What is Spiritual Growth?
Source: Self Realization.com

"As religious people, we are involved with a certain amount of traditional, ceremonial, and dogmatic behavior. We do it automatically, because when we were children, we were simply told to behave and even think in a prescribed way. But, do we really experience Spiritual Growth when we visit a church, do a good deed, pray a lot, believe what others told us to believe, belong to any particular belief system, grow beards, meditate, get circumcised, wear turbans, etc.? To answer that question, we have to know first what constituets spiritual growth.

Perhaps, all these traditional ways are important things, but Spiritual Growth simply occurs when the Spirit grows and the ego shrinks. Any Spiritual Growth happens only in direct relationship to a shrinking ego: without a shrinking ego, there is no Spiritual Growth. Through continuous Meditation, eventually, we experience our Self in its natural pure state. It is then that we realize that our Self-awareness is never born and never dies. To find that Pure Existence is the purpose of all Spiritual Exercise and one of our best tools is Meditation.

Like many Spiritual concepts, Spiritual Growth is a misnomer. In reality, the Spirit does not grow or shrink: it is always the way it is. What is a Spirit anyway? It is that which knows that it exists. Other names for Spirit are Life-force, Soul, Awareness, or Beingness.

If we do a good deed selflessly without the slightest consideration of the rewards or fruits, as a result, we grow spiritually. If we do that good deed and feel proud or even simply good, we strengthen the ego. Tricky but logical, is it not?

Likewise, if we meditate and reduce our thinking, we uncover more of the Spirit. But, again, if we feel proud of our accomplishments as a result of otherwise proper Meditation, we have not really accomplished anything at all.

Spiritual Growth has to continue until we rest without remaining wishes, attachments, dreaming, and thinking in pure Awareness. Pure Awareness (God) is where we rest in eternal peace and bliss. Once this is understood, the mind will still resist and state that it is not yet ready for such a permanent condition. That might be so, but such thinking is simply the result of having lost awareness of this superior condition of the Soul."