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To grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and influence is a Herculean task.
As a result, we’ve muddled our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning.
How can we balance the material and spiritual aspects of our lives?
To Grow Spiritually Is to Look Inward
Introspection goes beyond recalling the things that happened in a day, week, or month. You need to look closely and reflect on your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations.
Examining your experiences, the decisions you make, the relationships you have, and the things you engage in provide useful insights into your life goals, on the wonderful traits you must sustain and the undesirable traits you have to discard.
It gives you clues on how to act, react, and conduct yourself in any situation. Like any skill, we can learn introspection; all it takes is the courage and willingness to seek the truths that lie within you.
Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, be forgiving of yourself, and focus on your areas for improvement.
To Grow Spiritually Is to Develop Your Potential
Religion and science have differing views on matters of the human spirit. Religion views people as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one dimension of an individual.
Mastery of the self is a recurring theme in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings. They recognise the needs of the body, but place them under the needs of the spirit.
Perhaps the main difference between religion and psychology is the goal of self-development. Christianity, Islam and other religions see self-development as a means toward serving their Gods, while psychology views self-development as an end in itself.
Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and good works provide the blueprint to ensure the growth of the spiritual being.
In Psychology, realising one’s full potential is to self-actualise.
William James categorised human needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual.
Later, Maslow identified more human needs: physiological, security, belongingness, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualisation, and self-transcendence.
When you have satisfied your basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs come next. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual.
To Grow Spiritually Is to Search for Meaning
Religions that believe in the existence of God, such as Christianism, Judaism, and Islam, suppose that the purpose of the human life is to serve the Creator of all things.
Several theories in psychology propose that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. Whether we believe that life’s meaning is pre-determined or self-directed, to grow in spirit is to realise that we do not merely exist.
We do not know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we gain knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we are in.
As we discover this meaning, there are certain beliefs and values that we reject or affirm. Our lives have purpose.
This purpose puts all our physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials into use; sustains us during trying times, and gives us something to look forward to - a goal to achieve, a destination to reach.
A person without purpose or meaning is like a drifting ship at sea.
To Grow Spiritually Is to Recognise Interconnections
Religions stress the concept of our relatedness to all creation, live and inanimate. Thus, one calls other people “brothers and sisters”, even if there are no direct blood relations.
Deity-centred religions, such as Christianity and Islam, speak of the relationship between humans and a higher being.
Science expounds on our link to other living things through the evolution theory.
We clearly seen this relatedness in the concept of ecology, the interaction between and living and non-living things. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the highest human need, according to Maslow.
Recognising your connection to all things makes you more humble, to people, animals, plants, and all things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you.
It moves you to go beyond your comfort zone and reach out to other people, and become stewards of all other things around you.
Long Live Growth
Spiritual growth is a process. To grow in spirit is a daily journey.
We win some; we lose some, but the important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, we make further spiritual growth possible.
This free PDF will teach you how to free yourself from the limiting beliefs that are holding you back subconsciously. In turn, you will be able to start attracting abundance you deserve.
