| After doing a few presentations about my book, Authentic Spirituality: The Direct Path to Consciousness, I am finding that people have become intrigued by my discussion of “spiritual adulthood.” Several people have commented about the lack of such a concept in exoteric religions and even esoteric spiritual paths. It appears to me that when one places consciousness — not human-made organizations — at the center of spirituality, spiritual maturity emerges as the goal.
From my perspective, a spiritual teacher is like the captain of a ferry, who takes us from one side of a large river to the other. Where is the place for those who have reached the other side of the river?
How have we come to believe that we must always be pupils and not graduate into adult relationship and responsibility? We have evidence all around us that children grow up and leave home. Students graduate and begin to practice what they have learned. What has caused us to ignore this reality in our spiritual lives? When we place consciousness at the center of spirituality, as I have in my recent book, Authentic Spirituality: The Direct Path to Consciousness, it calls into doubt these old ways of structuring spiritual pursuit.
In Western countries almost everyone can read and most of what used to be secret is now available to the general public. Unfortunately, much that is truly real gets lost in our culture since it relies on the written word to explain truth. Currently, many individuals are not only as educated as religious officials who are designated to be parental figures and dole out doctrine, but they are more educated. Priests, ministers, rabbis and mullahs now face a struggle to convince us that they hold the keys to our spiritual lives. Among the mystical schools, the stories of the oral tradition can still be powerful — but they have been so diluted and literalized by our materialistic culture that they are loosing their power.
There is still a crying need for inspired and inspiring teachers to share the mysteries of the path with others. Living lives of soul and spirit means that people deepen and refine their consciousness. People such as these are needed to model for us how to begin this work. The great task of spirituality in this new age is to redefine the traditional understanding of teacher and student, parent and child, and to make much more room for the spiritual adult.
Transcending our culture means that we are no longer wearing our cultural blinders, made up of religious dogma, constricted consciousness, restricting concepts and limited choices. It is also virtually impossible to live a human life without participation in the culture around us. When our individual consciousness becomes trained to be able to transcend our cultural viewpoints and at the same time partake in the teeming natural and cultural life around us, we have gained a degree of spiritual freedom.
“Spiritual freedom is the culmination of a long and arduous path and not the beginning.” (Potter, 2004) This is not what most people want to hear. We live in a society that wants things to be easy. We live in a society that holds youth to be the ideal state. However, spiritual freedom requires us to go through a process of self-liberation where we rescue our true natures from the clutches of base ego desires and materialism of all kinds. Spiritual autonomy is not available to us when we remain wedded to our cultural addictions. We must use mastery, love and will to transcend a previously adored state of spiritual childhood before we emerge into spiritual adulthood.
I have had the rare honor to have known several spiritual adults, and I would like to create a new image of spiritual adulthood based upon the best qualities found in the spiritual adults I have known. I would like us to forget the stodgy authority figures of the past. If adulthood, responsibility and maturity seem to us to be too limiting then we need to reevaluate our concepts. It is really our concepts, created by far too many years of repressive patriarchal, religious, political and economic rule that have indelibly imprinted a faulty view of both cultural and spiritual adulthood upon us.
Joy is universal among the wise. The wise begin every action from their hearts and for this reason their actions can bring joy and light even into dark places. When our hearts are filled with joy, we naturally are open to seeing the beauty, harmony and depth of the exquisite life around us. How often have you noticed two people in the same situation and found that one saw mostly the beauty and the other saw mostly the problems? Our consciousness becomes aware based upon what our heart is open to. When we are only open to sadness, our consciousness will extract sadness from the multiple possibilities in our environment. The spiritual adult will find reasons for joy all around and yet never be blind to the sadness.
Peace is the desire of the soul. It may be said that the entirety of life’s quest is a search for peace that is beyond understanding. Because of its nature, peace cannot be completely found in life. Perfect peace is complete stillness and reserved for a time outside of time and space, or deep states of meditation, referred to as samadhi by the yogis. Humans have a deep desire for certain states of peace that can be experienced in life. There is a quiet sense of contentment that can come with spiritual adulthood that can permeate one’s existence. A peaceful heart becomes a balm not only for ourselves, but for all with whom we come in contact. Like a still lake whose calm surface only hints at the great depth that lies beneath, the heart of one who is spiritually mature can reflect the entire universe.
When the time comes that we can see spiritual adulthood as attainable in this lifetime, when we can conceive of spiritual maturity as a natural state, then we will put aside the need to be shepherded like sheep or parented as children for our entire lives. We will not need to become teachers, father and mother figures to everyone we meet, or become inflated with a false sense of privilege. We will instead seek to learn and grow to adulthood so that we can take our rightful place in our families, communities and societies. We will know that adulthood is normal and feel no need to be anything other than creative, joyful and peaceful human beings.
To read an expanded version of this article visit The Llewellyn Journal at www.llewellynjournal.com. |
