How to Grow Spiritually

Becoming a wiser mature person — how do you do it?  For spiritual development, it’s more than just aging and having more experiences, which come automatically. It’s what you do with your time and opportunities that makes the difference.

Shakespeare’s King Lear offers a cautionary tale for us here. The king made some bad decisions on ruling his kingdom with his adult daughters.  His most virtuous daughter wouldn’t flatter him, so he gave his kingdom to his fawning daughters, who manipulatively praised him.

As a result, he lost his kingdom — and in the end, he lost his health and sanity. At one point, his companion/counselor — “the fool” — told him: “Thou should not have been old till thou had been wise.”

Important Items to Consider

Part of self-improvement is determined by two factors: having free will and how timing plays into our journey. Free will gives us the ability to choose, to create our destiny by our choices. Whether we make growth or fear choices matters.

Also, there is a timing to life.  Sometimes we need patience, other times it’s good to strike while the iron is hot. Plus there are life stages. Often by midlife, for example, a transition or crisis causes us to pause and possibly change direction.

Keeping in mind these considerations (free will and timing), here are five ways to grow spiritually.

The Healing Power of the Soul

The soul is your most important resource for healing, spiritual growth, and accessing your full potential. You could even say it's the next frontier in human development.

Unfortunately, few people understand how to access it and integrate its power into their daily lives. This is ironic, considering the fact that accessing the power of the soul is just about the most important thing anyone can do.

What is the Healing Power of the Soul?

The phrase “power of the soul” refers an innate source of wisdom, guidance and healing that’s built into each and every one of us. It lovingly speaks to us of our value as uniquely wonderful human beings, of the spiritual gifts we are here to share, and much more. Oprah Winfrey said it this way:

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Do You Fit In?

To fit in or not to fit in, that is the question, to echo Shakespeare’s perennial question about being or not being.

In a previous article, we wrote about what others think of you. To be sure, it’s a crucial topic – one that can dominate your thoughts and behavior.

It’s such an important topic that we want to delve further into how we relate to others – in our thoughts, feelings and actions. Many of our fears and doubts come from what we “think” others will do or say about us.

This need for approval starts out as legitimate concerns for our safety and security. In early childhood, we need protection by a caregiver.  But as we will discuss, all of this energy can be flexibly used and transcended as we mature.  More details in a moment.

Let’s look then at this important part of our lives – in how we relate to others – more closely.

Decisions: How to Make the Best One

Your life is a series of choices. How do you decide which choice to make, to live most fully now and going forward?

Let’s examine three essential components.

1. Your intuitive mind 

Where you have a choice – whether big or small – you may notice a feeling in your gut or heart.  The gut and heart do overlap.

To distinguish, a gut feeling has more to do with instincts, keeping one safe. Following your heart takes you in a more soulful direction, connecting with the bigger picture around you.

It’s wise to consider both your gut instincts and heartfelt guidance.

An important caveat on the intuitive mind:

What Others Think of You

There is a notion that what others think of you is none of your business.  This is a partial truth. To understand more, we can put things in context by viewing the bigger picture.

Let’s begin with considering a few things. We are all energy, and all connected. So what affects you, affects me.  At the same time, we are still individuals creating our own destiny, our unique life path.

Actually, we’re embodied souls ─ and we are in the process of waking up to that fact. In turn, we can live more fully and help ourselves, others and the whole.

To put things more in perspective, here are three points relating to what others think of you.

Context Point 1: It’s natural to want approval.

Whether you desperately want to be approved of, or say you don’t care what others think of you, there still is an innate need for  approval. 

How to Age Well: Four Keys

At a certain point, it becomes more apparent that you won’t live on this plane, on earth, forever. So you might as well make the most of it.

Isn’t that why you (your presence, what brought you to earth) came here? Aren’t you here for some reason, beyond mere surviving and existing (although that is part of the scheme of things too)?

Coming on seven decades now, for us aging well becomes increasingly important. We have felt that successful aging means a holistic approach – body-mind-spirit.

Our experience – as well as research – has shown four keys to help you live fully. We are talking here about living with the power of your soul, growing wiser with fulfillment.

Here are four keys:

Who Can You Trust?

Who can you trust?  That “who” first involves trusting yourself, then others and, looking at the big picture, trusting the universe itself.

Let’s examine trust from three angles.

1. Be able to count on yourself. 

The essence of trust comes down to counting on yourself. If you can’t count on yourself, whom can you count on?

Soulful Living Show: Get the Most Out of Life

What is really important?  To live fully and aligned with your soul would be our answer at Awakenings Institute.

To help, watch our weekly Facebook Live Show: Soulful Living.

Each show offers an actionable soulful tip and strategy to start your week off right — and put your life on course, spirally upward.

We, Phillip and Jane Mountrose, share from our over two decades in the holistic coaching and healing fields, including dozens of publications and trainings.  Also we have wonderful guests on too!

Past show topics have included:

A Spiritual Solution for Today’s Problems

Have you considered that all the separation we’re seeing in our world may be becoming so extreme it’s making us come together? If we don’t come together, it seems we may fall apart. So coming together will help us not only survive, but grow, regenerate and thrive.

As you know, separation is showing up on many fronts: conflicts in race, politics, environment and more. 

Perhaps the solution to these growing rifts is to make the following a priority: to mature spiritually. We automatically get older, but what we are talking about here is becoming wiser. 

A Key Principle 

Before we offer some how-to specifics, let’s start with a fundamental principle for spiritual growth. We are all spiritual beings – regardless of race, creed or religion – having a human experience. 

And we all deserve dignity, no matter how “bad” an actor a person is, however narrow-minded, belligerent or destructive that looks like.

Just as peace begins with me, so spiritual growth begins with me too. This means facing one’s own narrow-mindedness, hostility and destructiveness as well as others’.

To gain clarity in maturing spiritually, here are three comparisons to help move us forward. 

Thriving in an Uncertain World

What part of life do we so often resist? Uncertainty.  In truth, no one knows what the next moment holds, much less the distant future that we are heading toward.

It may be distressing. Or not. To gain insight, let’s examine this important area further.

The brain has an often-outdated reaction to uncertainty, sometimes panicking as if one’s life might be at stake. For ancestors dealing with prowling predators, this came in handy. For most of us now it is a rarely needed impulsive reaction.

Today we are often faced with decisions that we need to make without much information. If you think about it, having little information should make you cautious and intentional, not flighty with a fast reaction.

Here are two common situations facing people:  A business person who wants their business to succeed, but has little information on how exactly to proceed. Or a spiritual seeker who gets advice from an authority, and is not sure how to follow up with this new information and way of being. In either case, just being reactive  can lead one astray.

So how do you prevent your limbic brain stem from hijacking your more intentional-thinking brain’s cortex?

Let’s start here: be aware of what you can and cannot control.  There are some grey areas.  But generally, focus on what you can control and let go of trying to control the uncontrollable.

As a motivation, know that you can make wonderful decisions and carve out a great life even amidst tumultuous times.

Keeping in mind a sense of what is within your control, here are four ways to deal with uncertainty: