Spiritual Advancement Part 2

This whole topic and original post I wrote came up as a discussion with a pagan friend of mine through email again this week. I am a deep creative thinker and very verbal by nature. (You should see my aura lol) Sometimes I need to write these things down and sort them through. My friend and I will agree and sometimes disagree (we have slightly different paths) but we’re open minded too so it can be fun to debate one another’s theories. We play the devil’s advocate route with each other, and ultimately it’s just babble, but it keeps us thinking. In the end it is just thoughts and ideas.

We’ve been talking now about what exactly spiritual advancement means, feels like, and how you can see evidence of it in your life. We created some interesting theories. So I am going to present here what we decided (at least as of late yesterday and we could change our minds as soon as we find a flaw in the theory again hehe) The example we set is of course based on our own experiences, but also what we have seen from other people in our lives. Ultimately it’s just opinions.

The Signs of Spiritual Advancement are simple (in our possibly brilliant minds)

Advancement shows itself to you in the mundane world. It’s the whole point, in essence, of healing and growing the spirit as well as magic for a Wiccan. Spirituality comforts the soul, but magic makes things happen. – that’s a basic principle in Wicca. You can notice the manifestations in your life and growth is always the key. It may seem vague but the basic premise is: Lesson, Growth, Advance, and Result. Perhaps we just get stuck on the lesson part and we never grow, and that’s maybe where we repeat the same mistakes etc. Advancement does show up in the little things too, the things sometimes you aren’t supposed to value first such as “money”.

If you want money out of greed to attain “status” then you won’t have it. If you want money too desperately you won’t have it. If you try to convince yourself too much that you “don’t need it” to be happy, then you still won’t have it. The truth is you have to earn it and work for it by doing both something you have a talent for and love. That’s the magic part. You must nurture your work and it can’t really be there to satisfy a dream or the ego. Sometimes we do work that doesn’t appear to have a “spiritual” value, but it is still something we enjoy or perform well at, which actually IS good for your own spirit. In your work you should see personal growth from it as each year passes… meaning that there is a lesson for you/your spirit in what you do. It’s how you know you are on the right path. Each year you should be able to look back and see what you have learned basically. By doing so, your income should increase from the growth. Maybe it happens differently for each type of job/career, but the result is some level of advancement and gain each year as you accept what you were supposed to. Spiritual advancement doesn’t make you “rich” financially, but being on the right path gives you what you NEED and makes sure you are comfortable monetarily by obtaining what you really earned to get what you WANT. Money CAN be a spiritual thing when you use it to help yourself, your family, and hopefully even others in some small way. Mundane work that challenges you is still spiritual.

Relationships are a sign of our spiritual advancement. Again we decided to look for the: Lesson, Growth, Advance, and Result. Sometimes you have to cut negative people out of your life, but you also have to remember that you have made some contribution to that negativity too so you must look back to grow forward. When you find yourself constantly changing friends and altering relationships with family then you have to look at yourself first to see why YOU aren’t really advancing. Your circle of people/relationships/friends should grow each year in some small way. It may result with literally new people or with stronger bonds to them.

Giving your children better then what you had is also a way of spiritual advancement. While finances play a certain part (mainly because as you advance, so do your comforts) they are surely not the only factor. Being a good parent means knowing when to yes, when to say no, when to make things easy, and when your child needs to have some adversity in their life to learn something. In the Tarot the Empress and the Emperor represent in a general sense, the parents. They aren’t pals or friends; they are serious about the job they do. Both are certain and in control of who THEY are – leaders. The Emperor in general is authority, and the Empress in general is nurturing. Spiritual Advancement as a parent means watching your child sometimes from a distance and seeing them become their own spirit.

Less equals more is also a sign of Spiritual Advancement. The example my friend and I used was within Wicca itself, but it could be any spiritual path most likely. We looked back to our beginnings in our chosen religion. We had to follow structured ritual, we had to get our hands on every Wiccan book seeking more, and we had to make every moment mean something. We were in essence TOO spiritual by always blaming Mercury Retrogrades on computer failures, always saying the moon was in the wrong phase, always reworking spells, and always buying new tools to represent what we sought. But spiritual advancements suddenly occur when you see the difference between what happens in the mundane world and what happens within the spiritual one. Living every moment too focused on the other worlds means you aren’t living in the mundane one, which is where you are supposed to be to obtain your lessons. One of the purposes of ritual is to remove yourself from the mundane world, that’s why you need the tools, the altar, the meditation, etc – it mentally focuses you into spiritual realms. But all ritual ends or should so, with some level of grounding work which means even the Goddess knows you have to get back to everyday living. Sometimes you just have to wash the dishes, fold towels, and have adult conversations that do not revolve around deep meaning, astrology, or the spiritual realm. Growth happens when you can also learn to let the spiritual world go and to do its thing without you over analyzing it. Simple acceptance is internal, not external.

Understanding the difference between your impulses and your instincts is also a major advancement. Both are very similar and often mistaken to be the same thing, which is our human flaw. But there is a major difference. An impulse is a feeling that causes us to make an action without forethought or evidence to support the feeling. Usually it is to satisfy an emotion rather than spirit. But an Instinct is a little like a sudden moment of enlightenment that is based upon “signs” or “evidence” that you experience. Instincts are a knowing rather than an “emotional” reaction. How to be sure? With instinct comes constant success, with impulse you get lucky….. sometimes. Instincts make situations BETTER while impulses do not, or do so only temporarily. Insticts help you grow, impulses are more like a quick fix.

Spiritually advancing (in our opinion) means never taking steps backwards in any area of your life because it means you aren’t growing. There is also a difference between “intention” and “action”, even in magic you need more then just an intention to make it work – spirit expects “action” too. One of my favorite old adages is “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” because intending to do good without actually doing it has literally no value to anyone, including ourselves. Intention alone is a backwards step in our spiritual progression. To me, it means we KNOW the right answer but we stubbornly refuse to DO what we know…. because of the ego, pride, or our own emotions. Intention is a very small part of our lives, our actions and reactions are of much greater value because you cannot succeed or fail on intention alone. Intentions are supposed to influence your decisions to make things happen, but they are just the spark. Good intentions do not create good things or good karma, unless they are followed through to a finale.

There are many more things I could add from my pondering with my friend and our interesting conversations. Today, this is what I had the time to write. I guess these are things everyone ponders when we look below the surface. The challenge to humans no matter what our path or religion is….. is when we ask ourselves; are we committed to “spiritual growth” or just to the behaviors of spirituality. Are we going through the motions or really seeing results?