Table of Contents
Spiritual Development: What Does Improvement mean to You?
Spiritual Development means Improvement at the soul level.
Improvement is a broad word and it can represent the entire spectrum across the various life processes. Improvement necessarily means increasing the pitch of life as days go by and being able to live to our deepest and fullest capacity in all walks of life.
This is my personal interpretation of all-round improvement or Spiritual Development.
Well, there is only one area that one needs to work upon so that with the energy that becomes available we can improve across all areas of life. Becoming conscious is the first step as it makes us flexible to understand and interpret our thoughts and surroundings.
This area of life, is the very fountainhead from which life spurts out, it is indeed the spirit. One need not work on the spirit, because it is perfect, complete and the very source of exuberance.
If that is the case, what are we supposed to work upon in relation to the spirit? We shall discuss this point in some detail in the current topic.
Spiritual Development: Human Beings And other Species
All life, whether it is a newborn chicken that breaks out from the egg or a new born cub or a baby born out of the womb of a woman, is born almost perfectly.
With perfection I mean, in the nature of life that exists in each creature. One may be born deformed physically or may have other problems.
But still, life, consciousness that flows, animating the living entities is perfect and not just near-perfect.
The problem begins with the human species to the exclusion of all other species.
All other species have a particular way in which the growth takes place, as the rule is set by Nature. You see that the puppy or the new-born colt starts walking within a few hours.
Within a few days, the new-born monkey has learnt the art of jumping across trees. The life of the other species is well-scripted or well-dictated.
However, human babies are born in the most helpless condition.
The human baby only knows to cry and the guardian must attend to his needs.
Otherwise the possibility of the baby not surviving becomes relatively high.
The possibilities of life are immense and maximum in a human baby compared to other species, which, as opposed to humans have a very limited but well-scripted natural growth.
Here is where the problem begins for human babies.
The human baby has almost infinite directions for expressions, through which life can manifest, profit and expand.
The baby becomes susceptible to all sorts of conditioning.
Spiritual Development: Roadblocks in Spiritual Expression
As the human entity starts with its growth process, the influences of the surroundings and the dominant ideologies, heavily conditions and restricts the growth process.
One may call it cultural influence or influence of society, or past influences.
I say this because the baby represents the future no doubt, but it is born in an environment already conditioned by the past.
Most times these influences are inevitable.
It becomes important for a progressive mind to realize this.
When much of influence has already occurred and the mind has become conditioned in such a way that one has developed too many opinions and biases, growth in the mental and spiritual planes becomes heavily stunted or curtailed.
Only people who are fortunate to have realized this stunting or restriction can have the will or the desire to overthrow and defeat many of the restrictions that one has internally developed during the course of one’s own growing-up process.
Spiritual Development: 99.99% of us have no Clue
Growing up does not mean that one starts behaving in accordance with the whims and fancies of the monkey mind. For Example: You grew up in a heavily restricted environment where you could not freely interact with the opposite sex.
Now, this does not mean that in the name of freedom you should be doing exactly that.
This Sort of Freedom is in fact an open invitation to doom. It becomes necessary to understand the true meaning of freeing up oneself rather than to define your own self-conceived standards of freedom, the way you want.
Then this becomes another sort of self-imposed restriction which, to you alone, appears as freedom.
Freedom does not typically mean free to do what you want. Instead it is to do and commit oneself to those things that will free you up from the inside.
This will be an interesting Video to watch.
Relieve yourself of all the compulsions of your inner habit patterns so that you can experience true relaxation, true contentment. This contentment cannot be artificially experienced or induced.
True contentment is born out of the Self, when the spirit is experienced in its totality.
Spiritual Development: Unblocking The Spirit
All our views and opinions about the world, relatives, friends, enemies and other fellow-beings are more or less distorted. It is not that this distortion is introduced within us.
It is generally the nature of our maturing and growing up process.
During this phase we experience a bloackage in our spirit and our energy levels wherein tapping into pure consciousness becomes difficult. The way our mind works, manipulates and cheats us is the very thing that is blocking the life-process and introducing us to situations which stunts creativity and pure expression.
It is our mind that creates fears and insecurities and gets us busy with building security and so, defines a limited kind of freedom that is taking the human entity into a whirlpool of never ending woes.
Another interesting Video on Overcoming Financial Fears will be Interesting
Unless one experiences for oneself this trick of the mind, the unblocking of the spirit can never begin.
Unblocking the spirit is the only way through which all improvement occurs.
Once this process starts within oneself, every other correction process shall happen on its own and there will never be a need to start a different improvement process in any other area of life.
Test your Alignment with the Spiritual Subject Matter (only 7 Questions)
The scores generated in this Quiz are relative. There are no right or wrong answers. A percentage towards 100 indicates that you are more aligned to the overall subject matter.
Spiritual Development: Improvement Begins By realizing the Mind
Today, we heavily enagage with our mind.
We cannot see ourselves different from the mind. We think, we feel and we experience. Most people, even today believe that this feeling, emotion and thought patterns is the real “them”.
This is where the main problem lies. When we do not wake up early, we say that is a habit and that it is our mistake. We do not see the discrepancies of the mind and the conditioning process as different from us.
We bucket all complexities of the mind as ourselves. This is a huge blunder.
When we are late for a function, we say “Sorry, I am late.”Well, the statement is true for practical purposes and can be a fact. Yet, it is not a statement of Truth.
The mind drives our habits and our actions, to which the body becomes so much integrated with us that we feel it is the doing of “ME” the spirit.
This is a false notion.
To rid ourselves of our inappropriate habits is not possible in this condition. This is why we make resolutions for improvement but the very next day we break it without any feeling of guilt. Feeling guilty will anyway be of no help, nevertheless.
Spiritual Development: Step Before Any Improvement
In fact, no improvement is actually required. Our goal is to create a gap between ourselves and the mind. We have to be able to see what drives us into doing things, how we the mind controls us and what is happening in our thoughts.
What is it that is motivating us? What is it that is forcing us? Is it the greed for profit or is it something else.
We must Introspect. It is important that we develop the single habit of watchfulness. When we develop watchfulness, we audit or scan the mind becomes.
It becomes our object of focus.
By watching the mental dialogue through some useful practices, the mind starts calming down and it moves away from our Self.
One has to understand that we are not seeing any improvement in ourselves because today we are not watching out our mind. The funny thing is that, the more you become capable in watching the mind, the faster it shall withdraw and stop its mischief.
The Spirit is perfect.
When the mind withdraws, naturally the life-energies and the power of the spirit surges into action. Then nothing can stop the spirit and slowly one shall inch towards great improvement in all walks of life, automatically.
Spiritual Development: 2 Processes To Watch The Mind
There are two fundamental processes that one can introduce in one’s life so that one stops identifying with the mind. They are chanting the Holy Names of God and Meditating on breath.
Personally I have derived tremendous benefits through both these processes. Improvement starts happening automatically in all spheres of life when one starts following these practices with great intent, the intent of being able to watch the mind at will.
When the mind separates itself from the spirit, it shall mark the end of the process. The mind finally withdraws itself, after completely knowing well that you are now addicted to this self-reformation practice.
The other way to interpret this statement is that one never loses awareness in thought, word and deed.
One shall never think, speak or do anything without a watchful eye. The intention is to root out the automatic unconscious ways of going through life as a dead ritual. This will pave the way for genuine spiritual development.
When the mind gets permanently separated from the self, one would have, for certain achieved this goal of Self-improvement in all walks of life with almost no effort.
