Introduction to Personal Growth and Transformation

On the path of personal growth, there are times when we seem to fall into a deep, dark pit, and the light is nowhere to be found. This is what is meant by a "spiritual crisis." This series of articles was written to better help people in this predicament understand and resolve their situation.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: Personal Growth and Transformation

Suffering seems to be one of those fundamental human experiences that we all have in common, and is perhaps the one we would all gladly give up. We often feel oppressed and frustrated by suffering because we do not understand it. It can pierce the heart of our being and our identity, and shake every assumption we hold about ourselves and the world. It often seems to destroy our will-power and overthrow our commitments, to our dismay.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: UnderstandingSuffering

Love is the primary, fundamental building block that everything is made of, and love is self-aware; it recognizes itself in everything, and loves itself in everything. In its primal, unified, unlimited, infinite state, it knows nothing other than unity, perfection, completion, wholeness.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: On Love, Separation, and Sacrifice

The following steps will help you make the shift from ineffective good intentions to being a powerful catalyst for positive change. With this approach you are very likely to see results, which is important because when we see that we've had an impact, we have more faith in our spiritual power. With faith, our power increases and our Area of Power expands.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: Discovering Your Area of Power

Most of us on our healing path have become very familiar with the admonition to "love ourselves." We may be clear that our purpose is to bring more love into the world. Since how we perceive and relate to "the world" is always a mirror of how we perceive and relate to ourselves, our goal is really to bring more love into ourselves. It is important to understand that, in terms of cause and effect, the external world is a reflection (or an "effect") of our "internal world: (our self), which is the opposite of how we naturally perceive things to be.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: Loving Ourselves

Whatever else you say about emotions and feelings, you have to admit that you just "wouldn't be your self" (little 's') without your own, familiar feelings. That's why we think we're going crazy or becoming "possessed" when unfamiliar or "out of character" emotions or reactions show up in our lives. However, there is another, more positive way to look at these disturbing occurrences. Remember that anything that feels like it isn't "you" must be a part of your shadow, and when parts of your shadow start to show up in your "self's" experience, this is HEALING.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: Healing the Shadow and the Mirror of Relationship

When you appreciate what God has given you, instead of saying "thank you" in word or thought, express your gratitude by choosing to be who God wants you to be - toward yourself, toward God, and toward others. Use the opportunity of "thank you" to correct your attitude and remember to love.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: On Opening to Higher Guidance

Reason shows us that "belief" and "experience" are one and the same. This understanding is crucial to understanding illusion, and it is difficult for most people to grasp. If I experience the pain of loss, I must be saying that such loss is not only possible, but REAL; i.e. when I experience loss, I BELIEVE in the REALITY of "loss." I cannot meaningfully say that I can experience something that is unreal; that would be to say that there is no way to distinguish real from unreal, making the word "real" meaningless.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: The Nature of Dreams

There are different types of knowledge. For example, the knowledge you have is not the same as what your soul has. Similarly, the knowledge amnesia patients have about themselves is different from the knowledge they are unable to remember. The knowledge you have about yourself does not assist you in knowing what your soul has done, or realizing your true identity. Likewise, the knowledge amnesia patients have about themselves does not help them to remember what they have forgotten.

Read more here: » Personal Growth,: Embracing Differences To Raise Your Consciousness

The Healing Path begins with an event that changed my life as violently as an earthquake wrenches a river from its course. Its medical label, "cancer," means little. Like other words that try to describe deep human experience--- love, hatred, joy, grief---it only hides the enormity it signifies. Our most personal moments are immune to language. And disease is so ineffably ours, so much part of our own irreproducable tale, that we are almost obliged to call it by our own proper name.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: Book Excerpt of 'The Healing Path...' - Illness As An Inward Journey

We are here to learn. We have created all our experiences for that purpose only: to learn, understand, and recognize ourselves in all that is. This is our sole/soul purpose in this entire existence. To learn a lesson never requires eternity; it is only our own unconscious choice to resist and avoid the learning that perpetuates the lesson.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: On Lessons, Creating our Reality, Limitation, and Eternal Suffering

Body-Mind Integration in the Personal Growth Process

Does the matter mind? I mean, does the mind matter? That is, what's the matter with the "mind over matter" attitude, and what's the matter if matter (the body) doesn't mind? Okay, I'll put the questions a little less pun-like and paradoxical. How often does it seem that our body is just something for our mind to use to achieve certain ends? And from the way the body minds at times, do we too often lack confidence that it's really going to cooperate with our plans? Or, even though we may try to "listen to our body," does it still surprise us when the massage therapist finds knots, "rubber bands," and sticky layers of achiness in areas we thought minded us the most?

Read more here: » Massage Therapy: Body-Mind Integration in the Personal Growth Process

Desire

Desire is one of the great paradoxes of being human. We find desire both at the heart of our greatest joy and of our greatest suffering. Sometimes we are empowered and uplifted by our desires, and at other times we feel enslaved to them.

About Desire, The Ego, Attachment, Victimhood and Empowerment.

Read more here: » Personal Growth: Desire

Who we think we are, is what we grow up to be. Simultaneously, we also develop a corresponding sense of who we are not. What we think we're not is the stuff that makes up our 'shadow', that part of us which consists of the unexplored, feared and unwanted qualities - whatever does not fit into our image of how we should be.

Poet Robert Bly says we dump what we consider personally and socially undesirable into a sort of invisible bag we carry around, with its contents growing as we grow older. The shadow is not about our 'bad' parts. What makes it so undesirable to us is what we put there has remained unattended for long periods.

(See also: Spiritual Growth, Faith and Belief, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Meditation is the natural process of withdrawing attention from environmental, physical, and mental processes and consciously directing it inward to a chosen focus of attention. But not many people know how to practice meditation for personal benefit and spiritual growth.

The beneficial side-effects of regular meditation practice include stress reduction, strengthening of the body's immune system, more orderly thinking, improvement in powers of concentration, and a slowing of the biological ageing process. For these reasons, meditation practice is recommended by an increasing number of doctors as a harmless way for patient-clients to be more responsible for their own total well-being.

(See also: Effects of Meditation, Faith and Belief, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Leadership is often associated with power. Today, the term has acquired negative connotations, particularly in politics. One has come to question the relative importance of being recognised as a "leader" when what we sorely need are individuals who both lead by their service and example and follow the universally accepted principles of responsible living.

We are beginning to see that traditional autocratic and hierarchical models of leadership are slowly yielding to a newer model. This model - of leaders as servants - will simultaneously enhance the personal growth of the led and improve the quality of our many institutions through a combination of individual and community teamwork in decision-making infused with ethical and caring behaviour.

(See also: Leadership, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Where does the average seeker find stability in spiritual growth? Is there a 'how to' manual of integration into daily life? Many a spiritual seeker is becoming aware that he is more than his physical body.

There is a deep craving to understand what is their calling. The revival of ancient wisdom is growing and that growth is having an effect on the way we perceive spirituality.

(See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

Each soul is potentially divine. "We are not human beings learning to be spiritual; we are spiritual beings learning to be human," said Jacqelyn Small. If this be so, why this forgetfulness about our divine potential?

What causes this amnesia? Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin has summed up the ultimate aim of Satan as: "The worst thing that the evil one can achieve is to make man forget that he is the son of a king."

(See also: Spiritual Growth, Faith and Belief, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

We face many challenges on the path to liberation. We also have an ego to deal with. I am often asked: "Are these challengers different for men and for women? Or is the path fundamentally the same for both sexes? Shouldn't there be different paths?"

Assuming that the goal is enlightenment, there is only one path. Of course, there are fundamental differences between men and women and, if we want to be free, these traits need to be acknowledged and deeply understood.

(See also: Spiritual Growth, Faith and Belief, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)

The act of self-forgiveness changes the energy and physical structures of your cells, and of your DNA. Guilt is a very powerful and deadening emotion. Guilt in itself can, as it were, close down the energy systems of your body, and thereby lessen, and in extreme cases, cut off the flow of Divine Energy and Love to the body entirely. Because each and every one of your cells has consciousness, they too can carry the essence and energy of guilt within them that makes their energy denser.

Read more here: » Forgiveness: Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness