Easy Spiritual Growth

I'd like to start the topic of how easy spiritual growth can be, the first step being to give yourself permission to believe that spiritual growth can be easy if you use the proper techniques. The next step would then be to realize which are the proper techniques... I'd like to suggest a few which have worked well for me:

1.)  Realize that you and the world have changed and are going to change no matter what... which will help the fear of change because we quickly realize it is actually the normal way of things. This should make it a lot easier to contemplate moving beyond our current versions of ourselves and leaving old, stale, nonproductive patterns in the dust.

2.)  Realize that we have not got everything figured out yet, regardless of how good of an argument we can present using our intellect. This helps to keep us from overreacting and being so fixated on trying to make someone else adopt our adopted beliefs.

3.)  Realize that real spiritual growth seems to be unanimously accepted as being mainly associated with the opening of our hearts. So we can begin to use our hearts as our gauge for our advancement instead of our mind or intellect.

4.)  Focus on moving out of the intellect and into our hearts. This also helps to disconnect from intellectual stories of truth and more into an awareness of being a conscious component of love, which is becoming more and more unified all the time.

5.)  Let's also not forget to take moments to laugh or find the silliness in our old, or current, ways of unproductive fixation, which we are continually leaving behind... instead of condemning them or thinking they are "bad".

6.)  Realize that when we focus on things being "bad" or negative we can easily get stuck in an intellectual fixation, which brings our attention/beingness out of our compassionate hearts.

7.)  Realize that when we see unhealthy patterns/habits in ourselves or others... it is only a pattern, and by being aware of it -it is automatically changed. There is no need to try and force a change. It is kind of like a potential burglar who runs to hide when the lights are turned on.

8.)  Use consciousness exercises:

    a.)  Whenever your mind is drawn to focus on an unpleasant idea, event, pattern -turn the tables by imagining the most beneficial thing that could happen related to that particular idea, event or pattern. Optionally, if this is an event which has happened in the past... you can also let your mind creatively explore what the best things you have learned or could have learned from this experience. This is also a practice in being playfully creative in the moment, and catching yourself before the mind tries to take you down a path of negative projections... and if you don't catch yourself right away, no big deal, just go from there.

   b.)  Meditation

The key in all this is learning to take control of our thoughts/energy and direct them into spiritually beneficial channels, because this is how we are creating our collective and individual futures.

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Also feel free to add anything you may have learned which has ever made things easier for you along your journeys.