Finding a good spiritual teacher to help you grow

Learning about spirituality is different for everyone, depending on what they as individuals need to experience for their spiritual growth. Who we learn from can make a big difference.

A stage that lasted a few years for me was to go and learn some basic aspects of therapy and spirituality. Being part of a group that was friendly, positive, supportive and loving was great, and it was enjoyable. Plus I found it did me a lot of good as I changed and felt a lot happier about myself and life. After a year or so I became involved in helping to make sure the workshops and events ran smoothly. I enjoyed that to very much.

After a while though, the learning slowed. The spiritual information that was being taught was the same all the time. One month was very much like another. I gradually became restless and my interest dropped off.

The people in the organisation who did the teaching were still happy and enthusiastic about what they were teaching. The spiritual stuff they believed and taught was enough for them, and gave them a view of the world that worked as far as they were concerned. But I wanted more. I had some friends who were becoming less happy about what was being taught because they also wanted more. One friend commented that what we had learnt in the organisation was kindergarten level spirituality, that it was time to leave, and learn more at a higher level.

With smiles the organisation tried to persuade us to stay. When we still said no, they were unfriendly towards us, as we no longer wanted to give importance to what they considered important. In a way it was like rejecting them because we rejected a key part of their identity. It wasn’t meant as that, we just wanted to move on to finding out about more aspects of spirituality. And I was very grateful for what I had learnt and how they had helped me change.

One thing I realised though was the people in the organisation I had left were satisfied with what they did and what they knew, but they had stopped asking questions, stopped learning, and stopped growing. They were happy and successful in their comfort zone, and stayed in it.

Myself and the others found some other sources of information and other teachers and learnt about spirituality, life and ourselves at another level. We found some teachers who like us kept on learning and developing, and this meant we were learning new things all the time, and being given the opportunity to change and grow as people.

I realised that some people who are therapists, workshop leaders, authors or “spiritual leaders” don’t learn and don’t change, and come out with the same old, same old. Which is fine for those people who want to learn a bit, and then stay in that comfortable place.

Then there are therapists, workshop leaders, authors and “spiritual leaders” who do keep learning and growing spiritually. These people are great for spiritual adventurers who want to keep learning and growing, learning something new, and then replacing it with something newer, again and again, as there is always More. We live in a time when wave after wave of spiritual energy comes in to transform humanity, the world and creation. Each wave of energy brings a new level of knowledge to match how humanity keeps changing with that energy. Each wave brings a new level of truth to supercede the old (think of layers of an onion as an analogy if you like). So there is continual change and growth. And this will keep happening.

Keeping with the same old teacher who teaches the same old stuff is like treading water in a becalmed sea. Learning with a teacher who keeps learning is like surfing an ocean wave that changes shape and demands you go with it.

I know what kind of learning I like.

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About Death

Death is a massive topic. We have all died countless times, and there is usually huge fear in people about dying. There is a lot of healing and change to occur so that we even begin to see death as a state to go through onto the next life.

Death happens this way:

The soul usually withdraws its energy and awareness from the lifeform as it is time to move onto the next part of the journey. Sometimes the physical elemental in the physical body fights this, and holds onto the energy. Usually the heart stops and the centres close down and the soul leaves the physical body.

Before death, the third eye centre can be seen to close down in preparation. The start of this closing down can be days before. The timing is based on karma. With karma, there are three kinds. There is positive, negative and opportunistic karma. With the opportunistic karma, events can go either way; negative or positive. So some deaths are opportunistic rather than the other kinds of karma. The third eye will show the probability of death, and can reopen if the opportunistic event has gone positive. Close shaves can be like this. A death can be positive karma, as the person has fulfilled all of their karma for that lifetime, and the soul withdraws its energy so the spirit of the person can have a deserved rest on the inner planes, an esoteric cup of tea, a review of events in that lifetime, and a meet up with old friends. They then can reincarnate into their next lifetime with a new set of karma to work through.

I’ve written this in a matter of fact way. With most deaths, there is a lot of emotion. Spiritually, we can know what is happening, but the emotions are something different. For the person dying, there is often fear, even though they have done this millions of times before. The people around them often don’t want them to go. When the person does die they are badly missed by those still living, those still physically incarnate. There is grief and loss in the minds of those left behind.

When we have a connection with someone, there are energetic cordings between us and the other person, from our centres to theirs. The stronger the relationship, the stronger the cordings. When the other person leaves, the cordings start to drop away. If the other person dies, there are no centres for the cordings to get attached to. This can be traumatic on a personality level. Grief ensues.

The person dying usually sees the light and as that is so amazing in comparison to what they experience in a physical body, off they go. Sometimes the grief and the emotional attachment of those left behind binds the spirit and soul in the space around the earth making them earthbound. This is not a pleasant or ideal situation for the person who has dropped their body as they are trapped and stopped from doing what they need to. These souls need to be rescued and released, so they can move on (this is rescue work). For many people, if they were generally happy, their spirit and soul gets to reside for a while in an energetic space that matches that positive emotional nature, where it is re-experienced and drains away. This space was known about by the Buddhists who thought of it as a positive bardo state. In Christianity it is called heaven. If someone’s general state was fear, or anger, or other negative state, the soul and spirit would go to a space that matched this and helped to draw the emotions out for a while so the soul can go off to the next lifetime with a clean slate. The Buddhists think of this state as a negative bardo state, and in Christianity it would be called hell.

When it comes to people we have a relationship with of some sort in this lifetime, usually we have had at least a few lifetimes with them in some sort of relationship such as friend, enemy, sibling, parent, son / daughter of, wife / husband, extended family member, and so on. We will have known them before. It’s likely we will see them again in future lifetimes, too, as there are karmic links. So death ends that well known link for now, but you get to see them again.

When out of physical body, being physically alive as opposed to being a soul and spirit on the inner planes, is not the big deal we make of it when we are in a physical body. We know there is more to that existence, we have it more in perspective. Physical life is a way of learning and developing through many lifetimes to become what we can be, which is a soul on the Divine Journeys, but knowing much more, and being more, than a soul who has not made the journey down into creation and back into the Divine.

Reincarnation is part of that process. Some distant day in the future we may understand that when someone dies that soul is going on the next part of their journey.

In the West, there are people who request funerals that are more upbeat and more of a celebration of that person and their life, rather than being a solemn affair. I do wonder how they will be when we really come to terms with reincarnation.

Taken from “If reincarnation is true, how would you live your life?” Spiritualgrowthadventure.com