Is your spiritual growth creating the results you want?
I’m not talking about enlightenment. I’m talking about growth in other life areas. We are, after all, whole beings. Expansion in one area of our lives must be reflected in all other life areas.
It’s not unreasonable to expect spiritual growth to create a greater level of fulfillment, more financial abundance, more satisfaction within relationships, and a greater sense of health and well-being. I’ll go even further than that. If the rest of our lives are not showing expansion, then we’re not really growing spiritually.
What we may be doing instead is simply practicing.
Meditation, prayer, journaling, fasting or doing yoga are called spiritual “practices†for a reason. Have you ever wondered what we are practicing for? These activities are not the main event – they are just how we “practice.â€Â These activities allow us to “practice†new states of Being so that we may then apply them to the rest of our lives. Taken into the rest of our lives, these new states of Being will create new action, and new results. That’s the point of spiritual practice. We are, after all, here to express ourselves as Divine Beings. We’re here to create the lives we want, to be Creators of our human experience.
It’s easy being Buddha- or Christ-like when we’re sitting on a meditation pillow. It’s not so easy when we try to take this state of Being out into the world, into our relationships, our work, our parenting, or dinner with our in-laws.
It can be so difficult taking that we don’t even try. We relegate our spiritual growth to the realm of the spiritual “practice.â€Â We become all about our time on the meditation pillow or the yoga mat. We seek out environments in which it’s easy to be oh-so-spiritual. We ignore the fact that we are hardly able to pay the bills, or are miserable in our relationship, or feel exhausted all the time. We are, after all, able to escape into bliss on our meditation pillow every day.
In the meantime, the more we connect to our Higher Selves, the higher our vibration rates, the more obviously any energetic misalignments will manifest themselves. Our life circumstances may actually deteriorate as we increase our spiritual “practice†if we just keep doing what we’ve always done. This, in turn, may send us running back to the comfort and safe haven of our spiritual “practice†instead of addressing the underlying issues that are calling out to be resolved. Spirituality becomes escapism.
Is your spiritual growth creating the results you want in the rest of your life? Or is your spirituality just an abstract, a theory, a “practice?â€Â Are you ready to take your spiritual “practice†into the main event of life? Are you ready to translate your spirituality into new action and new results that are the fullest expression of your Being?
It’s time to make ourselves, as spiritual Beings, manifest in every way we choose.
Blessings,
Andrea
And speaking of taking new action …
Lola Fayemi’s 6-week teleclass series “Healing Your Relationship with Food” starts on January 20th! This teleclass series is all about healing the issues, past and present, that are causing you to gain weight, eat unhealthily and dislike your body. Go check it out at Aligned and Thriving.
Filed under: Embrace Your Highest Path and Purpose • Manifest Your Desired Outcomes • Spiritual Development
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Hi Andrea,
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!
Excellent topic. As James Ray said in The Secret:
“… 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.
Really good article Andrea.
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!
Hey Andrea!
I love this statement of yours”…If the rest of our lives are not showing expansion, then we’re not really growing spiritually.”
Amen.
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.
Thanks for this perspective. To me, this is a tricky issue, because if I go into meditation specifically wanting more money, relationships or some other material reward, the experience will not be centering. Meditating may produce material results in the world, but ironically I think it’s most effective for doing so when we let go of expectations going into it. — Best, Chris
Irene – it’s definitely always a good idea to know our comfort zone, whether we are prepared to step beyond it or not. Awareness is the first step, right?
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
“We are in this physical world for good reason – not to transcend it, but to co-create it.”
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
Love the discussion this has inspired!
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!
Love your post!! It’s really about BEing and resonating in the same raised energetic state throughout the day, right? I am now beginning to see the importance of being aligned in all aspects of my life in order to be truly abundant!
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 like this post.
When I say “spiritual healing and growth is the foundation of all success, including success as entrepreneurs” not many people get it. There is such a hard belief that spirituality should stay in the tiny corner of life, whereas in fact, it is the foundation of EVERYTHING.
Now it’s time to go eat spiritually and feel wonderful about it. See you later,
Wonderful and thought provoking post Andrea!
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
Andrea, lots of good points in this article, especially the point that spiritual practice can’t be limited to times of meditation, but must pervade the entire life.
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.
The concept of practice versus more rigorous application prompts further reflection. Some people believe that regularly engaging in certain spiritual practices is a way to introduce a different mindset into their lives. This is often the case. Those who practice yoga claim to feel more relaxed in their workplace. People who participate in spiritual workshops often report more rewarding interactions in relationships and settings where communication is prevalent.
All this says energy vibrations of your thought process in one setting or activity can carry over to other areas of life. This may be slow and relatively unnoticable at first. However, as your awareness and deliberate intention become stronger, the focus and affect is clearer.
Andrea, this is a provocative post which brings up the issue of what “spiritual practice” looks like to each person. I just wrote a Transformational Tip called “Practice Receiving,” which suggests a personal check-in as well as a practical call to action. In my opinion (especially for givers), receiving is a spiritual practice!
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!