I don’t think of spiritual practice being only an internal process – I see it as both internal and external. If we don’t take our upgraded consciousness into the world in terms of how we operate, then we haven’t really changed anything, right?

About life expanding as evidence of spiritual growth, I see your point. And there may be people who have created very big lives who are externally driven without much consciousness, so for them, spiritual growth could involve more time going within. I think of spiritual growth in terms of seeking a balanced life and feeling of wholeness.

Spiritual pratice and spiritual growth can look very different for different people depending on their starting point, but this topic is ripe for thought/discussion and I thank you for bringing it up!

About all things getting better when we are on the ball: I once went to a conference by the renowned natural therapist, Joel Robbins. He pointed out that in a state of disease, the body is not strong enough to deal with a number of health issues, and will not be able to clean itself. But as we follow a more healthy regimen, and our bodies gain strength and energy, the body can then eliminate toxins, resulting in what has been called a healing crisis.

So it is in spiritual life. As we begin to develop our spiritual life, we may go through a spiritual healing crisis, and we may find that we will spontaneously begin to undergo difficulties which we didn’t have the inner strength to endure before. Yet even this is a sign of progress.

I have been pondering the distinction between spiritual growth and spiritual practise and can feel a blog post of my own coming on, thanks for the inspiration.

I’m into practical spirituality and have experienced areas of my life that have moved forward in ways I could never have imagined possible and experienced (am still experiencing) an area which does not seem to have transformed like the other areas. Where I feel stuck and where this post makes me think, am I really growing? If I didn’t see success elsewhere I would probably think not.

Your point “the more we connect to our Higher Selves, the higher our vibration rates, the more obviously any energetic misalignments will manifest themselves” is soooo true and it just makes living this misaligned part of my life even harder the more my vibration raises.

Spiritual practise is a massive part of my spiritual growth but I agree you’ve got to live it too and this post is making me wonder how much I live it in this area.

Great food for thought

In peace, love and prosperity x x x

Lola

Now it’s time to go eat spiritually and feel wonderful about it. See you later,

You’ve been such an inspiration to me, Andrea! I wish you every success while stepping out of your comfort zone to explore, expand and re-discover!

I don’t think I was clear enough in my first comment… I meant that yes, all of life becomes a meditation. It’s not just something confined to the mat in a particular time frame.

See this article for more

The Wise do not Waste Time on Meditation

And yes, that title is tongue-in-cheek!

Definitely. I grew up with a vague Buddhist background & in it you are taught that your ultimate goal is to transcend this world in order to achieve nirvana ASAP.

Making enlightenment a goal. Laughable. When we are all already enlightened.

Another reason why people get lost in their ‘practice’ / obsession with spiritual things & try to ignore the mundane. Spiritual rat race. First one to the enlightenment finish line becomes a lama! LOL

Silver – I totally agree with you. We are in this physical world for good reason – not to transcend it, but to co-create it. And that means fully engaging with this dimension and all it has to offer!

KL – I agree with you that the line between spiritual practice and spiritual living gets very murky … all action is spiritual practice, every moment can be meditation, right?

Ed – Yeah, I’ve definitely had my brushes with teachers who are very “achievement” – oriented in a spiritual context. It’s all about evolution, but not about life in its totality. It was interesting how that just created more separation between Spirit and “the rest” of life. It’s all One, right?

Chris – Oh, I agree that spiritual practice with a high degree of attachment to a result is NOT the way to go. There’s definitely that trick of being conscious creators AND stay in detachment to any outcomes AND at the same time witness in a highly conscious way what we are creating …

Blessings,
Andrea

It took me quite awhile to come to this realization. As spiritual beings having a physical existence we need to express who we are here, now. How we are “doing” in the rest of our our lives is the reflection of how well we are bring the Divine through–which to me is another reason we don’t “need” teachers as much as we need “guides” or coaches to remind us to stop and really look at our lives. If we don’t like what we see then it is time to change how we are in the world. It is so much less about trying a different or increasing our spiritual “practice” and more about bringing who we are in spiritual practice into our moment-to-moment lives.

One comment back to KL–I would add that meditation is the means AND the goal of how to live our lives spiritually. Not only “…we don’t have to stop to do our meditation practice at all…” but I would say it is all meditaion practice–at least that is my definition of moment-to-moment mindfulness.

You make such valid points. In the end, meditation is a means, not the end goal. It becomes how we live our lives moment to moment 24/7 and we don’t have to stop to do our meditation practice at all…

I love how you point out the results of spiritual practice too – boy can it bring some changes about!

“… I meet a lot of people who are “spiritual”, but they’re sick & broke all the time. That’s not wealth either. Life is meant to be abundant – in all areas.”

Escapism takes on a myriad of subtle disguises, the best of which take the form of ‘good’ things to do, or ‘good’ habits to form etc. Wolves in sheep skin.

I have two terms that I often use for this: ungroundedness & airy-fairy-ness. People who run into the fantasy world of ’spiritual fulfillment’ & ‘renunciation of the material’ not for any other reason than escaping from the problems they don’t want to face or do anything about.

Too easy to forget: We are spiritual beings in the FLESH now because we chose to create our experiences in the PHYSICAL realm. Whole new ball game.

This is definitely a good and new way for me to re-evaluate my life for 2009! I’m not all that hung up over new year resolutions, and I probably won’t consider this as one … but it is certainly a call for courage to shift, to expand, to grow. It is a call for me to re-evaluate what my comfort zone truly is. We shall see how that works out. Thanks!