Adventures In Spiritual Living

Living Life as an Adventure of
Spiritual Exploration and Discovery

Purpose of Spiritual Growth

The Purpose of Spiritual Growth / What Is Spiritual?

William Cooper

There is a realm of things and persons almost entirely beyond your material senses. It is enduring, even eternal. Your eternal future and your continued consciousness lie in this super-material realm. It is fair to call this a higher level of existence and to identify it as the spiritual realm. Growing spiritually then becomes adapting yourself to the higher reality. The natives of the spiritual realm invite you to join. Joining involves progressively transforming yourself into a being who fits this higher reality. 

Even now you can adopt celestial ideals as human ideals. There are substantial differences between the values you generally follow in your material life and those followed in the higher celestial reality. Celestial spirituality focuses on understanding celestial values and on modifying yourself to fit into the higher celestial civilization as smoothly as possible. There is an abundance of help but you must want it to succeed.

The realm of the super-material is not entirely imperceptible. While it is well hidden in our midst, there are many indications of its existence. Evidence of the unseen spiritual world often shows up in our material world, we just don’t recognize what it is. Evidence such as: 

  • You have definite, out-of-the-ordinary feelings of being in the presence of the divine.
  • Beneficial coincidences occur in your life. Things you need to know come to your attention by seeming coincidence.
  • You have experiences of being assisted, guided, or encouraged.
  • Insights into truth and meaning just rise into your awareness.
  • You suddenly have intense experiences of beauty or goodness that leave you feeling permanently changed and more complete.
  • Real needs of yourself and others are met through a surprising series of events seeming like little miracles
  • Sometimes you have an insight that something that happened years ago has produced a beneficial consequence.
  • A good consequence arises out of a loss or failure or even out of a sickness or injury.

These events do not simply arise uncaused. They are made possible by actions taken in the higher level of existence for your benefit. They indicate the existence of an unseen realm where you matter and from which you are assisted. 

The celestials teach that learning to love is very much a result of being loved. The evidence of the unseen realm is revealed for your discovery by their loving assistance, and your feeling loved and blessed contributes to your learning to love. Motivating you by the experience of being loved, to love in response and to serve the needs of others, is a very important objective in the super material realm.

  • Becoming Like God is Spirituality

God is a person – the one original creator parent of all that is. God has created many personalities who display the various qualities and powers of God. Even we humans, the youngest and least mature members in the family, are intended to grow to be like God. 

The method provided for you to grow to become like God is for you to choose attitudes and behaviors which make you like God gradually over time. How much time? Certainly more than this mortal lifetime and as much as your sincere efforts require. As you adopt the qualities of God you grow to be more like God. Eventually you will be very much like God. That is God’s plan and God’s will. It involves your personal decisions gladly and intentionally to be like God.

Loving the qualities of God isn’t possible without at least a factual knowledge of the nature of God. Even better is a person-to-person relationship with God. That too is part of God’s plan. Choosing God-centered spirituality is your mortal effort to adopt divine thinking and behavior for yourself. God-centered spiritual growth and progress come from persistence and dedication to supporting higher values of goodness and ethical treatment of others. That is how God and his family behave. 

  • What Causes Spiritual Growth in Godlikeness?

Some spiritual growth is organic. It is inherent in the design of your mind. But intentional alignments of what you want with what God wants are essential to claiming your awesome divine destiny which God has designed for you.

God’s plan for you is not just the statement of a goal to “be perfect” followed by your being on your own to find the way to do this. God’s plan also provides a step-by-step assisted path that provides every step needed to achieve your goal of perfection in Godlikeness. 

Being perfect is not the end purpose. God is engaged in an eternal and infinite expansion of the already immense universe. He wants you to administer part of it for him. Preparing for that role takes a lot of training and a lot of commitment to God’s goals. Better yet, God’s desire is that you freely adopt divine goals as your sincere and fervent personal goals.

Spiritual hunger, impulses, and insights don’t Just happen. They are caused by celestial beings working for your spiritual benefit. These celestials do a great deal without being asked. They will do a great deal more if you authorize it, ask, and pay attention. They are your relatives, your family, your teachers, and your coaches.

  • Spiritual Growth in Your Soul

You are given the potential and assistance to build a soul within your mind. One of the most important functions of your soul is to accumulate memories of your personal insights of what seems special in your life — rich experiences of love, truth, beauty, and goodness. Such as: 

  • loving relationships 
  • friendships 
  • kindness 
  • gentleness
  • forgiveness 
  • the feeling of being in love 
  • the feeling of giving love 
  • the feeling of being loved 
  • the burst of new tender emotions when your child is born 
  • every other significant positive experience you ever have in life 

Your soul is a special part of your mind and carries your unique achievement of character and personality over into your celestial after-life. So, building maturity in your soul in this mortal life is worth the effort. It is something you can do now that is real and permanent and important.

  • What is Spiritual Maturity and How do You Build It?

How you build spiritual maturity is simple in principle. It is a matter of often thinking deeply about your experiences to discover what works to produce goodness for the most people. Personal spiritual maturity comes from progressively abandoning self-centeredness while enlarging your desire to help others. Together these define and measure spiritual maturity. Feelings of fulfillment and joy will be a result of intentionally feeling and quietly expressing gratitude for the blessings you receive. Joy in goodness, delight in real achievement, and experience of gratitude expand your soul.

There is a universal human urge to be unselfish and to be of benefit to others. This is a gift to you by the spirit of the creator of all that is. This spirit resides in your soul. Pay attention to the unselfish and generous urges which seem to arise on their own within your mind. These are designed to draw soul building responses, insights, and values into your realization. If they simply arise without being sought, they are almost certainly spiritual encouragement given to you from the celestial teachers who live with you in your mind. And who are these teachers?

  • Your own personal spirit companion who is part of the creator of everything and who resides permanently in your mind specifically to build your soul from what you provide.
  • The spirit of Jesus who guides you in discovering truth and meaningfulness.
  • The spirit of your universe mother spirit who ministers personally to your individual and group thoughts, emotions, and feelings as well as your physical needs.
  • The mind spirits given to you by your universe mother spirit for your constant use in all your thinking, feeling, and sensing. Among other things, these spirits have agendas to develop your abilities to recognize and appreciate right and wrong, love and truth, reality and unreality, and values and meanings.
  • The angels who are so much in touch with you as to be almost physical.
  • There are many other celestials who function as teachers, revealers, and administrators of celestial programs that you benefit from. 

God-centered spirituality works to bring you closer to God and God closer to you. This improves the experience of the relationship for both. Spirituality involves living life not as a material experience alone but also increasingly as an adventure of spiritual exploration, discovery, and self-transformation.

Becoming perfect like God is not something you must do alone. Your success in this is so important to God that he has provided a superabundance of everything you need to achieve that goal, more than enough to assure your success. Why does God go to so much effort to assure your survival, education, and training? Because you are God’s very young spiritual child for whom he has planned an awesome destiny, and he is a very involved, perfect parent.

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