“I want to do more!” I hear this call from many of my clients and students, so it is my hope that this book will be an answer to your request. I’m not here to tell you how to get a cool, new age job or how to become a world sensation as a spiritual guru. I’m here to give you information about how to empower yourself and be the best at what you’re doing right now. When you feel you are in sync with yourself and the Divine, you are more apt to be open to the living guidance God offers you. You are also—by sensing your own inner security—more open to help and guide others who are currently struggling with their faith and place in the universe. Like moths to a flame, people who are lost in their own unconsciousness will be attracted to your light. You will help others find their own glimmer of truth. Is that not the reason we started our spiritual journeys: not only for our own well-being but also for the well-being of others? The Master Jesus knew early on what his mission was. He did not study with the mystics of his time purely for his own benefit. He studied to strengthen his connection to the Father/Mother God and to prepare his inner dynamics for the responsibility of bringing truth to the masses. As Jesus expressed, as He could do, so can you.
This book will cover many of the spiritual resources we have at hand. I will put my own spin on some subjects with the hope that it will help you to grow even closer to alignment with your spiritual power. I’ll refer to master teachers and healers such as Ron Roth, Edgar Cayce, and of course, Jesus. I’ll also include the importance of the role of the Divine Feminine, which I lovingly call the Holy Spirit. Another important goal of this work is to understand the evolutionary process of psychic power.
Many of us have become caught in a psychic web, sustaining a sense of desperation to know what’s going to happen in our lives or what’s around the next corner. There is power and faith in the mystery. Being able to have faith in mystery creates a wellspring of freedom that is our sustenance in remaining connected to the Divine. This ego mind with its fear of the “unknown” has kept many of us away from our ability to be co-creators.
THE SEVEN LEVELS OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH: A QUICK OVERVIEW
Over many years of working with clients and students (and myself!), I’ve seen a common pattern of spiritual development. Many people go through particular stages in a certain order. Learning the lessons of one stage is what prepares you to advance to the next stage. Once you have downloaded one piece of divine inspiration, you are ready for the next.
The common pattern is to pass through seven different stages, which can be called spiritual awakening, divine darkness, interior power, inner attunement, conscious creation, holistic living, and divine oneness.
Each of these seven levels of spiritual awareness formulates a progressive expansion for your soul to maintain and magnify its inner awareness as a child of God. It is important be aware of these levels in our lives, and the awareness builds a stronger relationship with the Divine. Even for the conscious soul, these levels of awareness make their presence known in our lives as reminders of our spiritual power. You don’t graduate after you experience their lessons—instead, you liberate your soul by the pervasive, ongoing awareness in your life.
SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
Spiritual awakening is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery. It happens when you begin to see a sliver of the Divine in your life. It’s as if your spiritual eyes begin to open from a deep sleep, just enough to see the new morning light. When the awakening process is complete and your spiritual eyes are fully open, you are conscious of your divine nature. You know that there is a divine purpose in everything.
DIVINE DARKNESS
Once awakening sheds light on what needs to change in your life, you are ready for divine darkness or “the dark night of the soul” to help you make those changes. If awakening happens when you open your spiritual eyes, then divine darkness occurs when you wipe the “sleep” from them. It happens when you begin to cleanse those crusty, irritating habits, illusions, and thoughts that previously glued together your spiritual eyelids. This is the stage of growth that prepares the way for you to clear out anything that keeps you from remembering your true divinity.
INTERIOR POWER
Once you have cleansed your soul of the illusions that have limited you, you are ready to ascend out of the darkness. Now that you understand the source of divinity, you can move toward the light by learning how to access the energy of the Divine. This energy is all around us, vibrating through our bodies and all matter. You simply have to become more aware of it as you understand how to use it in your spiritual development.
INNER ATTUNEMENT
You’ve probably heard the statement the kingdom of heaven is within. In this level, you acquire the skills that make this statement a reality in your life. You create a peaceful “inner heaven” by working with the divine energy flowing throughout your body—the energy you discovered from the previous level of awareness. You control, balance, and tune this energy to bring clarity, calm, and a heart-centered focus. This process of inner attunement allows you to maintain your interior power, strengthen your connection to the Divine, and continue on the path of spiritual growth. It gives you a fresh wellspring of energy to invest in your life.
CONSCIOUS CREATION
We create our own reality. This statement has been one of the most popular—and most misunderstood—teachings in the New Age. But the truth it expresses is fundamental to spiritual development. We are creative beings, and our minds are powerful. What we create in our minds shapes our experience of the world, and even the world itself.
It all hinges on your perception—how you see yourself, your situations, and the world you are living in. A person who sees herself as a desirable and successful person in a world of opportunities is going to create around herself a reality that’s very different from the reality of a person who thinks of himself as a failure in a world intent on beating him down. Your perception shapes your thinking, your thinking shapes the way you act, the way you act affects the people around you; and it is all reflected back to you.
HOLISTIC LIVING
Throughout the previous levels, I focused on sustaining and cultivating the inner life of soul development. You have learned that inner attention, when focused correctly, develops your capacities for self-knowledge and communion with the Divine. In this level, you express those spiritual dynamics outward in order to create a lifestyle aligned with your renewed sense of being. In this way, you become a clear channel of divine expression. Once you establish a bond with the Divine, you are meant to express that divinity, to become a channel of peace, and to share your light with others.
DIVINE ONENESS
The previous levels of spiritual growth led you toward a single goal: to be at one with yourself, the divine presence, and everything around you. This is the experience of oneness, of being completely in sync with the sacred energy of the universe. Oneness happens when the real you—your higher self—is fully present at every moment, and when your mind, body, emotions, soul, spirit, and psyche are all in unison with the Divine.
These stages manifest differently for each person. Not everyone goes through them in the same order. And more importantly, once you pass through one “stage” and into another, you aren’t necessarily finished with the earlier one. You can be well into the sixth stage but still have to deal with issues you thought you had mastered in the fourth stage. In other words, the stages might be simultaneous. The elements contain lifelong lessons that you will continue to experience from time to time. It’s important to remember that