Signs of Spiritual Growth on Your Awakening Path

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Tuesday, 17 September 2024

Written by Alue K. Loskotová

Signs of Spiritual Growth on Your Awakening Path

If you are reading this article, chances are you have been developing spiritually for some time.

You may have explored many different spiritual paths and dabbled in different techniques… And then there naturally comes a stage where you begin to question whether your efforts are really bringing about a deeper transformation and spiritual shift. In other words, you're asking yourself, how do you know you're doing it right and that you're really moving forward?

Spiritual Maturity is the result of having learned and accumulated a lot of knowledge that you have successfully put into practice, transforming your mind and life.

As a caterpillar going through the process of pupation and transformation into a butterfly, you have also experienced many breakdowns and breakthroughs. Then you appeared on the other side and you felt somehow different, but at the same time actually the same... So and you will know whether you are spiritually mature or not?

Spiritual maturity is the experience of embodying the qualities of compassion, wisdom, and discernment. When a person is spiritually mature, they have moved from a self-centered way of life to a life centered on others.

What spiritual maturity is not
Spiritual maturity is not an egotistical thing badge of honor denoting how "wise" or "enlightened" someone is“. That's just the ego talking.

Spiritual maturity is a process that happens organically as one gradually gathers experience.

Signs of spiritual immaturity
We are all spiritually immature to some degree, and there is probably no point at which we can say we are "100% spiritually mature" (after all, that would probably be a very immature thing to say about ourselves).

Spiritual maturity is the process of developing our life. Being humble and understanding the areas where we still need to work is useful and necessary.

Some examples and signs of spiritual immaturity include the following manifestations:

Having rigid and black-and-white ideas about spirituality, life, yourself and other people
Difficulty accepting paradoxes and subtle nuances
Being too idealistic
Believing that freedom, peace, happiness, etc. are somewhere in the future or in the past
Lack of compassion for self and others
An obsessive need to seek out special or extraordinary altered states of consciousness
Demonizing the human aspects of self and over exalting the spiritual aspects
Ego inflation that can lead to spiritual narcissism
Cultivating spiritual materialism

Psychospiritual therapist Neil M. Goldsmith shares an interesting perspective on spiritual maturity and immaturity and the intersection with psychology:

“With the exception of biologically based diseases, psychology must be considered a science of spiritual maturity. We tell people that they are neurotic, when in reality they are not suffering from an illness, but from spiritual immaturity. We also need to redefine spirituality. Not as supernatural, but simply as a natural progression towards the wise, mature end of the normal curve of human developmental psychology.“

Focusing only on spiritual growth and completely neglecting psychological development is another sign of spiritual immaturity. Spirituality and psychology must come together for all-round development.

Manifestations of spiritual maturity
Having said what spiritual maturity is not, let's finally look at what spiritual maturity is.

A realist, not an idealist
An idealistic approach to life seeks perfection: the perfect mind, the perfect body, the perfect family, the perfect job, and so on. However, spiritual maturity includes understanding that these utopian ideals are ultimately useless and unrealistic. Moreover, when applied to the spiritual path, idealism is harmful because it romanticizes certain teachers and states of consciousness, which can lead to fanaticism and walking the wrong path. Therefore, instead of idealism, spiritual maturity includes non-idealism, that is, being realistic, even down-to-earth.

Be kind and compassionate
Kindness comes from an open heart, and an open heart is a sign of spiritual maturity. If we don't practice kindness towards ourselves and our shortcomings, or the shortcomings of others, we live a constricted and unhappy life. And the more closed and mind-centered we are, the more immature we are. Practicing self-love and moving into compassion for others helps us step out of a judgmental and dismissive position and into a wise all-embracing heart.

Patience, perseverance and determination
We live in a world of instant gratification where we want quick results and we want them now. But that's not how the spiritual path works. A big part of spiritual maturity is understanding that everything in life works in cycles. Birth, death and rebirth are part of our inner and outer landscape and everything has its season.

Being patient, persistent and dedicated are all signs of a spiritually mature approach to life, knowing that awakening is not linear but cyclical.

Focusing on the present moment
Focusing on the present moment means finding the door to peace, freedom, and love right here and right now. The mind tends to imagine that peace, freedom and love can only be found in the future, in some ideal situation. But spiritual maturity is about finding the gateway to freedom in whatever situation we find ourselves in life.

As the Buddha said, “Only here can we find true liberation.“

Down-to-earth and integrated
At the beginning of our inner journey, it is normal to compartmentalize our spirituality and neatly separate it from the rest of our "everyday mundane life“. But at some point, in order to move toward greater spiritual maturity, we need to merge both the sacred and the mundane. And this is what makes our spiritual lives simple and integrated.

The best way to directly experience everything we learn about is to actively incorporate it into our work life, personal relationships and even the way we run our household. In this way, our spiritual journey is not just a separate practice that we dedicate 15 minutes in the morning to but becomes our whole life. In other words, everything we do, we do in the service of our divinity and in the name of the greater good.

Question everything, be a free thinker
Being able to question those who teach us is another aspect of spiritual maturity. Blindly following or naively believing everything others in leadership positions say is not a wise idea. In fact, it is very dangerous to follow what some spiritual teachers and gurus say without asking our own questions. (This is how cults and destructive groupthink are born.)
We must be free thinkers and find the truth for ourselves directly. We need to be the wolf, not the sheep, and sniff out what is true from what is false - it is our right.
There is no point in accepting everything someone says without experiencing it ourselves (and especially if they appear to be all-knowing and in a special place of high authority!). Challenging various claims and cultivating spiritual discernment are of the highest priority and importance and are central to spiritual maturity.

Ability to be flexible
Being flexible means understanding that there is no "perfect and absolute way" to walk a spiritual path. Dogmatically clinging to beliefs about how something "should" or "shouldn't" be done on the path of awakening is just a sign of immaturity and self-centered fixation on a belief. Flexibility allows for nuance, differentiation and diversity, which fosters an environment of peace and tolerance.

Rejecting others because of what they believe creates fear and resistance, which is certainly not a sign of spiritual maturity.

Receiving polarities
Black and white thinking leads to a dualistic and painfully divided way of seeing and experiencing the world. But when we learn to embrace opposites and polarities: human and divine, sacred and wild, happy and sad, angry and peaceful, right and wrong – we find harmony and wholeness.

We touch on non-duality, which is a mature way of relating to life as it transcends the mind to the very essence of being.

Community focus, not self-focus
Spiritual maturity is about moving from a Me-centered way of living life to a We-centered approach where we can experience the interconnectedness of everything. When we have a healthy relationship with life, we find a sense of harmony and flow. But when we are in opposition to life, we feel cut off, disconnected and alone. Spiritual maturity involves moving from resistance to relationship to the various situations, people and experiences that arise, no matter how difficult they are.

Accepting the simple things in life
Wanting to look, act, or feel special and "super enlightened" or "super awakened" is a sign of immaturity and an ego at work behind the scenes. Accepting the ordinary and simple things in life, on the other hand, is a sign of spiritual maturity because it embraces us and life as it is. There is no need to act a certain way, look a certain way, speak a certain way in a special way, or add or subtract anything from your life. Life is seen to be okay the way it is. The ordinary is extraordinary. Spiritual maturity means being content with being ourselves as we are and working in a very down-to-earth way.

Non-dual consciousness
Non-dual consciousness sees unity in all, and as such is a sign of spiritual maturity. When we live through the mind, we divide. We divide the world into concepts and ideas, missing the wholeness that is already right here, right now, beneath the idea. This tendency to compartmentalize the world and operate from an isolated little self is the root of suffering.
As such, non-dual consciousness is a return to life as it was before the hyperactive mind came and cut it up and divided it into different labels, beliefs and ideas. Returning to this way of seeing is what has been referred to throughout the ages as the way back to heaven, freedom, unity, enlightenment, or self-realization.

Spiritual maturity is not something you can artificially cultivate, impose on your life, or wear as a badge of honor. It is a by-product of sincerity, devotion, humility and an open heart on the path of spiritual awakening. In other words, spiritual maturity is something that is acquired through consistent effort and lots of trial and error..

Image and Translation by CrystalWind.ca