3 Key Stages of Spiritual Growth | An Unconventional Guide

What is spiritual growth?

What does genuine spiritual growth look like?

Are there specific stages to growing spiritually?

Is there a “best approach” to spirituality and growth?

This in-depth guide will address all of the above questions and a lot more.

Let’s dive in …

CONTENTS

What is Spiritual Growth?

Spiritual implies “of the spirit.”

Spiritual growth is the process by which one deepens their understanding of themselves and others, strengthening their connection with Spirit and the totality of all things.

Spiritual growth brings an individual closer to what’s often called the Self (Self-realization) or God to align with one’s true nature.

Each Wisdom Tradition uses different names (the “names of God”), but all of these names point to a similar quality that’s universal, formless, ever-present, and eternal.

The Ego and the Self

Who or what can develop spiritually?

Obviously, it’s not the Self, Spirit, or God that “develops”. This quality, by whatever name, is already complete and total.

So, we call the one interested in spiritual growth the individual. The faculty within the individual interested in development is often referred to as the ego.

What is the Ego?

The ego represents our self-identity. It’s a collection of conditioning and programs that manifest as desires, preferences, judgments, opinions, beliefs, abilities, and more.

The ego is our sense of self. But as mystics and sages throughout time have expounded, this ego represents the false self. That is, it is not our true nature.

What is the Self?

In contrast, the Self is the organizing principle within the psyche. Here, again, we have many different names depending on the tradition:

God, Divinity, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Original Spirit, Original Nature, Original Face, Purusha, Atman, Brahman, and many more.

In essence, spiritual growth represents the movement from small self to big Self, from the false to the Real, from ego to God.

The Goal of Spiritual Growth

Goals for spiritual growth may differ between individuals. An individual’s “goal” or focus may be to:

Strengthen one’s connection with God, or the Self.
Develop greater devotion to God, or the Self.
Become more virtuous.
Realize spiritual maturity.
Achieve enlightenment.
Be of service to others.
Transcend the mind, or enter a transcendent state.
Achieve moksha (self-liberation) or Self-realization.

An individual’s spiritual goals depend on their understanding of spirituality, which is primarily influenced by the information available to them (through their religious upbringing, books, sermons, seminars, and so on), as well as their intuitive insight.

Iris and Jupiter (1701)

Three Components of the Wisdom Traditions

Within each of the ancient Wisdom traditions—Eastern and Western—there are generally three essential components:

The religion itself
A philosophical foundation
A system of practices

Let’s examine each one to understand how they relate to spiritual growth:

1 – The Religion

The religion itself is based on a set of beliefs, stories, and rituals that have been passed down through generations.

These beliefs, stories, and rituals establish the religion’s dogma. The religion itself is a mythology that lives within the psyche of the cultures that abide by it. (“Mythology” in the way Joseph Campbell used the term.)

Most often, the mythology is shared with the individual during early childhood, and so it becomes an aspect of their identity as they develop.

These mythologies provide an initial structure for individuals, shaping their understanding of the cosmos, universal meaning, and life purpose.

Within a given culture, the majority adheres to this structure, complete with all its rituals, customs, and belief systems, which are all taken at face value. (Meaning, “They are ‘true’ because we were told they were true. The book says so.”)

However, there are multiple ways of interpreting these religious structures. They can be perceived:

Literally (exoterically),
Allegorically (stories to understand human behavior), or
Symbolically.

How an individual perceives their mythology will depend on their level of development and understanding.

2 – Philosophical Foundation of Perennial Truths

For the adepts, those who had transcended these mythologies, the focus was mainly on understanding an in-depth philosophical system with its perennial truths, virtues, principles, and precepts.

However, these truths were not merely accepted at face value. Instead, they required constant examination, observation, confrontation, and reflection to validate and apply these principles within oneself.

3 – Systemic Practices

Finally, each tradition had an advanced system of practices. The precepts weren’t meant to be just memorized, for this would reduce them to a system of beliefs (religion or mythology), no different than any other form of dogma or hearsay.

Instead, in the context of the Wisdom Traditions, the precepts and inner truths were meant to be discovered and actualized within the individual through a series of practices.

That is, these truths were not meant to be conceptual or intellectual (held exclusively in the mind through study), but experiential reality. The insights are to become one’s pervasive way of being.

Spiritual Growth in the Wisdom Traditions

Many individuals get stuck in the mythological stage. They exclusively identify with a particular religious faith as who they are—for example, “I am Christian” or “I am Buddhist”. However, they don’t necessarily observe and examine their daily behavior or engage in authentic practice.

Consequently, limited spiritual growth occurs, and they often don’t even realize this. Instead, they identify with spirituality without engaging in any actual development.

So, to realize genuine spiritual growth, perennial truths are combined with devout, daily, and consistent spiritual practice. (We’ll cover specifics related to practice below.)

Photo by Thomas Galler

What are the Qualities of Spiritual Growth?

What does spiritual growth look like?

How do we know when we see it?

Do we have any clues we can look for in ourselves and others?

Thankfully, we do.

10 Signs You’re Making Spiritual Progress

In this guide to spiritual awakening, I provided ten signs of spiritual growth. In my opinion, the term “spiritual awakening” is a misnomer as it implies there’s an actual and singular “awakening.”

In reality, there are likely many progressive levels of “waking up” along an individual’s spiritual journey. Many insights are revelatory and can lead to feeling that you’re more “awake” or “present” than you were before.

That said, here are ten common signs that spiritual growth is unfolding:

1) You lean into discomfort.

You begin to lean into discomfort (“embrace the darkness”) instead of distracting yourself and keeping your current self-identity intact. Cleaning up and repairing the past becomes a dominant intention and focus.

2) You become more observant.

You become more observant of yourself and others. An internal curiosity to better understand yourself grows within you daily.

3) You embrace simplicity.

Your values (as observed in your attitude and behavior) begin shifting away from material trappings and the neurotic drive for achievement toward simplicity and what you believe to be “essential.”

4) You have heightened sensitivity.

You develop heightened sensitivity, including detecting your feelings, intuition, and your body’s energy—all of which provide internal feedback that supports continuous spiritual growth.

5) You notice trauma everywhere.

You begin to see signs of trauma everywhere. These signs were always there, but now, as you heal your past, your understanding of the world you find yourself in changes radically. (More on this topic below.)

6) You have greater compassion.

In learning more about yourself, your past trauma, and how this world works, you become more compassionate and understanding of yourself and others. The drive to blame others and play the victim role diminishes.

7) Your mind becomes more flexible.

As you grow spiritually, you become less rigid and more flexible in your thinking and your perspectives on life. The absolutist, fundamentalist, black-or-white thinking of the past falls away.

8) Your self-identity becomes more fluid.

It’s not just your mind that becomes flexible, as your self-identity also becomes less rigid and more fluid. In doing inner work for spiritual growth, you begin to drop many concretized notions about yourself. (“I am like [enter your desired quality here].”)

9) Your discernment increases.

Psychological and spiritual growth help burn up one’s ignorance about oneself, others, and the world itself. In removing this child-like naivety and ignorance, greater discernment becomes available to you.

10) You begin to enter Wu Wei.

As you navigate the internal chaos to restore your psyche, a growing sense of internal calm emerges. You begin slowing down and entering the state the Taoists call Wu Wei (nonaction or nondoing).

Maslow’s Being Values and Self-Transcendence

In Abraham Maslow’s study of self-actualizing individuals, he found a repeated pattern of specific values in those with positive mental health. (He found “positive mental health” in individuals to be quite rare. It took him a long time to find enough individuals who qualified for his studies.)

Maslow called these values Being values, or B-Values for short. These values include:¹

Wholeness
Perfection
Completion
Justice
Aliveness
Richness
Simplicity
Beauty
Goodness
Uniqueness
Effortlessness
Playfulness
Truth (honesty; reality)
Self-sufficiency

Maslow observed that individuals in a transcendent state are primarily motivated by these Being values.²

That is, we can say that these Being values are expressions of higher spirituality and growth.

Signature Strengths based on Virtues | Positive Psychology

The Cardinal Virtues

Maslow’s observations are consistent with insights from ancient philosophers and mystics from all the wisdom traditions, known as the cardinal virtues.

Cardinal virtues are considered universal and “beneficial” for every individual within society. That is, they represent what is considered morally good for all.

I analyzed the cardinal virtues found in virtually every tradition here. The results were seven primary virtue groupings:

Benevolence (including compassion, kindness, and magnanimity)
Temperance (including moderation, modesty, humility, and patience)
Truthfulness (including honesty, integrity, and sincerity)
Wisdom (including prudence, knowledge, and intelligence)
Courage (including fortitude)
Justice (including righteousness)
Equanimity (including tranquility and contentment)

These virtues appear to represent humans when we are in our natural or “highest” state. That is, spiritual maturity coincides with the natural expression of these virtues. (We’ll address virtues again in the practice section below.)

Image Adapted from Richo’s How To Be an Adult

How To Be An Adult: A Heroic Journey

If I were going to mention just one book that addresses psychological and spiritual growth, it would be David Richo’s How to be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration (1991). This small book is chock-full of psychological insights and practices that are relevant to all of us.

Richo uses the hero’s journey metaphor to illustrate three stages of psychological and spiritual growth.

Departure
Struggle
Return

Let’s look at each stage as he described them:

1 – Departure

In the initial departure stage, we learn to let go of illusions and work through the trauma of childhood.

2 – Struggle

In the struggle stage, we work on ourselves to become lucid, alert, responsible, and autonomous adults, both personally and in relationships.

3 – Return

In the return stage, we are enlightened with higher consciousness, realize our true nature, and return to our original state of wholeness. In the Return stage, the neurotic ego now serves what Richo refers to as the spiritual Self.

3 Core Challenges to Adulthood

In the process of this heroic journey to psychological and spiritual growth/integration, Richo outlines three core challenges we all must face:

Fear
Anger
Guilt

Each of these challenges builds on the prior one …

Challenge 1: Fear

Navigating through the neurotic ego and its conditioned fears is the initial stage.

Challenge 2: Anger

Then, addressing anger and repressed rage helps us build internal power.

Challenge 3: Guilt

Finally, having released our fears and conditioning from childhood, and consolidating our power within us as adults, we can address our feelings of guilt to arrive at a more natural way of being.

3 Stages of Spiritual Growth

3 Essential Stages of Spiritual Growth

Now, let’s look at the process of spiritual growth through one more hero’s journey structure to provide additional clarity.

These three development stages are:

Departure: Self-Discovery
Into the Deep: Trials and Self-Healing
Integration: Returning Home to the Self

Before we begin the first stage, we mostly identify with our persona (or personae for plural)…

The Persona (Pre-Stage)

A persona is like a social mask. For example, when you identify with being an athlete, a parent, an executive, a devout religious person, and so on, as the core of who you are.

These social masks typically begin to develop mainly during our teenage years as a means of identifying ourselves and “fitting in” (Maslow’s need for belonging).

Before we begin our journey, our personas and self-identity are shaped almost exclusively by prior conditioning and programming from the outside world.

But, of course, we’re not the masks we wear or the conditioning that comes with those masks. And so, the process of psychological and spiritual growth starts by looking behind these masks.

Let’s run through each stage that follows.

Stage 1: Departure | Self-Discovery

In the departure phase, we begin the journey to self-discovery. Here, we get to know our conscious self, or the personality in its current form:

What are you really like? What’s your character?
What do you value? What do you stand for?
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
What are your fears, desires, ambitions, aspirations, and goals?
What’s your personality type (for example, your Enneagram type)?

This initial stage can be exhilarating for some, driven by high energy, curiosity, and a passion to “know thyself.”

Stage 2: Into the Deep | Self-Healing

While getting to know your current personality is an important step, this initial inquiry is still mainly on a cursory level. That is, it’s an exploration of what’s conscious and known.

The second phase of this alchemical journey is where things tend to get messy. Here, we begin exploring what’s unknown (the unconscious). And it is here that the real ordeals, trials, and tribulations begin to unfold.

At this stage, we delve into the depths, exploring our pasts and getting to know the “inner children” and other archetypes (or parts) within our psyche. (“Inner Child” is a misnomer as we have many child parts within us.)

The psyche is like a continuous, multi-dimensional recording device. It captures everything it observes, from beginning to end. Our conscious minds may not have access to these recordings, but they still exist with our “field.”

Our childhood traumas are unearthed during this stage. These traumas we endured cause:

Splits within our psyche,
Stagnant energy within the body, and
Disruptions in our energetic field.

The bulk of the “heroic” part of the journey takes place in this second stage, where the focus is on self-analysis, inner observation, cultivating understanding, and self-healing.

Stage 3: Integration | Self-Realization

The final stage of spiritual growth comes after the splits in the psyche are brought to consciousness and mostly healed. A lot of the stagnant energy is released and returned to us.

The self we were before is now seen as the false self. It was a set of concepts based on prior conditioning and programming. We can fully see that now. In observing this, we stand separate from it (as the witness). It’s still there, but we are certainly not that.

Having transcended the prior two stages, we integrate all of this psychic material and hold to the Center, stabilizing within ourselves.

Now, we can return home to the Self, Spirit, or God. We return to our true nature, unconditioned and ever-present.

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Photo by Sandra Seitamaa

How to Approach Spirituality and Growth

Now that we have a basic framework for understanding spirituality and growth, let’s go deeper into the practices and processes involved in making this 3-part journey.

Stage 1: Self-Discovery Activities

Individuals often engage in extensive learning, reading, seminars, workshops, and assessments in this initial stage.

Personality assessments, such as the Enneagram, are a great place to start. It’s highly instructive to learn about your particular personality type and gain insights into common patterns.

Other things you might encounter at this stage include:

Discovering your personal core values
Determining your character strengths
Clarifying your personal vision
Creating a personal development plan

Some individuals like to engage in various therapies or group meetings on related interests during their discovery phase.

In this stage, the focus is more on personal growth than “spirituality” per se.

I’ve already covered this self-discovery stage here if you’d like to learn more. For our purposes in this guide, we’ll invest more time and focus on the next stage.

Photo by Alfred Schrock | Unsplash

Stage 2: Self-Healing Practices for Spiritual Growth

Spirituality is integrally linked with healing. To heal is to make whole. If we were already whole, would “spirituality” even be necessary? We would already be one with our true nature.

However, this place doesn’t work that way. Emotional and psychic disruptions (trauma) happen almost immediately after entering this world.

As such, an essential aspect of spiritual growth relates to addressing past trauma. In many ways, trauma is at the root of our disconnection from the Self.

Too often in the spiritual literature, the physical body is either discarded or given little emphasis. Instead, the focus is on topics like “light” or “higher consciousness.”

However, the alchemical vessel by which we experience these higher states and stages IS the physical body. As such, doesn’t it seem prudent to focus on fixing (healing) and strengthening the alchemical vessel first?

Trauma is Pervasive and Universal

Abuse comes in many forms: physical, mental, emotional, sexual, and psychic. No one leaves childhood unscarred.

Our parents, family members, teachers, and kids at school ensure this. School itself is like a daily, inhumane trauma ritual that permanently destroys many souls. (This becomes abundantly clear during this self-healing stage.)

It’s not a function of blaming anyone or playing the victim. We’re all born into ignorance, and most of us are fully possessed by shadowy archetypal forces we don’t know or understand.

True mature adulthood is rare. And it generally is only achieved in the second half of life. So, for the most part, it’s the blind leading the blind in this place.

Unlocking Stagnant Energy and Removing Body Armor

Trauma that occurs in childhood (or later) is stored within the body in the form of repressed emotions and stagnant energy. Trauma blocks the flow of vital energy within the body. This energy stagnates. Then, various diseases manifest, whether it be physical, emotional, or mental illness.

Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich referred to this blocked emotional energy as body armor. This body armor keeps us from healing our emotional wounds and can also block our access to Spirit. And so, spiritual growth necessitates that we address this trauma and remove this armor.

When we heal the trauma stored in the body, we feel more internal vitality. In fact, with stored trauma, much of our body is numb. We can’t feel into many regions of our body internally. After releasing this trauma, however, it’s as if we can internally navigate throughout our body with our awareness and internal senses.

We feel more alert, relaxed, calm, and centered.

Now, let’s review a set of practices that support self-healing and spiritual growth.

Breath Work

Breath work is a foundational practice with many self-healing benefits.

As we saw in David Richo’s heroic journey structure above, the average individual lives within a relatively neurotic (anxious) state. Sadly, this is the average starting place for most adults, as Abraham Maslow’s research on basic human needs demonstrated.

Anxiety and stress are precursors to many illnesses, and they generally inhibit personal and spiritual growth.

Along with anxiety comes shallow, incorrect breathing, which activates our sympathetic nervous system and the “fight or flight” response. It creates a negative feedback loop and impacts our cognitive functioning, physical health, and emotional well-being.

Various breathing techniques help to calm the body and mind. They reset our nervous system and improve our blood and chi energy flow. From this more relaxed, centered state, healing and spiritual growth can unfold more naturally.

Installing proper breathing principles into one’s body helps augment the benefits of many other practices we’re discussing here.

Body-Oriented Approaches to Addressing Trauma

In prior guides, I’ve highlighted numerous ways of addressing trauma. In general, trauma needs to be approached on multiple levels: physically, emotionally, mentally, and psychologically.

Body-oriented systems include:

Trauma Release Exercises (TRE)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Spontaneous movements and dancing (Zi Fa Qigong)
Bioenergetic Analysis
Various Qigong exercises
Self-message (deep into the sinews and to the bones)
Deep stretching
Acupressure

This guide provides descriptions of many of the above methods. For those interested, I also recommend reading psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (2015) and Dr. John Sarno’s The Mind-Body Prescription (1999).

In terms of Qigong, I especially recommend Zhan Zhuang to correct postural misalignments, release internal tension, and begin developing body-mind awareness.

Mind-Oriented Approaches

In conjunction with body-oriented approaches, it’s beneficial and often necessary to engage in analytical approaches too.

When using a physical technique like Trauma Release Exercises, your body spontaneously shakes as you release stored trauma. Sometimes during or after this release, images and memories of the original event spontaneously come to mind.

But other times, there’s still a psychic wound that may be bubbling up in the mind, yet remaining outside conscious awareness. Here, analytic approaches can be therapeutic. These approaches include:

Active imagination
Dream recall and analysis
Spontaneous writing
Voice Dialogue
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Psychosynthesis
Subpersonality analysis

The goal here is to bring the trauma to consciousness, often by dialoging with various parts and subpersonalities within the psyche, so they can be released and/or accepted.

Rembrandt, Philosopher in Meditation

Self-Analysis

The above mind-oriented approaches are all part of a larger category of self-healing methods called self-analysis or depth psychology.

It’s difficult to imagine how an individual can grow spiritually without self-analysis, self-observation, and self-reflection.

How else could you …

Get to know yourself?
See through your biases, beliefs, blind spots, and prior programming?
Assess your behavior and make course corrections?

In my opinion and experience, shadow work is a must for virtually anyone interested in spiritual growth. It’s an ongoing method of self-examination; a means of bringing the unconscious material within your psyche to consciousness.

During this process, you:

Differentiate the archetypes operating within your mind,
Recollect your projections to restore what’s yours,
Observe your prior conditioning clearly, and
Address various internal tensions and psychic splits.

Ultimately, through a rather messy and uncomfortable process, you get to know your real personality (without being exclusively defined by it).

Devotional Approaches

Devotional approaches to self-healing involve praying for guidance and support.

Those who perceive God or Spirit as external may ask for guidance, clarity, and insight through outward prayer.

Those who perceive God (Spirit or Self) as internal may quietly ask for guidance and clarity within.

Sometimes these insights will come in the form of a dream. Other times, an image or memory will spontaneously arise on its own. Or, the tension or issue held in mind either resolves itself or fades away into the background.

For the devotional approach to be effective, it’s important to be earnest and humble in your request.

It’s also vital to slow down. Most often, these Divine-inspired insights and healings are elusive because we’re moving too fast or distracting ourselves with external stimuli.

Then, once the insight is received, ask for acceptance and understanding so that you can release it or let it go.

Body-Mind Integration Practices

Body-mind integration practices are vital at this stage and the next.

For most of us, the body is largely divorced from the mind. Most “modern people” live in their minds. (Now, it’s worse than ever because most individuals are wired to their devices 24/7.)

The body is mainly there to support the head and to facilitate daily functions like transportation, eating, eliminating waste, sleeping, working, sex, and navigating the Internet.

When the body is divorced from our mind, we are cut off from our instincts. We also have limited access to our innate intuition.

We don’t just have neurons in our brains. We have a network of neurons in our gut and heart regions as well. Said another way, we have multiple brains, yet arguably, the average person barely uses one of them.

Body-mind integration systems like Qigong and Hatha Yoga are designed to help restore the physical and energetic bodies so they work in harmony once more.

Regardless of your religious background or faith, these systems can be both self-healing and revelatory during this stage of spiritual growth.

Amitabha Mandala of Vajrayana Buddhism

Stage 3: The Integration Process

By the time you arrive at the integration stage, you have already done considerable inner work and undergone significant self-healing.

You are not the individual you once perceived yourself to be. The “hero” that began the journey is now but a memory.

Each ordeal, trial, and tribulation you endured during the prior stage changed you. It made you more grounded, humble, and secure within yourself (less neurotic).

With or without knowing it, you’ve been developing your personality as you have progressively healed yourself.

But even this developed personality, or mature ego, is still not the real you. It’s still just a collection of concepts held together by one’s sense of being.

However, this understanding isn’t entirely lucid yet. Your true nature has yet to reveal itself. That’s the focus of Stage 3.

Full Lotus Posture | Find meditation posture guidelines here

Meditation Practice

Meditation is a foundational spiritual practice found in virtually every Wisdom tradition. An individual might engage in meditation at any of the three essential stages, but it becomes especially important here.

Why is meditation essential for spiritual growth?

Done correctly, meditation training helps us cultivate the Inner Observer. Meditation helps create “space” between us and our thoughts, feelings, impulses, attitudes, and judgments. With this additional space, we can more clearly and accurately observe ourselves without reacting.

Meditation done in conjunction with self-analysis is a powerful combination. All of the true Wisdom Traditions understood this and provided a variety of methods for developing one’s consciousness with various analytical approaches.

Deeper and more advanced forms of meditation can lead us directly to the Self, referred to as Self-realization.

A Quick, But Vital Caveat about Meditation

To be clear, meditation alone does not necessarily produce spiritual growth. If it did, you wouldn’t have all the cases of long-term meditators, including monks, gurus, and the like, who become sexual deviates, start cults, and worse.

Various forms of meditation can develop the brain in different, beneficial ways. However, meditation divorced from self-analysis and self-reflection can turn you into a “blockhead,” where you become detached and get stuck in what the Taoists call “the Netherworld.” It can lead to dissociation instead of integration.

As such, you can become a long-term meditator and yet, psychologically, remain a teenager.

To prevent this from happening, be sure to combine meditation with self-analysis. Also, build resolve, conviction, and faith in the practice itself. Continuously remind yourself why you’re doing the particular practice.

Keep your meditation practice alive within you. (And don’t talk about it with others.) Of course, ensure you gain proper instructions as well.

Virtues Tree | Openlight Media

Virtues Cultivation

Spiritual growth and virtue cultivation go hand in hand.

Our base animal nature is mainly driven by the endless pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Left unchecked, this lower nature leads to the “hedonic treadmill,” where we endlessly seek pleasure. This quest for pleasure leads to needless suffering, chronic addiction, and numerous health problems.

Ultimately, this endless pursuit of material, fleeting pleasures depletes our life essence (Jing), which leads to disease and premature death.

Cultivating virtues helps us contain these unhealthy impulses. Virtues move us toward principled living, which supports natural spiritual growth.

Living the cardinal virtues helps us access our innate wisdom and inner knowing, leading to moral refinement.

As we realize our true nature, the need to cultivate virtues actively decreases because we already are an expression of them. As Maslow noted, in transcendent states, the Being values are naturally expressed.

Devotional Practices

Devotion can come in various forms. For example, in Bhakti Yoga, there are nine forms of devotion:

Complete surrender of oneself to God (Aatma-nivedanam)
Worshipping the deity with offerings (Archanam)
Serving God as a servant (Daasyam)
Chanting the names and praises of God (Kirtanam)
Serving the feet of the Lord (Paada-sevanam)
Developing a friendship with God (Sakhyam)
Listening to the stories and glories of God (Shravanam)
Remembering God and His qualities (Smaranam)
Offering salutations and respect to God (Vandanam)

Prayer and devotion can be projected outward or directed inward.

For those on the path of self-knowledge (Jñāna Yoga), devotion is more about placing one’s focus and attention on the Self, one’s beingness, or consciousness itself.

Inward listening done with devotional energy is another viable practice.

What’s most essential with devotion (just like with sitting meditation) is applying one’s full conviction and faith to the act of devotion.

As the Spiritual Journey Continues …

Ultimately, the spiritual journey takes us from ignorance to Self-knowledge, from the false self to one’s true nature.

Eventually, even the concept of “spirituality and growth” becomes nonsensical and can be discarded.

Regardless, the integration process takes time. So, there’s no point in rushing or trying to “get there.”

For starters, rushing creates tension, which will retard the process. Second, in the end, there’s no “where” to go.

The self-healing process is simply about restoring what was damaged and shedding the layers of what you are not.

Your true nature was always right there in front of you. That’s why some traditions refer to it as your “Original Nature” or “Original Face.”

It’s the “I Am” before the unfortunate conditioning of this world came upon it.

What was lost is “found” again (even though it was never really lost and so it can’t really be found).

With Self-realization, you return home to this Original Nature—the impersonal, ever-present Self or God.