Spiritual Growth
And Worldly Success

Spiritual growth includes, rather than excludes, worldly success, because, ultimately, everything is spiritual.

Failing to include a discussion on spirituality within the context of worldly success is to fail to fully understand the true meaning of achievement and fulfillment.

Since the sum of our disappointment in life yields the gift of inner transformation, it follows that all success is a result of increased intelligence and applied awareness.

Initially, when we look within, we find people and events that we resent and experiences that we resist. As we look deeper, things change. Regret changes into compassion, compassion changes into acceptance, and acceptance changes into love. Where we perceived an abomination, we now find an embryonic love for all beings everywhere.

Spiritual growth teaches us about our nature as lovers of life and other beings.

It dawns on us that most of the things that we used to seek when we hoped to live better in the world do not matter. The world and everything in it is a temporary form. Everything is destined for oblivion. Entropy consumes it all.

We discover that we ourselves are beings of infinite love traveling through an ephemeral world.

Spiritual growth awakens us to our true, authentic Self.

The truth that sets us free is the truth of ourselves, the truth of our real, intrinsic, essential, spiritual nature.

Spiritual Growth And Self-Discovery

The physical form of us, and its dimensions of mind, emotion, and vitality, is not us.

Our name and form, our ego self, are not us.

We do not exist in the things we have.

We cannot be found in our accomplishments.

All our expressions are but faint reflections of us, nor more real than our image in a mirror.

What we find is that the True Self is invisible, intangible, and ineffable.

Spiritual Growth And Self-Acceptance

However, spiritual growth does not end self-growth; it merely puts it into perspective.

Although we may be intrinsically whole and complete, we can still improve the quality of our lives and relationships by working on our human weaknesses, namely, all the self and other-destructive behavior that arises from feeling and expressing apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, and pride.

Spiritual growth is accepting our essential grandeur in the great scheme of things, our connection to all of consciousness.

Self-growth is improving our earthly conditions through refining our personality, our egoism, and our earthy self.

These two perspectives, although completely contrary, don’t contradict each other, because this is the nature of duality, heaven and earth, subtle and gross, spirit and matter. Instead the self-acceptance that arises from spiritual growth makes self-growth much easier and progressive. Psychological healing accelerates once the spiritual dimension is accepted.

Once we discover our True Self, we stop trying to complete ourselves from a superficial perspective.

From the spiritual perspective…

We find that there is nothing to change. We do not need more control, approval, or safety. We do not need to know more or to do more. We do not need to find missing physical, mental, or emotional pieces. Everything is as it should be. There are no missing parts. There is nothing to discover, heal, or amend. We are perfect as we are—perfectly ourselves, unique and special, and perfectly united with all beings.

And from the spiritual perspective…

We can stop trying to fill in the gaps in our lives, plug the missing holes in our psyche, and heal the imaginary wounds of past wrongs, we are set free.

We understand that we are intrinsically whole and have always been that way. We have always been in absolute unity with all things. We have always been one with all of creation.

Of course, from the human perspective, we always have much work to do, but, uplifted by a spiritual awareness of our real nature, we are much more able to deal with our temporary, earth-bound natures.

Spiritual Growth And Self-Discovery

After we were born, we began to accumulate beliefs that separated us from remembering our whole and complete spiritual self.

Because we fell out of awareness, we believed in our separation from higher consciousness and this illusion made the world appear cold, cruel, and indifferent to our needs.

We forgot that the thread that runs through the tapestry of all creation is consciousness and we forgot that the world of form is the expression of consciousness. Mistaking this world of form as our source confused us.

Identifying ourselves by our form and establishing an identity based on our associations with form created the illusion of separation.

The theological explanation of spiritual growth and the scientific explanation of a quantum field of all possibility turn out to be a discussion of the same thing. They both discuss how consciousness expresses itself in form.

Consciousness is inseparable from the quantum field of all possibility. It is the awareness that informs the structure of all things.

As long as we believe in the illusion of separation, the quest for spiritual growth is futile. It is the light seeking illumination. What we are seeking for is what we are seeking with. It is our divine nature that seeks divinity.

The authentic, True Self reveals the kingdom of consciousness. The reason why consciousness is considered to be omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient is because consciousness is in everyone and everything, and that includes us.

Spiritual Growth Quickens Into Love

It has always been there, but now we are ready to live in a higher consciousness.We are free to begin the journey of heart-centered living. We get in touch with what really matters. We discover a friendly universe.

The wisdom of this authentic being is expressed through the language of love.

When we open up our hearts, we can touch lives with our presence.

This is what Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela did to change the world.

When Mahatma Gandhi dispensed with playing his role as a lawyer, he discovered the power of satyagraha, the power of soul-force, the power of knowing spiritual truth, the power of spiritual knowledge, and he expressed this power through an ideology of nonresistance to the dominion of the mighty British Empire.

When Nelson Mandela dispensed with playing his role as a rebel, he discovered the power of grace, the power to love his captors by gifting them with the vegetables of his prison garden.

In the depths of a negative political world, they found their essence. In this essence, they discovered their freedom. Once they recognized that they were free in their experiences, they became free of their experiences. Along the journey of their transformation, they changed more than their own worlds. They changed the world for everyone else, too.

They found within themselves a power greater than the power of the world.

Spiritual Growth Expands With Lovingkindness

How can we live and grow and find life more abundant as we press forward?

The answer, of course, is always the same: it is the effulgence of unconditional love, divine love, agape.

While the other kinds of love, philos, brotherly love, and eros, romantic love, can do great things for us, it is agape, divine love within, that has the power to heal anything.

In any situation in our life, we must ask, “Where is the love? How can we discover it? Where can we express it?”

Love is our gift to life. It is our antidote to fear.

Love is of pure consciousness. Fear is of the world. When we bring the reality of pure consciousness into the illusion of the world, love casts out all fear.

As we love, we quicken our own consciousness. We stop judging others and start blessing them instead. We see everyone as doing the best they can with how much they know. We see everyone as an expression of ourselves.

With love we no longer see through a glass darkly; and we discover that our mature consciousness attracts grace. Suddenly life becomes the miracle we always suspected. In our new wisdom, we notice that everything is unfolding exactly the way it should. We no longer assume that our thin slice of awareness of any situation defines it.

Once we awaken to our True Self, everything changes for us.Once we discover that our real nature is love, once we discover that love is expressed as wisdom and compassion, once we discover that the world is not hostile, we cannot live in the world in the same way. We find ourselves one with all of creation and that the presence of pure consciousness is closer than our own heart beat. Now our question is not, “who am I?” but, “what am I willing to call forth into expression?”

Thus, the pursuit of success in the world is in perfect resonance with the pursuit of a higher understanding behind the meaning of life. While the corporate world may have little time for higher principles, it does not exclude them from its consequences. The individual who both aligns with spiritual growth and self-growth will enjoy the highest level of success, both on a spiritual and worldly level. The distinction between heaven and earth, spirit and matter, soul and mind, is an artificial intellectual distinction that does not serve anyone because it limits success.

Get Free Mind Power Insights
For Achieving Success

Related Articles

Go to Follow Your Bliss

Go to Tao Of Success

Go to Forgiveness

Go to Dharma

Go to Spiritual Guidance

Go to a Path With A Heart

Go to Spiritual Enlightenment

Go to Spiritual Warrior

Go to Culture Is Not Your Friend

Go to Soul Awakening

Go to Self-Awareness

Go to What Is Spirit

Go to Local Universe

Go to Morning Meditation




Return from Spiritual Growth to Home Page