How to achieve spiritual growth? I have heard recipes like “you need to do spiritual work, and there will be spiritual growth.” Unfortunately, definitions of “spiritual work” are no easier to obtain than “spiritual growth,” but a criterion for the correct performance of spiritual work is still needed.
The second problem is that many authors get carried away and completely leave their subtle bodies from the real world into the astral spheres. Such “growth” raises strong doubts about its adequacy and practical applicability. Other authors claim that the only way to achieve spiritual growth is to become a follower of their teachings. The problem is that the teachings are all different, so some of them are definitely wrong. Still others formulate things in a long, complex and vague manner. Such formulations cause me strong suspicions - those who understand and understand can usually clearly formulate and explain clearly.
I sat down and figured out what spiritual growth is. I can clearly explain what it is and how to achieve it. Sitting in an intricate position and muttering intricate mantras is not necessary. But you will have to work on yourself, because spiritual growth requires a number of practical skills, and skills do not arise by themselves, they need to be developed.
What is "spirituality"
I analyzed a dozen and a half definitions of spirituality, and came to the conclusion that spirituality is understood as a combination of four qualities: faith, peace of mind, unconditional love and awareness.
Spiritual growth is a change in perception, a change in the picture of the world. A spiritual person sees the world, and himself in it, as it is, undistorted. A spiritual person has gained faith in himself, peace of mind, love and compassion for his neighbors. A spiritual person considers serving people as his top priority.
What is "faith"
There are a number of facts that can be verified. For example, if you melt ice, you get water. It makes no sense to believe or not to believe in facts. Such facts also include purely random processes. They are accurately described by statistical laws, and “faith” is also inapplicable to them.
Faith refers mainly to non-obvious and non-random future events that a person can influence. Faith mobilizes the will, i.e. allows you to make decisions and stick to them, and leads to the achievement of results that would not otherwise be achieved.
If you believe in victory, your chances of winning are much higher. If you believe that nothing will work out, then most likely it won’t work out.
People with weak faith adapt to people with stronger faith. Without strong faith, it is impossible to lead people, you can only follow someone.
What is "peace of mind"
Peace of mind is the absence of anxiety, worry, worry, panic, regardless of external circumstances. This is a calm, confident look into the future.
What is "unconditional love"
“Conditional love” is when you love for something, for example, for money. I suspect that this is not love at all. “Unconditional love” is when you love without setting any conditions, you love not for something specific, but you simply love. In other words, you love not “for”, but “in spite of”. In addition to love, when defining spiritual growth, good attitude towards people, sympathy, and empathy are mentioned.
What is "mindfulness"
Living consciously means perceiving yourself, those around you, and the whole world as it is, and not as we would like it to be. Stop deceiving yourself, stop hiding from reality, turning a blind eye to unpleasant facts, living in a fantasy world. Admit to yourself your desires, your weaknesses, your problems, your dreams. Understand yourself.
Why does a person need spirituality?
Spirituality improves quality of life. A person who loves, does not worry, believes in himself, and lives consciously, feels better than a person who hates, is stressed out, is convinced of the failures awaiting him, is trying to hide from reality in a fantasy world, and is trying to convince himself that the best choice for him is .
Spirituality allows you to release energy that was wasted on anxiety, worry, negative emotions, self-deception, and redirect it to constructive goals.
Spirituality allows you to develop, move forward, and lead people, and at the same time help and serve them.
How to develop spirituality
How to achieve spiritual growth? Imagine that you are pulling a sled up a hill through the forest, and it gets caught in the branches. You can pull harder, you can unhook the caught branches, or you can combine these two approaches. It’s the same with spiritual growth. First, let's figure out what's slowing us down and how to unhook it.
What hinders spiritual growth
A person does not believe in himself, is nervous, isolates himself from people and is at enmity with them, hides in an imaginary world - not from a good life. We all have psychological problems that largely determine what we think about ourselves and about others. These problems accumulate from childhood and prevent us from growing spiritually.
Self-confidence is hampered by the belief that nothing will come of you, you will make a mistake, only we, parents, can make the right decision for you, and you will make a bad one.
What interferes with peace of mind is the panic of your parents, and the belief that something bad will happen to you if you don’t listen to us, your parents, exactly.
It is certainly difficult to love if in childhood you were “loved” conditionally, in other words, they did not love you, or pretended not to love you, or did not allow you to love yourself - for educational purposes and due to your psychological problems. It's hard to love if you grew up in an atmosphere of anger, hatred, revenge.
Avoiding reality, suppressing one's desires and emotions is the body's defensive reaction. To return to a conscious life, you must first ensure that consciousness does not have a constant need to look for where to hide and what to hide behind.
What to do about these problems? They need to be worked through and treated. Even such a primitive approach as Dianetic auditing helps to greatly weaken them. But it is better to take the help of a professional psychologist, for example, a Gestalt or NLP therapist. Just make sure that this is a real doctor, and not a fashionable showman.
What promotes spiritual growth
Simply understanding what spiritual growth is is already a big step forward. Making the decision to seriously engage in your spiritual growth is the second big step forward.
Spirituality is a set of practical skills. It needs to be trained and developed. The best training is solving complex problems that interfere with the life and development of the people around you and all of Humanity.
Solving problems will give you confidence in yourself, in your abilities, reduce anxiety, bring you closer to people, help you see reality and yourself in it better and more clearly, thanks to the constant testing of theory in practice. All difficulties that arise along the way should be considered as an opportunity for training and development of spirituality. When seemingly earned spiritual growth suddenly fails, rejoice at the opportunity to strengthen a weak point and persistently continue to move forward.
Spiritual growth is the skill of achieving peace of mind, the skill of strengthening unconditional love for people, the skill of restoring and growing self-confidence. It is the skill that is developed through practice that makes spiritual growth sustainable and irreversible - even if something very bad happens that shakes peace of mind, love for people and self-confidence, this skill will allow you to survive and recover.
How to develop faith
Steve Pavlina says that there are beliefs that help and give energy, and there are those that inhibit and take away forces. You need to cultivate the former and get rid of the latter. We are talking about beliefs that are related to reality, and not about self-deception. Let's say, convincing yourself that you are the strongest in the world is most likely self-deception. Convincing yourself that you can achieve success in what you would like to do is an empowering belief.
Don't let other people impose their assessment of you on you. What a person is - only he decides for himself.
How to achieve peace of mind
At first glance, peace of mind is easier to achieve if there is an external force that takes on the worries of the future. Followers of many religions entrust their destiny to God and do not worry about it. But if you look at it, with God’s help or not, you need to be ready to accept everything that tomorrow brings. Whether a person can configure himself this way or not depends only on him.
You need to get used to the fact that it is impossible to gain complete control over the future, so you need to be ready to accept any scenario and not worry in advance.
How to strengthen love
It is impossible to live for people and at the same time not love them. People do ugly things, including towards you, only because they lack spirituality, i.e. because they are afraid, nervous, panic, do not fully understand what they are doing, they are constrained by psychological problems, and they often simply have no other choice. But those same people, if helped to grow spiritually, will be kind, wise and loving.
There is a subtle point here. On the one hand, we need to help people grow spiritually. On the other hand, there is no need to try to remake a person to suit your idea of him, you need to perceive and love him as he is. These two conditions do not contradict each other. Each person grows spiritually in their own way. You need to help him grow in the way that is most convenient for him, and not try to force him to grow your way.
Look at people carefully, try to understand their problems, their motivation, their emotions. Once you understand a person, you will stop being wary of him and will be able to develop sympathy for him.
How to live consciously
Just as you look at others, look at yourself. What do you really want? What do you not allow yourself to dream about? What are you trying not to notice? What are you trying to avoid? What makes you angry? What keeps you up at night? As you grow spiritually, you will be able to deal with many problems. But for now, all the defensive reactions of your psyche are part of you. You know how many fingers you have, what your height and weight are. The characteristics of your psyche are no less important characteristics. Study them, deal with them, have the courage to acknowledge them even if you don't like them.
Conclusion
Is it true that faith taken to the extreme is insane fanaticism, peace of mind is reckless carelessness, and love is the submissive suppression of all grievances? This is a misconception, but it needs to be dealt with in more detail. Love involves forgiveness, but not suppression of self-worth. If people's actions cause you negative emotions, you need to tell them about these emotions. Peace of mind does not mean ignoring problems and dangers, but it prohibits panic and allows you not to be nervous or worry. Faith becomes fanaticism when it is divorced from reality, when it becomes self-deception. In order not to go to extremes, you need to engage in spiritual growth persistently, but gradually, you need to be able to distinguish normal development from going to extremes, and monitor the direction of your spiritual growth. You will be lucky if you find a spiritual guide who can help you with this.
Here we will discuss the topic of what are the signs of spiritual growth; it is important not only to know what the signs of spiritual growth are, but also to be able to see them in yourself and in others.
At the moment, people have so much garbage in their heads about spirituality that it’s simply impossible to count. Humanity is simply lost and does not know where the exit is. And this is quite understandable. There are so many different schools that not only tell their own vision of the world and Existence, but also denigrate others.
I would like to expand a little on the topic of spirituality in general before touching on the signs. You need to understand that these are different things. You can find spirituality through religion, but you can come to it without it.
it simply requires that you stop listening to yourself and your soul, and listen to it. In fact, what holy people like Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha said is so distorted and misunderstood that people simply don’t even come close to the truth even when reading holy books. Much is hidden because, you see, it’s too early for people to know about it. And thus power is kept in the hands of a few.
Religion is a political instrument, a monetary instrument and an instrument for controlling people, an instrument of power. So be careful. Also nowadays there are many cultists, be careful, they only want power over you and your money.
Below are the signs of a person’s spiritual growth. Thus, when communicating with people, you can already see whether he is a spiritual person or has simply memorized some material related to religion and repeats it like a parrot.
Therefore, be careful, besides, spiritual people will never come up to you and powder your brains with broadcasts about God, a spiritual person will only help those who were drawn to him and asked for help, and then only on the issue that interests him person and so that the person himself tries to solve his problems, and not someone for him.
So, let's get down to the signs of a spiritual person.
Sign No. 1. Unity
A spiritual person does not divide people into nationality, religion, skin color, and so on. For him, everyone is, first of all, people. And we are all people. We all share the same blood. We all have two arms and two legs, a head, everything is one and
Same. Therefore, we can say that a spiritual person treats all people equally. The same applies to money, power, success; for a spiritual person, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, women, whether you are a president or a cool businessman, the main thing is that you have at least some spirit. But both a president and a businessman can be spiritual. This doesn't mean you have to be poor or homeless. Simply, whoever you are, bring spirit into your life.
In addition, a spiritual person knows that it is precisely the division of people into gender, race, and religion that is the source of almost all wars. If every child was raised in such a way that he is first of all a human being, and then a Muslim or an Arab or a Christian, then there would be peace on Earth
How to bring spirit? JUST BE AWARE.
Sign No. 2. Awareness.
Actually, this sign comes first. Only through awareness comes the understanding that WE ARE ALL ONE, WE ARE ALL ONE. Awareness is the source of everything, the key to all doors.
Mindfulness is the source of unconditional love, lack of expectations and judgments, feelings of guilt, shame, anger, disappointments, fears, lack of...
ONLY A CONSCIOUS PERSON IS SPIRITUAL. It doesn’t matter how much good you have done to other people, how much you go to the mosque or church, how much money you give to charity. You are either aware or you are not. You can either see and observe your every thought, word and action or not.
Here's what Osho says about mindfulness:
If all the Buddhas of the world agreed on one thing, it would be this: man as he is is asleep, and man as he should be is awake. Awakening is the goal, and awakening is the taste of all their teachings. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Buddha, Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak - all the awakened ones taught only one thing... in different languages, in different metaphors, but their song remains the same. Just as all seas taste salty - whether you taste sea water in the north or in the south, it will taste salty - so awakening is the taste of buddha nature.
But if you continue to believe that you are already awakened, you will not make any effort. Then there is no question of making any effort - why bother?
From your dreams you have created religions, gods, prayers, rituals - your gods remain as much a part of your dreams as anything else. Your policy _ . it is part of your dreams, your religions are part of your dreams, your poetry, your painting, your art - whatever you do, because you are asleep, you do everything according to your state of mind.
Yes, Osho said correctly, people are SLEEPING or UNCONSCIOUS, all that great teachers teach is AWAKENING or CONSCIOUSNESS. Awareness is here and now, it is feeling the world with your body, not thinking.
Sign No. 3. Responsibility
A spiritual person is responsible for his life, 100%.
Such a person never blames anyone for anything; he understands that everything around him is created by himself.
Such a person sees his mistakes, and does not fence himself off from them. Such a person never repeats them twice.
A spiritual person certainly does not blame himself for mistakes and does not regret them, he simply draws conclusions and moves on.
Thus, a spiritual person is the creator of his life, and he is very aware of this.
Sign #4: Unconditional love
I can't miss this point. A spiritual person loves everything in his life, both negative and positive moments, loves all people. It’s just that the power of love may be different, but we can definitely say that such a person loves himself most and puts himself first.
THE MOST LOVING PERSON IS THE ONE WHO FOCUSES ON HIMSELF.
How is it with us? People are focused on the external, what everyone is doing, they like to gossip and discuss, they are immersed in the news of the world, they like to watch films about other people’s lives, but they themselves don’t want to change anything in their lives and they don’t want to change themselves either.
A spiritual person is a person of freedom, he does not limit anyone and does not allow himself to be limited by any framework, morality, right - wrong, good - bad, evil - good, this is beyond his categories.
A spiritual person is grateful for everything, for he knows that if there were no evil, he would never be able to experience good, if there was no cold, then he would not be able to experience warmth, if there were no fear, then he would not be able to to experience who he is, that is, love.
Sign No. 5. Gratitude
A spiritual person is grateful for what he has. Such a person knows that everything that is in his life, he created with every thought, word and deed. Therefore, to not be grateful for what you have and to renounce it is tantamount to renouncing the part of yourself that created it.
Likewise, a spiritual person practices in life a saying from the Bible:
“He who is grateful for what he has will have more, and he who is not will lose what he has.”
Yes, and there is a lot of value in the Bible, but not everything, and what is valuable is misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Sign No. 6. Respect for life
A spiritual person realizes that WE ARE ALL LITERALLY ONE, we are the Being manifesting through us here and now, therefore he will never stop someone else's life. Such a person will not offend animals or plants, but will treat everyone with care. But at the same time, he will not cling to them and be afraid of losing any of them.
This applies to any things, since they also live to some extent, since they also have molecules and atoms that are constantly moving.
A spiritual person remembers the saying:
"Treat others the same way you want to be treated"
What comes from you comes back to you, and this is literally true.
And this applies to everything, not just people.
Sign No. 7. Universe
A spiritual person knows how the Universe works and knows its laws. If the laws of man can be circumvented, then the laws of the Universe cannot. Therefore, a spiritual person knows these laws and also knows that he cannot act outside of these laws, so he observes them.
Compliance with the laws of the Universe makes his life fabulous. A spiritual person does not live in a world of STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL, such a person lives in a world of prosperity right here and now. For a spiritual person, heaven is already here and now, and not someday in another life.
This article describes only seven signs of spiritual growth; there are, of course, many more. To begin with, these will be enough for you, and you will be able to navigate and observe them in yourself and in other people.
How to achieve spiritual growth? I have heard recipes like “you need to do spiritual work, and there will be spiritual growth.” Unfortunately, definitions of “spiritual work” are no easier to obtain than “spiritual growth,” but a criterion for the correct performance of spiritual work is still needed.
The second problem is that many authors get carried away and completely leave their subtle bodies from the real world into the astral spheres. Such “growth” raises strong doubts about its adequacy and practical applicability. Other authors claim that the only way to achieve spiritual growth is to become a follower of their teachings. The problem is that the teachings are all different, so some of them are definitely wrong. Still others formulate things in a long, complex and vague manner. Such formulations cause me strong suspicions - those who understand and understand can usually clearly formulate and explain clearly.
I sat down and figured out what spiritual growth is.
I can clearly explain what it is and how to achieve it.
Sitting in an intricate position and muttering intricate mantras is not necessary. But you will have to work on yourself, because spiritual growth requires a number of practical skills, and skills do not arise by themselves, they need to be developed.
What is "spirituality"
I analyzed a dozen and a half definitions of spirituality, and came to the conclusion that Spirituality is understood as a combination of four qualities:
faith,
peace of mind,
unconditional love
and awareness.
Spiritual growth is a change in perception, a change in the picture of the world. A spiritual person sees the world, and himself in it, as it is, undistorted. A spiritual person has gained faith in himself, peace of mind, love and compassion for his neighbors. A spiritual person considers serving people as his top priority.
What is "faith"
There are a number of facts that can be verified. For example, if you melt ice, you get water. It makes no sense to believe or not to believe in facts. Such facts also include purely random processes. They are accurately described by statistical laws, and “faith” is also inapplicable to them.
Faith refers mainly to non-obvious and non-random future events that a person can influence. Faith mobilizes the will, i.e. allows you to make decisions and stick to them, and leads to the achievement of results that would not otherwise be achieved.
If you believe in victory, your chances of winning are much higher. If you believe that nothing will work out, then most likely it won’t work out.
People with weak faith adapt to people with stronger faith. Without strong faith, it is impossible to lead people, you can only follow someone.
What is "peace of mind"
Peace of mind is the absence
anxiety,
unrest,
experiences,
panic regardless of external circumstances.
This is a calm, confident look into the future.
What is "unconditional love"
“Conditional love” is when you love for something, for example, for money. I suspect that this is not love at all. "Unconditional love" is when you love without setting any conditions, you love not for something specific, but simply love . In other words, you love not “for”, but “in spite of”. In addition to love, when defining spiritual growth, good attitude towards people, sympathy, and empathy are mentioned.
What is "mindfulness"
Living consciously means perceiving yourself, those around you, and the whole world as it is, and not as we would like it to be. Stop deceiving yourself, stop hiding from reality, turning a blind eye to unpleasant facts, living in a fantasy world. Admit to yourself your desires, your weaknesses, your problems, your dreams. Understand yourself.
Why does a person need spirituality?
Spirituality improves quality of life . A person who loves, does not worry, believes in himself, and lives consciously, feels better than a person who hates, is stressed out, is convinced of the failures awaiting him, is trying to hide from reality in a fantasy world, and is trying to convince himself that the best choice for him is .
Spirituality releases energy
, which was spent on anxiety, worry, negative emotions, self-deception, and redirect it to constructive goals.
Spirituality allows you to develop
, move forward, and lead people, and at the same time help and serve them.
How to develop spirituality
How to achieve spiritual growth? Imagine that you are pulling a sled up a hill through the forest, and it gets caught in the branches. You can pull harder, you can unhook the caught branches, or you can combine these two approaches. It’s the same with spiritual growth. First, let's figure out what's slowing us down and how to unhook it.
What hinders spiritual growth
A person does not believe in himself, is nervous, isolates himself from people and is at enmity with them, hides in an imaginary world - not from a good life. We all have psychological problems that largely determine what we think about ourselves and about others. These problems accumulate from childhood and prevent us from growing spiritually.
Self-confidence is hampered by the belief that nothing will come of you, you will make a mistake, only we, parents, can make the right decision for you, and you will make a bad one.
What interferes with peace of mind is the panic of your parents, and the belief that something bad will happen to you if you don’t listen to us, your parents, exactly.
It is certainly difficult to love if in childhood you were “loved” conditionally, in other words, they did not love you, or pretended not to love you, or did not allow you to love yourself - for educational purposes and due to your psychological problems. It's hard to love if you grew up in an atmosphere of anger, hatred, revenge.
Avoiding reality, suppressing one's desires and emotions is the body's defensive reaction. To return to a conscious life, you must first ensure that consciousness does not have a constant need to look for where to hide and what to hide behind.
What to do about these problems? They need to be worked through and treated. Even such a primitive approach as Dianetic auditing helps to greatly weaken them. But it is better to take the help of a professional psychologist, for example, a Gestalt or NLP therapist. Just make sure that this is a real doctor, and not a fashionable showman.
What promotes spiritual growth
Simply understanding what spiritual growth is is already a big step forward. Making the decision to seriously engage in your spiritual growth is the second big step forward.
Spirituality is a set of practical skills. It needs to be trained and developed. The best training is solving complex problems that interfere with the life and development of the people around you and all of Humanity.
Solving problems will give you confidence in yourself, in your abilities, reduce anxiety, bring you closer to people, help you see reality and yourself in it better and more clearly, thanks to the constant testing of theory in practice. All difficulties that arise along the way should be considered as an opportunity for training and development of spirituality. When seemingly earned spiritual growth suddenly fails, rejoice at the opportunity to strengthen a weak point and persistently continue to move forward.
Spiritual growth is the skill of achieving peace of mind, the skill of strengthening unconditional love for people, the skill of restoring and growing self-confidence. It is the skill that is developed through practice that makes spiritual growth sustainable and irreversible - even if something very bad happens that shakes peace of mind, love for people and self-confidence, this skill will allow you to survive and recover.
How to develop faith
Steve Pavlina says that there are beliefs that help and give energy, and there are those that inhibit and take away forces. You need to cultivate the former and get rid of the latter. We are talking about beliefs that are related to reality, and not about self-deception. Let's say, convincing yourself that you are the strongest in the world is most likely self-deception. Convincing yourself that you can achieve success in what you would like to do is an empowering belief.
Don't let other people impose their assessment of you on you. What a person is - only he decides for himself.
How to achieve peace of mind
At first glance, peace of mind is easier to achieve if there is an external force that takes on the worries of the future. Followers of many religions entrust their destiny to God and do not worry about it. But if you look at it, with God’s help or not, you need to be ready to accept everything that tomorrow brings. Whether a person can configure himself this way or not depends only on him.
You need to get used to the fact that it is impossible to gain complete control over the future, so you need to be ready to accept any scenario and not worry in advance.
How to strengthen love
It is impossible to live for people and at the same time not love them. People do ugly things, including towards you, only because they lack spirituality, i.e. because they are afraid, nervous, panic, do not fully understand what they are doing, they are constrained by psychological problems, and they often simply have no other choice. But those same people, if helped to grow spiritually, will be kind, wise and loving.
There is a subtle point here. On the one hand, we need to help people grow spiritually. On the other hand, there is no need to try to remake a person to suit your idea of him, you need to perceive and love him as he is. These two conditions do not contradict each other. Each person grows spiritually in their own way. You need to help him grow in the way that is most convenient for him, and not try to force him to grow your way.
Look at people carefully, try to understand their problems, their motivation, their emotions. Once you understand a person, you will stop being wary of him and will be able to develop sympathy for him.
How to live consciously
Just as you look at others, look at yourself.
What do you really want?
What do you not allow yourself to dream about?
What are you trying not to notice?
What are you trying to avoid?
What makes you angry?
What keeps you up at night?
As you grow spiritually, you will be able to deal with many problems. But for now, all the defensive reactions of your psyche are part of you. You know how many fingers you have, what your height and weight are. The characteristics of your psyche are no less important characteristics. Study them, deal with them, have the courage to acknowledge them even if you don't like them.
Conclusion
Is it true that faith taken to the extreme is insane fanaticism, peace of mind is reckless carelessness, and love is the submissive suppression of all grievances? This is a misconception, but it needs to be dealt with in more detail. Love involves forgiveness, but not suppression of self-worth. If people's actions cause you negative emotions, you need to tell them about these emotions. Peace of mind does not mean ignoring problems and dangers, but it prohibits panic and allows you not to be nervous or worry. Faith becomes fanaticism when it is divorced from reality, when it becomes self-deception. In order not to go to extremes, you need to engage in spiritual growth persistently, but gradually, you need to be able to distinguish normal development from going to extremes, and monitor the direction of your spiritual growth. You will be lucky if you find a spiritual guide who can help you with this.
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The names speak for themselves: Personal growth is when the Personality grows, Spiritual growth is when the Spirit grows.
Previously, I had not thought about the difference in these concepts. I placed them side by side and believed that the main thing was that there was growth. But now the time has come to dig deeper and figure out what's what.
A contradiction is inherent in a person from the very beginning. On the one hand, man is an animal, on the other hand, he is a spiritual being. The animal in a person wants him to take care of his body and grow his Personality. The spiritual being wants man to grow the Spirit within himself.
The Main Difference Between Personal and Spiritual Growth
Personal growth is the growth of the Personality. A personality is alive by its difference from other personalities. That is, there must be a difference. To grow your personality, you need to be different from other people.
Be different. Think differently. Do things differently. Live differently than everyone else. Stand apart. Be independent and self-sufficient. That is, Personal growth involves separation and discrimination.
Spiritual growth is the development of the Spirit within oneself. Development of that particle of God that is in every person. The more a person is developed spiritually, the more he feels connected with other people, with nature, with God.
Spiritual growth is about coming together and connecting. A highly spiritual person sees a connection between himself and another person, he understands that people are united by the Spirit.
And this is the main difference between Personal and Spiritual growth. Personal growth – divides and sets boundaries. Spiritual growth unites and erases boundaries.
Personal growth is an increase in your personal benefit
Following personal growth, a person unwittingly enters into competition with other people for attention, resources, food, and clothing.
While a person lives in the body, he naturally strives to increase his personal good, the good of his individual personality. To do this, a person gets an education, sets personal goals, builds a career, and creates his own business.
To do this, he arranges his life: buys furniture, equipment, a car, a house. To do this, a person prepares resources for the future: buys real estate, makes cash deposits, buys jewelry and antiques.
Spiritual growth is an increase in love for the benefit of your neighbor
The purpose of spiritual life is to increase love in oneself and manifest it in the world. Already in the very name “spiritual growth” there is an understanding - this is a change in which the growth of the spirit occurs.
By spiritual growth I mean the fulfillment of the two main laws that Christ spoke about: loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. Growing your Spirit means growing God within you. Growing God means doing what God needs.
And God needs love between people. Neither prayers, nor bows, nor rituals, nor sacrifices, nor fasting are needed by God. All He expects from us is that we love each other.
This is what happens in youth: eat more and tastier, show yourself and others to look at, intoxicate yourself with alcohol or drugs, satisfy sexual lust in a frenzy. For youth, this is personal growth. If this is not the case, then the person is considered a weakling, a sucker, a coward.
But when a person has crossed the thirty-year mark, a crisis comes that brings forward the needs of the soul. Who am I? Why am I living? What is the meaning of my life? These questions are increasingly beginning to haunt our heads. A person seeks answers to these questions and begins to grow spiritually.
Both personal growth and spiritual growth are important for a person. There's just time for everything. In the first half of life, a person grows his Personality, in the second half - his Spirit.
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