ARE U GETTING SPIRITUALLY BETTER?
spiritual maturity is a process that happens organically without “our” doing.
Being Kind and Compassionate:
Kindness comes from an open heart, and an open heart is a sign of spiritual maturity. Without practicing kindness toward ourselves for our shortcomings and human flaws and others for their imperfections, we live a constricted and unhappy life. And the more constricted and mind-centered we are, the more immature we are.
Practicing self love and coming from a place of compassion toward others helps us to step outside of the judgmental and rejecting mind and into the wise all-embracing heart.
Patience, Persistence, and Commitment:
We live in an instant gratification world where we want fast 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 landscapes, and there is a season for everything.
As such, being patient, persistent, and committed are all signs of a spiritually mature approach to life, knowing that awakening isn’t linear, but is instead cyclical.
Present-Moment Focus:
Having a present-moment focus means finding the doorway 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 within life. As Buddha said, “Only here can we find true liberation.”
Embracing Polarities:
Black-and-white thinking results in a dualistic and painfully divided way of seeing and experiencing the world. However, when we learn how 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 into non-duality, which is a mature way of relating to life because it goes beyond the mind and into the very nature of being.
Nondual Consciousness:
Nondual consciousness sees unity within everything, and as such, it’s a sign of spiritual maturity. When we live through the mind, we divide and cut up the world into concepts and ideas, missing the wholeness that is already right here, right now, underneath thought. This tendency to divide the world and to operate from an isolated little “me” (which is another thought) is at the root of suffering.
