SpiritualOdyssey  

I get asked this question all the time. "How do I know I'm growing spiritually?" My response is quite often, "How do you know you're not?"

I've done a lot of different things thus far in my lifetime. I've hit several plateaus in my life where I've paused, looked about myself and wondered how I got to be at that place in time in those circumstances. It seems like much of what I've done professionally and personally has been to meet certain immediate needs, but as I look back I realize that I didn't have much long-range vision for my life when making those decisions. I've been aware of being on a spiritual journey since around the mid-'80s, but my journey and my real-world obligations have seemed disconnected for much of my journey. It brings up the question in my mind as to whether it matters if we are aware of being on a spiritual journey for us to be growing spiritually. When I have been unconscious of the connection between my job and my spiritual growth, there has still been such a connection. Being unconscious of it has nothing to do with whether it is actually there or going on.

On a mundane level, consider people you knew when you were in high school. For some of us, that was a long time ago. I knew people in high school and even middle school who were obnoxious, mean bullies. If I met them today, I might be surprised to see that they are nice, community-minded parents who are nothing like they were 20 or 30 years ago. Does that mean they intentionally set about making changes in themselves on a conscious journey of growth? Maybe. Probably not. Life has a way of mellowing us as we age, like a good brandy. We tend to make choices for immediate circumstances. We are seldom aware of the long-term effects of our choices, but if we make them according to the urgings of the heart, that may be good enough.

Let me explain by way of my own spiritual journey in very brief terms. I grew up the son of an ordained minister who served dysfunctional little churches in small towns. I didn't experience much grace or spirituality in those churches. I also spent a week at church camp every summer from when I was 6 yrs old until I was 18. I anticipated those summer camps with each of the preceding 51 weeks because I experienced God's presence more profoundly there than at any other time in my young life. After my senior year, though, I couldn't go back to summer camp. It was time to be an adult, but I knew of no place I could go and experience what I felt in those 12 weeks of my life spread out over more than  a decade. I foundered for several years, not wanting to go back to church, but not really knowing what to do. Life had to go on, so there was work, dating, lost love, hardships, and bad career decisions. In 1983 I read Timothy Leary's autobiography, which led me to read most of the books by Ram Dass, and within a few short months I was consciously on a spiritual journey. Life still went on with its hardships and challenges. Over the years, I explored Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and several other "isms" as well as errant New Age thoughts running around out there. I discovered a new look at Christianity through the Unity church and since then I’ve been working a deeper spirituality that harmonizes Christianity with some of what I’d explored in other religious traditions.

I’m not the same person I was when I started my conscious journey. I say conscious journey because there are parts of the journey that are also unconscious. In all the hardships and bad career decisions along the way, I gained experience in theater scenery and lighting design, construction, sales, and management. It wasn’t until I went into ordained pastoral ministry that I had need of all of this experience at one time or another. Although I’d been unconscious of any future reason for gathering up all that experience, I found that my future called me into it nonetheless. I’d made decisions to meet immediate needs, but made many of them according to what felt right in my heart. Those decisions led to accumulating what I would need later in my life.

The same can be said for my spiritual journey. How do I know I am growing spiritually? Because I am continually maintaining more consciousness of the Divine Presence around me every day. At first, I was wanting to learn as much as I could, thinking that if I just knew enough I would finally be spiritual. Pooh. All that learning was just a means of opening up. The real learning comes from experiencing. It’s about learning to just “be.” Here. Now. Every moment that I live with my consciousness wrapped up in the future or the past shows me my growing edges in my journey.

The point is that whether you are aware of your spiritual journey or not, you are still on one. The experiences you have gathered up in your life until this moment are part of that curriculum. If you can look back and honestly say that you have learned to love more fully, love deeper, love more unconditionally with less judgment, and be more readily forgiving, then you are growing spiritually. If you are more conscious of this now moment in which you are truly living, you are growing spiritually. But even if you aren’t aware of growing spiritually, you may be anyway. It’s like keeping up with the mileage markers while traveling cross country. For the most part, it doesn’t matter how much ground you’re covering. The point is that you’re headed toward your destination. Ironically, your destination is your complete awareness of right here, right now.