involve imagining moving energy up and down the energy centers in the body and the chakras in the spine. I learned to do this by imagining connecting to the earth and connecting to the stars and the Loving Consciousness (of god) and then picturing earth energy and cosmic energy traveling up and down my spine and energy centers and radiating out to all beings across the planet and throughout the cosmos. I also learned to use breathing techniques to move energy and spinal fluid up and down through my body. What this did for me is to stimulate the pineal gland in the center of the brain to release hormones that put me into states of deep meditative consciousness and eventually states of awakening and god-consciousness.

I also engaged imagination to take healing vision journeys. For example, I learned in therapy that I was struggling with CPTSD, abandonment anxiety, low self-esteem, and anxious (disorganized) attachment issues. Keeping the story short, with help from my therapist, I created a vision of a place I could go anytime where I felt safe and loved. I could see the place clearly in meditation, and I frequently imagined going there to find connection and reassurance from loved ones. I also went there on guided shamanic journeys to meet a spirit animal who gives me guidance and speaks healing words to my soul. Other journeys of imagination I’ve taken included visiting the “soul realm” (my term) where all souls reside to talk with various souls, visiting and talking to spiritual masters and guides in a “heavenly temple,” visiting past lives, and envisioning physical and emotional healing for myself and others. Additionally, I learned to retrieve memories of difficult formative moments in childhood and then imagine myself as an adult reparenting myself by listening, soothing, and reassuring the inner child. These many journeys of imagination have provided psychological healing and spiritual growth.

Imagining Love

I mentioned earlier the most important precursor to deeper spirituality: Love. Once you become used to moving light and energy through your body and radiating it to all beings, start radiating it together with love to people and situations. You can start with people and situations that are not difficult, and then graduate to radiating to the difficult ones. Being laughably honest, I can tell you that one of the most difficult people in the world for me to send love and positive energy to is Donald Trump. The secret is you don’t have to feel love to radiate love; it comes from the Loving Consciousness and all you need is the intention to pass it on through to the other. Love is the solution to every problem and the healer for every relationship, so the more you can send love to every situation—even if you can’t feel it or speak it to those you send it to—the better and more healed your life will be and the lives of those you know. Eventually, you will have enough love and compassion to feel it even for Trump (but you don’t have vote for him)! In this way, you will deepen your ability to see love in the universe and feel it from The Oneness.

Awakening to God Consciousness

In meditation I’ve been given a number of profound experiences. Many times consciousness of myself has faded away as I entered into the blissful presence of god. It feels so good to lose track of self and time that often I have not wanted to return (but my mind does remind me eventually to come back). I have also seen an aspect of the nature of the universe that spiritual masters have confirmed—that every single atom and particle, all of material reality, is full of the love of god and is somehow imbued with the presence of that Loving Consciousness.

Eventually, these repeated experiences produced times of constant awakening bliss and joy that have lasted first for days and even for many weeks. I wish I could tell you they are permanent. So far, they are not. They get stronger each time, and afterwards the memory of them is stronger, making it easier to find my way back. But I still struggle with both normal daily emotions, such as impatience, stress, and anxiety, and also longer term CPTSD and attachment struggles that I’ve had all my life. Thankfully, I now have the tools from therapy (thank you, Julie!) and from my spiritual work to keep the struggles from becoming as painful as they once were, and I can return reasonably quickly to inner peace.

Movie: Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds (2012)

I’ll end this section with an illustration, a very recent experience and the most important one I’ve had to date. I was preparing to pray for someone, and I went into deep meditation. I lost track of time and my physical being and found my consciousness expanded and floating in deep space. Then unexpectedly, I saw my body as if I were outside of it, and watched it dissolve into space. My atoms just disintegrated and floated off in all directions. I was still conscious and aware of my individual identity but also fully immersed in The Oneness, The One, the Loving Consciousness. It was blissful, joyful, peaceful, and the best thing came next. Instead of a passive experience of being immersed in god as I’ve had before, this time my intention to pray made us active together. I started to pray, and we were both praying, working together as One. It was the first time I experienced god’s active creative power from “within” god, rather than just being immersed in a passive blissful experience of Oneness. A side effect of the experience was realizing death does not mean the loss of the individual soul; we are one with god and we are an individual soul, all at the same time. Our awareness, who we are as our Higher Self, remains!

Closing

As I bring these thoughts to a close, I want to share that I am writing this for YOU, the seeker who needs it, whoever you may be. I apologize that it is only my path, not a complete path for everybody. I haven’t included anything somatic, for example, which I know is a great pathway to healing and Oneness, but I can’t write what I don’t know, so I am writing what I do know. There must be some who are like me and who need this guidance from an ordinary person, an “accidental yogi,” no matter how limited it may be. You want to be emotionally healed, you want the experiences of peace, of Oneness, of god consciousness, but you don’t know or aren’t sure of your path, and you may not want to engage with formal religion. I hope briefly telling the outline of my story and including a bit of guidance helps bring light to your spiritual path. Above all, I encourage you to trust your Higher Self, your Soul, your connection to The One, to get you where you want to go. Your Higher Self knows the way.

Please feel free to leave any comments or questions. I welcome dialogue.

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