Maybe you’ve been on the spiritual path for some time now.
Being on a spiritual journey is meant to ebb and flow and bring a constant slew of new experiences into your life… If those sound like familiar words, then read on because that isn’t quite how it works, and it may be the reason why you’ve become frustrated with your lack of progress in your spiritual journey.
The reason why that one magic key to your spiritual growth isn’t showing up in your life is simple.
There isn’t one.
Let that sink in for a second…
You can have turning points in your life and pick up valuable teachings along the way, and they do obviously help. But those keys are just a figment of your imagination. They only have as much value as you ascribe to them, and each one holds just as much value on your journey as the next teaching or experience you come across.
They don’t work in isolation. Each new insight only works because of the understanding of the last, so for you to place more value on one teaching than another doesn’t make sense. They all contribute to the whole of your journey.
If you want to know the real key to your spiritual growth, I can tell you this…
The key is the journey itself.
The key is being present and part of your experience as it happens, not projecting yourself so far into the future that you lose all sense of grounding and appreciation of this present moment experience.
How Do You Really Define Spiritual Growth?
There are three main areas of spiritual growth, and they relate to:
- Understanding of Spiritual Concepts
- Your Daily Interactions with Others
- Energetic Upgrades and DNA Activation
These usually follow in a linear fashion.
You gain an understanding of a new teaching, which you then put into practice in your daily life. And through engaging with it consistently, you raise your vibration and become a signature frequency match for new experiences to come into your life.
It’s a cyclical process.
And this goes on regardless of how high you ascend on the spiritual ladder. It’s an absolute concept. Awareness. Action. Ascension.
Do You Even Know What the “Keys” to Your Spiritual Growth Look Like?
And this isn’t meant to belittle you but to make you think.
You’re on your journey of spiritual development and are breaking new ground with each step you take. It’s a journey of discovery, which means you don’t know what experiences are important to you without the benefit of hindsight.
Some of the most significant turning points you can have on a spiritual path are experiences that bear no resemblance to anything spiritual whatsoever. They’re events that sweep through your life like a hurricane, and it’s only in the aftermath that you realise it was the universe rearranging your circumstances to allow new experiences into your life.
And although it might not look like it, does that not sound like spiritual growth?
The entire reason why those elusive keys aren’t showing up in your life is that you can’t see what’s happening right underneath your nose. The universe works in very subtle and oftentimes, contradictory ways.
The Art of Integration: Why Growth isn’t Always About Moving Forwards
If the concept of integration is new to you, it’s the process that occurs after a profound spiritual experience has taken place in your life – it can be underestimated by a lot of people.
Remembering what we talked about earlier with creating new understandings, putting them into action and receiving energetic upgrades, the concept of integration falls somewhere between the second and third steps.
So if you happen to be someone who always has to be in perpetual motion, when you’re in these phases, it can seem like you’re journey has come grinding to a halt.
This is not the case, and the integration of an experience and/or learning is equally, if not more important than the experience itself. Your experience needs to be backed up by understanding. That is what integration refers to in practice.
Take this as an example.
You’re in college, and you’ve just completed your first semester, except you’ve been asked to complete no assignments, and there are no end-of-term finals. As much as you might view these as an inconvenience at the time, they’re necessary for your development.
How likely are you to progress next semester when you’re asked to understand newer concepts that build on the original ones? How can you be expected to succeed when you’ve not proven your learning of the supporting material?
You’re Placing Too Much Expectation on Your Spiritual Growth
There’s often so much value placed on what’s coming next.
To suggest that you give up all forms of fantasy and daydream about what could be next would be pretty miserable of me to suggest. It’s unrealistic and is something I also have some fun with from time to time. It’s interesting to see if you can connect the dots from your past to the present and then project outwards to the future. It can be a very useful exercise.
The problems arise when the thought of what could happen next is replaced with the idea of what should happen next. The weight of expectation puts the brakes on your spiritual development quicker than you can imagine.
Expectancy goes hand in hand with an instant gratifying mindset, wanting everything in the here and now. And by engaging in the thought construct of the events that should be happening in your life right now, you limit the possibilities of what could happen.
If you’re so fixated on the idea of a specific outcome, you close yourself off from the full potential of a situation. You burden yourself with limitations. You have the understanding that what you expect is all that’s possible. It’s a kind of false-light enlightenment trap – one that keeps you stuck and ultimately in mediocrity.
You’re Not Ready for the Next Stage of Your Spiritual Journey
Let’s revisit the idea of schooling once again because it’s essentially the same concept that a spiritual journey connotes.
If specific experiences haven’t entered your life yet, there’s usually a good reason for that… You’re not meant to be having them.
There is an order and logic to everything that takes place in your life as far as spiritual growth is concerned. And just as you wouldn’t be expected to engage with academic materials above your level of understanding, the universe works in the same way.
You might be fully aware that these levels of experience exist.
You may have friends who’ve been on the path a little longer than you have or may have read about the achievements of spiritual teachers and wondered when you might have the same experiences.
And you can clamour all you like because as much as you believe an experience is the one you need and holds that elusive ‘key’ to your spiritual growth if it isn’t in your field, it probably doesn’t.
You need to realise you are exactly where you are in this present moment because there is something important for you to learn. And whether that’s integrating a new experience or some other teaching, pining after what’s next isn’t going to help you.
You’re not Able to See What’s Right in Front of You
We talked earlier about some of the most disruptive events in life are the ones that hold the most value.
But not seeing what is in front of you also has another connotation.
It means working on the thing that is in your direct line of sight.
If you take a practical view of spiritual development, what is the use in trying to solve a problem that hasn’t even entered your field yet!? It sounds quite ridiculous to hear that, I know. But it’s something we’ve all been guilty of at some point.
You’re not going to progress to the next class until you’ve passed your current assignment.
Why Your Spiritual Growth Should Be Organic (You Don’t Need to Chase It)
By now, the truth about spiritual growth should be pretty clear.
There is no shortcut, no cheat code, and no “keys” to getting ahead that you’d consider to be found experiences.
However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything you can use to assist you on your journey. If there is one big takeaway from all of this, it’s the cultivation of your virtues. And that includes things such as hindsight, mindfulness, perseverance and patience, to name a few.
Why are you in such a rush? What do you think is waiting for you at the end of your journey?
The whole point of learning is the joy that comes from discovery. Once you master a skill, it tends to lose some of its allure – it ceases to hold some of its mystery. And it’s because it was the act of engaging that was the real draw. It was the challenge and not the destination.
If you’re still intent on discovering the key to your spiritual growth after reading this…
Then this is it…
The key to your spiritual growth is realising it’s the entire journey.
And that is why you haven’t found it up until now. It is a meta-realisation that both exists and doesn’t exist like many spiritual teachings – a paradox.
It is taking part in the journey that matters – not the results.
Spiritual growth is not a pass-or-fail exercise. We all reach the same point, and it’s not a race.
Take the scenic route and enjoy the view.
