Spiritual Practice vs. Spiritual Growth

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.

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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." 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." 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?" 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.

Andrea Hess is an Intuitive Consultant and author of "Unlock Your Intuition: How to Accurately and Reliably Access Your Most Valuable Resource." For more information on her book, her readings, or to read more of her work on her blog, please visit http://www.EmpoweredSoul.com

Contact the Author
Andrea Hess

Andrea@EmpoweredSoul.com
More Details about results of spiritual practice here.

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This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

Paradox, to give up the ego, you have to have a healthy one

Paradox, seemingly incompatible ideas:
There is a paradox in recovery theory and it's about the denigration of the ego, the giving up of the ego. "Virtually all the major spiritual traditions speak of the giving up of the ego...it seems that in order to give up the ego, you've got to have a healthy one FIRST" (paraphrased from John Bradshaw)

If you 'give up your ego' and you don't have a healthy one FIRST

- you might as well 'offer up' all your worldly possessions and become Hari Krishna, or climb a mountain in the Himalayas...how would you contribute to society that way?

What follows below seems contradictory, but both family systems theory AND what a sponsor might say are both good things to do!

Inner child work IS useful

...to help you get to the point where you forgive yourself

...and it IS true that at some point you're just gonna have to take responsibility for your actions.

Twelve Ways To Tell The Difference Between Your Sponsor And Your Therapist:

1) Your sponsor isn't all that interested in the "reasons" you drank.

2) Your therapist thinks your root problem is your lack of self-esteem, negative self-image, and your poor self-concept. Your sponsor thinks your problem is a 3-letter word w/no hyphens... YOU.

3) Your therapist wants you to pamper your "inner child." Your sponsor thinks it ought to be "Spanked" or "Taken out and Shot!"

4) Your sponsor thinks your inventory should be about you, not your parents!

5) Speaking of parents, your sponsor tells you not to confront them, but you apologize to them.

6) The only time your sponsor ever uses the word "closure" is before the word "mouth."

7) Your sponsor thinks "boundaries" are things You need to take or tear down, not build up.

8) Your therapist wants you to love yourself first; your sponsor wants you to love others first.

9) Your therapist prescribes care taking and medication; your sponsor prescribes prayer making and meditation.

10) Your sponsor thinks "Anger Management Skills" are numbered 1-2-3...12

11) Now that u haven't had a drink in six months, your therapist thinks you should make a list of your goals and objectives for the next five years, starting with finishing up that college degree.

Your sponsor thinks you should start today by cleaning the coffeepots and helping him or her carry a heavy box of literature to the jail.

12) Your sponsor won't lose his license to practice if he talks about God...



No site involving the 12 steps or relating to the 12 steps could be complete without a list of useful one liners that could be heard in a meeting.
Here's what I found useful:

About the 3rd step, let go and let God:

"Everything I ever let go of had claw marks all over it"

"I had an ego that would kill a lesser man"

Damn, this last one was me to a tee!


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This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services