When I bring up the topic of spirituality, I am not talking about religion. Although the two are very related, they aren’t the same thing. A “religion” is a culture’s attempt at incorporating “spiritual” value into daily life. Most organized religions share the same basic spiritual truths if you sift through the details and get to the core. However, you can absolutely have a spiritual connection to something greater without subscribing to any religious group. I firmly believe that everyone needs to come their own conclusions about the topic.
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple. The philosophy is kindness.
-The Dalai Lama
Spirituality is a real part of my life, but it has nothing to do with angels and demons and gods and worshiping ANYBODY. It also has nothing to do with getting help from ghosts and aliens or spirits from other dimensions. It has EVERYTHING to do with you “growing up” at the “being level;” growing up from the point of view of the observer that is looking out of your eyeballs. As you “grow up” more, opportunities and abilities are added to your experience along the way. All it takes is practice and effort to develop it just like any other talent!
“You think of yourselves as humans searching for a spiritual awakening, when in fact you are spiritual beings attempting to cope with a human awakening. Seeing yourselves from the perspective of the spirit within will help you to remember why you came here and what you came here to do.”
-Unknown
You have a body. You have a brain. You have a mind. “You,” the real you are the conscious entity that “has” all of these things. Since you can’t “be” anything you possess any more than you can “be” your car; even if it is 
a Farrari. Your life force animates the body the same way your body controls and animates the car. Lets face it, the human body is hands-down the most fantastically incredible piece of “tech” on this planet, and “you” are sitting in the operators seat. We never sit and think how amazing it is that your body can can eat a banana and within hours turn it into a human being.
You don’t look out there for God, up in the sky. You look in you.
-Alan Watts
I want to share a short story / thought experiment with you that will allow me to explain what the meaning of spiritual growth is to me. It can function as a sort of parable to give a different perspective on matters of the spirit and how they benefit me.
Start by imagining a lamp post that sheds light in a small circle beneath it. Everything outside the range of this lamp’s light is still completely dark.
Now imagine a boy who gets to play and run but only stays on the lighted area under the light.
He does not play in the dark because he does not know what’s out there where he can’t see. There is a certain inherent fear of the unknown. He 
stays under the light where he feels more safe and secure.
The boy hears something out in the darkness just outside of where he can see. He is unsettled by the feeling that he would be completely powerless if he were in danger. Realizing that there was nothing he could do about it, he accepts that it would not be very productive to remain in a state of worry.
Worrying doesn’t empty today of its troubles. It empties today of its strength.
-Corrie Ten Boom
After accepting fate, his fear subsides and gives way to curiosity. As soon as his curiosity overpowers his fear he thinks “how can I shine more light into the darkness so I can see what’s out there past my comfortable little halo around the light post?” After all, there might be something right outside his current perimeter that he ought to know about.
He immediately heads over to the lamp post to investigate the current lighting situation. He had been underneath the light of this post for some time, but never once did he ever think to take a good look at it. For whatever reason it simply never crossed his mind.
As he walks up to the post he realizes that there is a ladder fixed to the side of the post; obviously for maintenance of the light bulb. As he climbs up the few rungs to the bulb he notices that the post and the ladder are actually much taller than they appeared from the ground. In fact, they extend right up past the light and into the darkness as far as he could see.
As he examines the bulb he sees that it is actually completely covered in dirt and dust. To make matters worse, he finds that the bulb isn’t even screwed in all the way. He just can’t believe that he had been going along all this time with a loose dusty bulb. He didn’t care about how it got that way or whose fault it was, but he knew he’d be much better off with a clean bright light showing him the way.
If you think in negative terms, you get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you get positive results.
-Earl Nightengale
He puts on a pair of gloves that were hanging by the lamp and unscrews the bulb so he could wipe all of the dust and cobwebs of it without accidentally breaking it. After he unplugs the bulb he realizes that he has cast himself into complete darkness. The only thing he can see is the glow of the bulb in 
his hand, but as it fades he loses all sight. There he stands stranded on the ladder. He is unfamiliar with the lamp and helpless to plug the light back in.
Once again he contemplates his fate as he peers into the black void before him. Gradually his eyes begin to adjust in the darkness. From what he could remember, he had never been without the light, and he had never been into the darkness outside of his safe circle for long enough for his eyes to adjust out there. This was something new.
As his eyes attune themselves to the low level of light and his pupils widen, he begins to see the light bulb in his hands once more. A new wave of invigoration comes over him. What else didn’t he know about this place? His eyes adjusted even more and he could see that there were twinkling lights far up over his head that gave off just enough light to let him see how vast the
landscape was. The light from the lamp kept his eyes focused on only what was within its reach and blocked out everything else.
He could see that the ground that he had been living in was but a minute little play pen with a vast uncharted expanse beyond its borders. In fact he could see that there was some sort of structure just outside the perimeter
of where his light reaches. He couldn’t quite make out what it was, but he knew it was worth investigating.
Now it was time to “let there be light” again. He screws in the bulb and nearly falls off the ladder in astonishment. He peers down at his halo of light to see it in a way he had never imagined it. It was, indeed, the same old place but everything was bathed in a crystal clear light that revealed everything in glimmering HD colors. Blues are bluer, reds are redder, and the textures of surfaces are alive with stunning detail.
It is so vivid that he nearly forgets about what had just previously peaked his curiosity. The structure just outside his lighted halo. Even with the new brilliant splendor that lay underneath him from this perspective, he is still unable to reveal what lies outside his ring of perceived safety. Carried by the curiosity to know, he remembers that while he was gazing up at the incredibly tall pole, he saw that there was another hook for him to hang the lamp on just 
a short way up the ladder. If he could only get the light mounted up there his light would unveil a substantial portion of the landscape that was previously dark.
With the light bright again, he can’t see anything that lay in outside the light with his eyes adjusted back to the brightness. Since he can’t see the ladder above or the hook he thinks he remembers seeing, he has to rely on his confident faith and trust in himself as he unhooks the heavy lamp and begins climbing upward with it. It takes every bit of his strength and endurance to do it, but he succeeds in re-mounting the light.
Don’t set goals to GET, set goals to Grow.
-Bob Proctor
He looks down from his new point of view to see the new landscape before him. Not only could he see that the structure that peaked his was in fact a large book case, but that he had quite a few other objects of interest to ponder over that were now within his new halo.
He takes the first step back down the ladder to explore and knows he will never be the same again. He could never again settle for the old state of affairs that he had grown accustomed to. He was going to learn everything there was to learn, and one day he would be back up the
ladder to raise the light even more.
Now let’s take another look at this parable through different eyes.
The story is really about our experience as an intelligent human being.
The area of lighted ground or “earth” beneath the lamp post is my metaphor for the sum of what you are cognizant of TODAY as you stand. This is all the data coming in through your five senses and while the real “you” sits in the position of the observer. Everything that is bathed in light constitutes our current perspective of this “physical matter reality.” The halo of light is our AWARENESS.
Awareness allows us to get outside of our mind and observe it in action.
-Dan Brule
The boy trying to make logical sense of all this is the MIND. We are used to the mind being anchored mostly to this physical reality in our experience. What we call “the mind” has been conditioned to “tune in” to this lighted area. What the mind can see depends on the quality of the light.
The physical state of your body is related to the condition of the light bulb. When I find my body in the state of unbalance or “dis” “ease” I know that my “light bulb” is working to a diminished capacity and is not giving the best picture of data to my “mind” for best processing, I need to pay extra attention to eating the right foods, avoiding and cleansing out the toxins and parasites, and keeping myself active and physically energetic in order to keep my voltage HIGH, my brightness HIGH, and intentions Crystal Clear.
The unplugging of the light bulb was meant to be symbolic of going into a meditative state wherein you “tune out” of the radio station broadcasting “5-sense data” from the body. The gradual adjusting of the boy’s eyes to the darkness is likened to the process you go through becoming acquainted with more subtle “data” coming in to your consciousness from the larger
conscious system that exists just beyond what we are used to paying attention to. This was a great vantage point for the boy to plan his next goals, just like it is for me.
The spirit uses the spark of curiosity to attract the mind towards activities and experiences that will expand our AWARENESS. When you make the decision to follow a genuine curiosity you actively direct the mind and put it to work. This conscious directive imposed upon the mind toward the goal of expanding awareness is analogous to putting in the required “persistent” effort in order to KEEP your bulb clear and bright and to raise it to greater heights.
What people CAN do is very different than what people WILL do.
-Tony Robbins
Every single time we experience an EPIPHANY; every AH HA moment can be thought of as raising your light up. Every little bit counts. The gradual process of raising your light up the pole is symbolic of what we call “growing up.” Some of us keep raising our light until the day we leave this Earth. Some stop at puberty. Some expand their conscious awareness into realms you couldn’t even begin to imagine. It’s all a matter of how much curiosity you cultivate in yourself and how you CHOOSE to spend your time. A human being’s culture 
will more or less herd them along raising their consciousness to the recommended level for the average civilian, but anything further than that requires that CONSCIOUS EFFORT.
In a nutshell, spiritual growth is manifested in this world as expanded awareness and understanding at the “being” level; at the level of the observer. When we follow our curiosity and engage in activities that are aligned with our values and goals we are constantly expanding our awareness and the quality of our human experience.
To cultivate spiritual growth, you need to make art of your everyday life. Show unconditional love to each person you come into contact with. Especially honor the relationships you have with significant others and do your best to raise children to be even better than you could ever hope to be. Everything you do, do your best and you will have a logical reason to never engage in guilt or regret. As you grow the quality of your being, by default, you gain in awareness, wisdom, compassion, and your whole perception of reality changes along with it.
Discipline is generally a form of punishment in most people’s mind. It is really the ability to give yourself a command and then carry it out.
-Bob Proctor
Spiritual Development = “growing up” at the “being” or “soul/spirit” level.
The more you raise your light above the ground, the greater area your mind/intellect gets to operate in with clarity, and the greater and greater the number of choices become in your decision space to grow your experience base and grow and learn ever more.
As you grow in spiritual awareness you do not leave this realm or go to another place. But rather you gain new perspectives and learn new things about the way “this place” works and how it is tied into the larger network of experience that we have always been connected to. All is self. Know thyself.
Little by little each day we grow in our own way. The increase in the quality of consciousness of the adult only happens on purpose without outside factors. Growth rarely happens in great leaps without major upheavals in your personal life. These kinds of awakenings are usually brought on by a death, divorce, near death experience, sickness, car accident, or some other traumatic event. There is no denying that these experiences literally rock our world and leave us changed people. A couple of these major life events hit me at the same time and caused me to completely reevaluate my value system and overall trajectory in life.
The road does not end here. This is only the conclusion of my free gift to you. For those who are sincere about taking this important journey with me, I promise to give you the tools you need to accomplish what you are really here to do. The way this reality is put together and the way you can most effectively operate in it is a whole lot more amazing than we are brought up to understand and it has the fingerprints of a higher power right in our faces if we only know how to re-tune ourselves to proper balance. We need to take another look at what the great thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Ben Franklin were REALLY into studying. That’s what sparked my fire.
I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.
-Leonardo Da Vinci
I want to provide you with the motivation and the tools to have YOUR OWN personal awakening. This is of the utmost importance, to have your own experience and your own truth. The more people I help, the more and more my capacity to help more people on deeper and deeper levels. I want everyone I come into contact to know this feeling.
It’s got to be your experience to be your truth.
-Tom Campbell