The concept “growth-minded” or “growth-oriented” has become prominent in society. You hear it all the time in podcasts about raising children or on motivation and life goals shows. In the realm of spirituality, it’s no different: spiritual growth is important.
Spiritual growth is when an understanding of who you are and your connection to life around you deepens and transcends prior limiting awareness. It’s a meaningful discovery process revealing a higher consciousness of your identity. This can be with the universe, with the divine, or with a sense of purpose in life.
Spiritual growth can occur through intentional behavior, such as following a religious or spiritual path. Similarly, it can happen as a result of difficult life events, such as the sudden death of a loved one, and a pure need to change. Sometimes it happens like a calm whisper in your ear. Other times, like a punch to the face.
The result of spiritual growth, however, is greater inner peace and personal wisdom.
In this post, we’ll explore more deeply what it means, what stages one encounters during the process, and how to provoke spiritual growth in one’s life.
First, a deeper dive into what it means to grow spiritually.
What Does It Mean To Grow Spiritually?
To grow spiritually, we must be able to connect to our vulnerabilities and not look away. We have to learn through life’s disappointments and still unite with the larger world in meaningful ways. When we can do this, it is spiritual because your heart is opening to yourself and thus the world.
One way to begin doing this is to contemplate our pasts. Let’s look at this more closely.
The Role of Reflection
When we reflect on our lives, it often takes the form of judgmentally reviewing our accomplishments and failures, important relationships, and events from childhood and early adulthood.
This can be a critical linear factual retrospective; a one-dimensional outlook about our pasts. It’s tempting, therefore, to form simplistic conclusions about who we are from it.
Like a movie, we scroll through the scenes of memory, check-boxing this one as good, that one as bad. We run the whole thing through the mind machine of the “if-onlys” or “shoulda, coulda, wouldas,” (a.k.a regrets).
For me, I know this process intimately. I dilly-dallied in my early 20s, putting off college, neglecting (and thus losing) important relationships, and having absolutely no goals (and thus, not much to show for those years save for a lot of personal life stories).
Instead of creating a life, I moved to California and hung out at a New Age retreat center on a beautiful mountain side for two years, caught in a state of spiritual bypassing and avoidance of my future!
For years afterwards, this experience haunted me. I judged it as “wasted” time and as financially irresponsible (it was, to a large extent).
But, in retrospect, I acted out of what I knew. I would’ve done differently had I known better (or better yet, felt better, as I had emotional and psychological issues at the time).
My point is, that “failure” pushed me to look at my wounds and regrets. I could either hate myself for the rest of my life with my story of failure, or move on with compassionate towards my youthful, naive self.
While difficult, the hardship taught me the importance of intimate connections with others and gave me a deep understanding of the necessity of setting goals in life.
“If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”
dave Ramsey
So, growing spiritually means taking a mirror to our life and learning how to grow from pain without cynicism, self-recrimination, and with hope. The way we choose to see our personal history matters.
This brings me to the importance of story in our inner dialogues and why that fosters spiritual growth. Let me explain.
Why Story is Key to Spiritual Growth
Developing an inner personal story, or inner dialogue with oneself, is a powerful tool for spiritual development. It begins with nurturing a healthy, intimate relationship to our memories, emotions, inspirations and life dreams. Or, as an old acquaintance once said, “Be an elf to yourself!”
This thoughtful approach to self-reflection then gives us wisdom, compassion, and connection to a life-force energy, or elan vital, deep within. We can talk to our pain, our life disappointments, or hopes and desires like a good friend and learn from the conversation.
“When our attention is focused inwardly at the depth of our inner being, in the context of the wholeness of our life, resources for a profound knowledge of life become accessible to us.”
ira progoff, creator of the intensive journal method
Thus, developing and refining our personal story helps us break free from the chains of self-judgment and locked personality traits. It allows us to access the inner creativity where forming new, more dynamic and nuanced life perspectives arises. Subsequently, it allows us to dream our futures and use the lessons of our pasts to grow and change.
Next, here are some ways to tap into creating your relationship to your own life story.
Steps to Developing a Personal Story:
- Self-Reflection and Journaling:
- Begin by setting aside quiet time each day to reflect on your life experiences.
- Use journaling as a tool to write down memories, feelings, and thoughts. Over time, patterns and themes will emerge.
- Ask yourself questions like: “What events have shaped me?”, “How have I grown from challenges?”, and “What lessons have I learned?”
- This process helps in understanding the narrative arc of your life. It assists in identifying key moments that have contributed to your spiritual growth.
- Meditation and Visualization:
- Engage in regular meditation sessions where you visualize your life’s journey.
- Imagine yourself as the protagonist of your story, navigating through various challenges and triumphs.
- This practice not only helps in grounding yourself in the present moment but also allows you to visualize a future where you’ve achieved your spiritual goals.
- Seek Feedback and Perspectives:
- Sometimes, we’re too close to our own stories to see them clearly.
- Talk to trusted friends, family, or mentors about your life’s journey. They might offer insights or perspectives you hadn’t considered.
- Listening to others’ personal stories can also provide inspiration and show you different ways of interpreting life events.
- Engage in Creative Expression:
- Use art, music, dance, or any other form of creative expression to tell your story.
- Creating something tangible can help you process emotions and experiences, giving them form and meaning.
- Sharing your creative works can also be a way to connect with others and receive feedback on your personal narrative.
4 Examples of Spiritual Growth Paths
There are many ways one can develop spiritually. Here are 4 unique approaches that can be used when cultivating a spiritual growth path .
Breadth and Depth Approach/Inner-Outer
Breadth and depth refers to going deeply inward to provoke transcendent maturation, or to devote oneself outwardly to propel it.
First, in breadth, we undergo serious life reflection. We comb over our existence with a fine-toothed metaphorical comb. Here, we take from our past, present, and current hopes and dreams to ascertain what clear values we hold. Then, we cultivate insight into our purpose in life and derive connection with it from the deep well of meaning within.
Next, in the depth approach, we intentionally connect more directly to the world around us. Through this, we develop wizened outlooks on our interconnectivity, unity with others, and personal purpose or mission in life.
This can look like doing community service and humbling oneself to the suffering of others and developing compassion. Or, it can mean using ones creative gifts to benefit society. For example, starting a health food restaurant in a part of town where access to fresh food is limited or helping with classroom supplies and decor at a low-income school.
The breadth and depth approaches both trigger spiritual growth because each path contains challenging us out of our comfort zones and into a broader worldview. It means being in intentional relationship with yourself and the connected world. But, if you’d like more structure, perhaps a different approach would work better.
So next, let’s explore the religious path.
Religious/Spiritual Path Approach
The religious or spiritual approach simply means choosing an already established path and using it’s tools, rituals, philosophies, and teachings to apply to your life and grow from them.
For instance, if you grew up Catholic, you may read theological writings, engage in church masses and community rituals, and work directly with a spiritual director for ongoing accountability in spiritual self-development.
Furthermore, studying meditation, mindfulness, Zen, and yoga may stimulate your learning path for deep consciousness work. The key to any path is to find one that feels right to you and devote yourself to it.
A helpful tip is to create a small spiritual or self-development group of like-minded individual on the path. Years ago, I met weekly with a journal writing group that was focused on each individuals life goals. This trusted group of fellow travelers created space where vulnerability could show up. Hence, this planted seeds from where spiritual transformation grows.
So, you don’t have to forge a brand new way to spiritual development. Pick a preexisting one and work it.
Life Experience/Tragedy Approach
Unfortunately, life has a way of pushing us to our limits and then throwing us over the edge of them. There probably is nothing more than the loss of a loved one, a tragic illness, or a cruel life event that can break a person. But, these experience, too, can also provoke profound spiritual growth.
The wound is where the light comes in
the poet rumi
Certainly, this can greatly depend on the demeanor of the person. It also depends on the support they receive relative to the tragedy. However, the National Center for PTSD says those survivors who have spirituality fair better. They are more likely to rise beyond anger, self-loathing, fear, and distrust. Furthermore, they maintain perspectives of forgiveness, hope, inspiration, and life purpose.
Thus, choosing to cultivate ones spirituality in the aftermath of tragedy may help evolve ones hearts and minds. It may raise you to a higher, more meaningful and connected level of understanding about being alive.
The Hero’s Journey
The Hero’s Journey is a common trope in myths and stories from around the world. The Star Wars movies follows it as well as The Legend of King Arthur and Disney’s Moana. The basic three stages of the Hero’s Journey are:
- Departure (or Separation): This phase involves the hero leaving their familiar world, often due to a call to adventure.
- Initiation: In this phase, the hero faces various trials and challenges, often leading to personal transformation.
- Return: After achieving the goal or boon, the hero must return to the ordinary world. They bring back the knowledge or elixir they’ve gained.
If we think of events and significant phases in our lives in the context of a hero’s journey, our perception shifts out of an ego-centric one to one of living in your higher self.
Where once we felt very attached to the outcomes of life and defining ourselves against them, we become flexible in our thinking. Our perspective becomes a larger, universally symbolic one where we see ourselves as mere mortals along side others struggling in this game or great drama called life. Love expands, fear shrinks.
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
joseph campbell on the hero’s journey
In this way, a great sense of compassion, untouchable inner strength, and ascendent personal peace arises. This is because when we hold ourselves in this objective light, we’re more likely to learn from our mistakes. We’re more likely to take risks in love and adventure, and draw meaning from conflicts and hardships. And ultimately, that drives personal transcendence.
On the whole, the hero’s journey approach is one where we leave our current conclusions behind. We become open-minded to new possibilities and challenges for our lives. In the end, we are reborn a wiser, more whole and reconciled version of ourselves.
Stages You May Encounter
The following are phases you may go through on your quest for spiritual growth. If you’re a journal writer like me, take note of these as you go through them for future journal work or reflection:
- Initial Awakening/Inspiration: The spark that ignites the spiritual journey.
- Seeking/Beginner Mind: A phase of exploration and open-mindedness.
- Loneliness/Relationships Change: A period where personal connections evolve due to newfound insights.
- Lifestyle-Change Desire/Habits Conflicts: The struggle between old habits and new spiritual aspirations.
- Loss of Interest in the Material World: Transitioning from materialistic desires to deeper spiritual pursuits.
- Sensitivity/Emotionalism: A stage marked by heightened emotional awareness and depth.
- Mentors: Seeking and connecting with guides for deeper understanding. (see Tim Ferris’s great book on mentorship and success for more inspiration).
- Testing/Embracing Challenges: A phase of confronting and learning from spiritual tests.
- Increased Empathy/Compassion: Evolving to a state of profound understanding and love for others.
- Shift in Personal Narrative: Reframing one’s life journey with spiritual insights.
- Seeing Things More Dynamically/Wholistically: Recognizing the intricate web of life and its interconnectedness.
- Identity Crisis: A stage of self-questioning and redefinition.
- Unifying Vision of Life: Realizing the interconnectedness and unity of all existence.
- Impulse to be Creative/Share Experience: The drive to express and disseminate spiritual revelations.
This list will help you be aware of the challenges you may face when your inner worldview shifts. Furthermore, it can help curb any spiritual growth byproducts of anxiety, stress, or self-doubt.
10 Steps to Encourage Spiritual Growth
Life sometimes forcing us onto a growth path whether we’re ready or not. However, there are activities you can do which prepare the ground for spiritual growth to take place.
For example, I’ve recently started practicing praying. Growing up Catholic, prayer was a huge part of my childhood. But having been a Gen X-grunge-music-era-hippie-chick in my youth, that went by the wayside. It was replaced with pot, New Age ideology, yoga, and a cynical denialism of my religious roots!
While I’ve not re-birthed as a Catholic, I took up praying again. I’d always found peace and hope in it. Time will tell if it evolves me as a spiritual creature. But it is deepening my spiritual life as it’s helping to transform anxiety into a focused, positive outlook.
In that light, perhaps one or more of these suggestions will be a catalyst for you to grow your inner life as well.
Finally, the steps you can enact to trigger self-transformation.
The Steps:
- Vision/Visualization: Envisioning your spiritual path can be transformative. By visualizing your journey, you set clear intentions and align your inner compass towards growth and enlightenment.
- Meditation: Meditation isn’t just a trend; it’s a time-tested method to center oneself. By observing your thoughts, you gain profound insights into your inner world, fostering a deeper connection with the self.
- Journaling: Putting pen to paper can be therapeutic. Journaling offers a reflective space to process emotions, understand experiences, and chart your spiritual evolution.
- Forgiveness Practice/Therapy: Holding onto past hurts can hinder spiritual growth. Engaging in forgiveness, whether through personal practice or therapy, paves the way for healing. Thus, it opens the heart to deeper spiritual experiences.
- Read Spiritual Literature: Delving into spiritual literature is like conversing with the sages of old. These texts offer guidance, wisdom, and a broader perspective on the intricacies of the spiritual journey.
- Mentor/Spiritual Guide: Walking the spiritual path can be daunting. Having a mentor provides invaluable guidance, offering wisdom from their own journey to illuminate yours.
- Workshops: Engaging in spiritual workshops can be transformative. They provide structured learning, deepening your understanding and equipping you with tools for growth.
- Praying/Prayer Group/Dream Group: Prayer, whether alone or in a group, is a profound act of connection. It’s a space to seek guidance, find solace, and commune with the higher powers. Dream groups, on the other hand, allow you to delve into the subconscious. Here, you’ll uncover messages and lessons that can reveal hidden truths about who you are and what makes you tick.
- Community Service: True spiritual growth often involves selflessness. Serving the community not only benefits others but also nurtures your own soul. Hence, it can ground your spiritual journey in acts of kindness and compassion.
- Natural World Excursions: Nature has lessons for those willing to listen. Immersing yourself in the natural world can offer clarity and perspective. Additionally, it can give a deep sense of belonging in the grand tapestry of life.
Obviously, spiritual growth isn’t something we can force to happen. It isn’t a formula you wake up one day and apply to your life. It isn’t some magic spell that transforms you into your best self. But by thinking about these approaches, you can definitely embark on a quest to a more fulfilling inner life.
Life After a Spiritual Growth Experience
To conclude, the journey of spiritual growth stands out as a transformative and deeply personal path. In the intricate tapestry of life, it’s a voyage that transcends the mundane. It pushes us to confront our deepest selves, challenge our perceptions, and embrace a higher consciousness.
Therefore, whether it’s through intentional practices, life experiences, or the stories we tell ourselves, the pursuit of spiritual growth is a testament to the human spirit’s resilience and desire for meaning.
Lastly, as you navigate your own spiritual journey, remember that each step, each challenge, and each revelation brings you closer to understanding your place in the universe and the boundless potential within. Embrace the journey, for it is in seeking that we truly find ourselves.