You Can't Force Spiritual Growth

You can chant and meditate and do yoga for hours a day, for years even. If your goal is spiritual growth, then you need to know that nothing will happen until it's your time. It's as simple as that.

Yes, you can induce certain experiences though "spiritual practices" and other methods, but that does not equate to spiritual growth. It's more like masturbation, you have an experience, but it doesn't result in anything, really.

When you grow spiritually, you don't even need yoga or meditation. It can happen while you're sitting on your couch watching Netflix, or on the way to the grocery store.

You don't have any control over it whatsoever. You can't even stop it when it's time to happen: if it's going to happen and you don't want it to, you are going to get pulled, kicking and screaming, into the new world.

Like a baby being born.

Spiritual growth is a natural function, like birth or puberty. It happens when it's time for it to happen.

And there isn't one enlightenment...there are many. As many as you need.

As much as it is necessary in the evolution of a human being, it can range from unpleasant to extremely terrifying and traumatizing. There are of course experiences that are pleasant or even ecstatic. But those are experiences, not growth.

Spiritual growth is painful. It usually involves either facing the shadow parts of yourself, or expansion of consciousness and perception, both of which are usually painful, confusing, and traumatic.

Spiritual growth can take years, decades, and maybe even lifetimes. It consists of a series of life-altering events.

But like puberty, after a prolonged growth period, eventually we reach adulthood.

I don't think that we experience our "adulthood" of spiritual growth in this human form, or in this world, or realm. I don't really know , of course. But we seem to be left in the dark about what happens when our growth is done.

We have clues, rumors, not much else. It is something, for sure, beyond what we can conceive of with our small human minds.

We get small tastes of what comes after during our spiritual experiences. They are usually confusing and unexplainable in human words. It is like an ant trying to conceive of a human experience. It is impossible, most likely.

I'm not saying you shouldn't meditate or do other spiritual practices. They might be a part of the growth period, for all I know. They are known for a reason, after all.

Who the heck am I to say what is necessary and what is not? I am just a mere human with nearly zero knowledge. I can only go by my own past experiences, like everyone else.

Don't listen to me. Listen to your own intuition, your own heart. Your connection to God.

This is a strange, strange world. I think the next one is even stranger. But by the time I get there, it might start to seem more normal than this one.

I feel like we are in kindergarten, and some of us are graduating to first grade. We are standing at the bus stop, our pink backpacks on, our lunchboxes in hand.

We are somewhat scared as we say goodbye to our mothers, and enter the yellow bus, destined to an unknown place, with no foreknowledge of what to expect.

We've heard some rumors from our older siblings, some good, some bad. Either way, we don't understand their vocabulary to begin with, so it makes it that much harder to understand.

But we have our rituals we've been taught, to stand in line, be polite, bring an apple for the teacher. Just like we have yoga and meditation as our rituals for spiritual growth. We just do what we've been taught, without any real understanding of why.