by Owen Waters
Spiritual growth is the growing awareness of a higher level of consciousness.
A higher level of consciousness brings an expanded view of reality.
The more your view of reality expands, the more you are able to integrate any conflicting issues within yourself.
Why It Matters Today
Spiritual growth has become such an urgent issue today because the frequency of everyone’s consciousness is rising. People may not be aware that they are growing. They may resist it. They may be in denial that today’s great changes affect them. Nevertheless, these are the days of great change, an era called the Shift.
The Shift is a steady rise in consciousness which affects the entire planet. It is similar to the cultural shift of the Renaissance, only amplified several times over. The Renaissance was merely a practice run for today’s transformation.
The Shift into higher consciousness is propelling today’s search for spirituality and meaning in life. Spiritual growth involves gaining a deeper sense of inner awareness. Deeper awareness ranges from light meditation to a complete and blissful union with your true, inner self.
Exposure to the deeper states of meditation have the long-term effect of raising your everyday level of awareness. The higher the frequency of your consciousness, the more likely you are to see the synchronicity of events in your life and gain intuitive insights into these.
The universal theme playing out on Earth today is shifting from one of separation to one of integration. Integration means learning how to love and accept yourself, and others, completely and unconditionally.
Deeper awareness opens the door to an inner sense of the connectedness of all life. You begin to see other people as different expressions of the same Infinite Being. Not better than, not less than, just different than yourself. In the deeper awareness of spiritual growth, the universe is seen to be within, not something separate and outside of yourself.
Inner integration is a process that causes issues of separation to arise so that they can be resolved. In society today, issues are coming up so rapidly that society appears to be in turmoil or chaos. This turmoil is actually a great society-wide healing, with issues becoming resolved one after another.
People are becoming more sensitive in many ways as the frequency of consciousness rises. The search for lighter diets is just one manifestation of this new lightness of being.
The physical senses are becoming more acute. An example of this is people’s sensitivity to the smell of cigarette smoke in work places and restaurants. Back in the 1970s, people smoked everywhere and very few noticed any discomfort from it. By the 1990s, however, the majority of people’s sensitivity had changed so much that they couldn’t wait to get smoking banned from indoor gathering places.
With the rise in consciousness comes a rise in personal empowerment. People are no longer willing to tolerate abuse or inequality in any form. Many forms of abuse which were traditionally ignored and tolerated have now come out into the public view for examination and reform.
David: Icon of the Renaissance
The Renaissance movement was inspired by the icon of Michelangelo’s statue of David. The statue portrays David, strong-willed and ready, at the moment that he decides to engage the threat posed by Goliath. This icon of personal empowerment resonated with the cultural shift of the time. People wanted to explore their potential, taking personal initiative in their lives.
Before this, they had seen life as a sequence of events caused by a pre-ordained destiny. Up until that time, people had resigned themselves to a flow of events which they saw as being outside of their control.
When people shifted towards the attitude that they might also be pre-ordained to take some personal initiative, everything began to shift. The floodgates of possibility opened up as people began to explore their true potential.
In that same era, people on Earth still thought that their planet was the center of the universe. The Sun was seen as orbiting around the Earth, and the stars were merely a decorative backdrop in the Creator’s sky.
Today, it is known that the universe measures billions of light years across, contains countless billions of galaxies, with each galaxy typically containing billions of suns. The number of planets in the universe is so large that it makes such an expanded view of reality almost impossible to grasp.
When you consider that all of those trillions of planets were created by one Creator, there is an obvious need for today’s concept of God to expand to fill the new reality. Faced with such a massively expanded view of the universe, how are people supposed to grasp the concept of such a huge Creator in a way that makes sense today?
What would David have done? As he faced the looming Philistine giant Goliath and readied his slingshot, to whom did he pray? Did he invoke the power of an external God for his protection? Possibly, but not likely. As portrayed in the Michelangelo statue, his face was set, but not with a need for protection. It was set in a defiance born of inner strength and determination.
The Power Is Within You
Everyone possesses such inner strength. That same source of incredible personal power is available within everyone, and the source is your inner self. Often referred to as the soul, your inner self is the permanent part of you. While the physical body can pass away from the physical world, and later the spirit body can pass away from the spirit world, your inner self is the real, permanent you.
It is the part of you that is permanently joined with your soul family in vibrant love and harmony. The more you contact your inner self through meditation, the more you can tune into this source of strength, love and harmony.
People’s connection to the Infinite Being always has been through their soul, or inner self.
Inner contact through meditation is the most peaceful, and the most productive, part of any day. Everyone deserves quality time. When quality time becomes the first priority of the day, then meditation will happen regularly and the benefits will automatically be yours.
Put meditation at the top of your To Do list for each day and watch your spiritual growth unfold.
Tell a friend…