So you’ve been devoting months, years, or perhaps even decades of your life to your spiritual practice.
But unlike physically tangible pursuits, there’s no easy way to know if you’re ‘making progress’ or not when it comes to your inner spiritual life.
If you’re wondering whether you’re actually growing and evolving and whether spiritual growth is indeed occurring in your life, keep reading.
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What is Spiritual Growth?
Spiritual growth is the process of awakening to your true nature, purpose, and potential. When you undergo spiritual growth you experience an expansion in awareness and insight, also known as higher consciousness.
All spiritual growth has one objective: to help you embody your Soul or Higher Self. Once you are able to shift from ego to Soul, there is the potential for you to experience what is understood as spiritual enlightenment, self-realization, “heaven,” Oneness, or moksha in varying degrees.
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Spiritual Growth: 12 Signs You’re Growing and Evolving
Here are the major signs that you’re growing and evolving on a spiritual level:
1. You embrace challenges as lessons and opportunities
Whether your car has just broken down, or someone you love is terribly ill, you sense that there’s an underlying lesson and opportunity in the obstacle before you. Instead of feeling like a victim, you feel like a student of life. In other words, you see that life is not happening to you, it is happening for you.
2. You see through the seduction of the material world
Once upon a time, you might have loved buying expensive things, focusing on enhancing your social status, earning more money, or even indulging in spiritual materialism. But now, you understand that the material world doesn’t ultimately bring you the deep happiness you seek.
3. Your sensitivity has heightened
In the past, you might have been living in a numb state where you were disconnected from your body, heart, mind, and soul. But now, you are a great deal more aware of what is going on inside and around you. As such, you might experience more empathic suffering, which can often feel like both a curse and a gift.
(If you can relate to this spiritual growth sign, see our book: Awakened Empath for more guidance!)
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4. You feel more love and compassion (for yourself, others, and the world)
With heightened sensitivity, you also feel more connected to yourself and the world. You may feel higher levels of compassion and true empathy for others – even those who are harmful to themselves, others, and the planet. Your open heart brings you more joy, but also more pain. And yet, your heart is slowly learning how to expand and hold that pain.
5. You stop seeing life in black-or-white dualistic thinking
If you’ve been taught anything by your spiritual awakening, kundalini awakening, or dark night of the soul, it’s that there’s more to life than meets the eye. Something that may seem negative may turn out to be positive. Something that seems beautiful may actually be ugly deep down. Everything and everyone have two sides that are interdependent – nothing is totally black or white.
6. You can show more understanding toward difficult people
Because you can see underneath the surface of a person’s behavior – and the various wounds and traumas that may have caused them to misbehave – you no longer carry as much anger or resentment as you once did. You find it easier to show tolerance and understanding toward others, no longer reacting with as much judgment, condemnation, or self-righteousness.
7. You see that life is cyclical and like a spiral
Instead of getting stuck in one mode of being or mindset, you’re beginning to see that life is cyclical. There are good times and bad times. After spring comes autumn and after day comes night. All things are destined to come and go, rise and fall. As such, you don’t get as affected as you once did when life waxes and wanes – it’s just part of life and the journey of Soul Work.
8. You become less attached to mental stories
The more you become acquainted with your mind, the more you recognize that thoughts, ideas, and beliefs don’t actually define you. Instead, these mental occurrences are like clouds that float into the sky, and then eventually drift away. When you attach to mental thoughts and beliefs, you suffer. But when you recognize that your thoughts and feelings don’t define you – instead, you are the vast Consciousness beneath them – you find it easier to let go and find a sense of inner peace.
9. You find it easier to slow down and do nothing
Our thinking minds are always wanting us to “do,” “get,” “achieve,” “go-go-go!” but the soul, the spiritual center of our being, finds true nourishment in slowing down and enjoying life as it is. If you’re finding it easier to wind down, or at least catch the desire to constantly be “switched on” and change course, this is a clear sign of spiritual growth.
10. You are more interested in letting go of the old than gaining the new
As an ongoing student of the Tao Te Ching – an ancient wisdom text from the Taoist tradition – the topic of letting go constantly arises.
Among many verses on letting go, verse 44 packs quite a punch:
One’s own reputation—why the fuss?
One’s own wealth—why the concern?
I say, what you gain
is more trouble than what you lose
Therefore, a huge part of authentic spiritual growth is the capacity to be not only accepting of letting go, but actually preferring it to “gaining more.” The desire to accumulate is from the ego, but the desire to surrender and be free is from the soul.
11. You have more capacity to be discerning
Spiritual growth is not just about experiencing love, bliss, and expansion – although that is part of it. As we deepen and mature, spiritual growth is also about the capacity to think clearly and distinguish truth from falsehood. This ability to use the mind like a sword is what is known as spiritual discernment.
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12. You can access more moments of ‘ordinary magic’
While it’s normal at the beginning of the spiritual journey to want glitz, glamor, and exciting sparkly experiences, the more we grow, the more we recognize the beauty of what is already here, right now. This ordinary magic can be accessed whenever we are present, grounded in the Now, and connected with the heart and soul.
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Keep in mind that the above list isn’t exhaustive. Furthermore, you don’t need to check every single box to be experiencing spiritual growth. Recognizing yourself in even just one of the above points signifies that you are indeed experiencing transformation instead of stagnation.
I hope this article has been of help to you. If you think I’ve missed out on any points, I’d love for you to share them with me below in the comments!
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I would like to share it with everybody nowadays! People in 2020 are literally arguing in the internet who is more awakened and who sees the better through, they very often see „seeing the through” as finding out conspiracies not feeling your true essence- what is totally unrelated.
Why is this happening niw to this extend? Did it become fashionable to grow spiritually?
As most of them have mentioned – I find myself in the traps mentioned above. Never have I felt superior about anything or anybody .Never have I felt others inferior. Yes, the 12 traps perfectly fits some one who has awakened not until recently. Most of the time, a book or a writing shows us where we need to head or go. For the first time, I am seeing someone tell us where one might get trapped & to me this is most important. Life is never taught , life has to be lived and experienced to appreciate and understand. Though I thought and kept telling myself ” my ego can never be hurt” after reading the 12 traps – I found it had been and it has been. And now I have a check on it with Your writings etched in my mind. There is nothing complex about Your writing, but it beautifully tells us how one can make life and understanding of spiritual awakening complex. God Bless You.
Well I’ve been using spiritual bypassing as a means to escape reality and it’s caused more pain than anything else. Due to my anxiety and fear of going to hell I clinged to my old religious beliefs. This article opened my eyes to my own mistakes
I don’t know how to respond to this one. I have been all these things and maybe I still am.
All I can say is that these too are words and will unfortunately not stop me from being who I am.
For example, you say that everything is transient. This very popular saying doesn’t work for me because I know for a fact some things are eternal – and we must not let the transience of some things override our perception of the eternity of others. The data changes. The Logic does not.
And Logic dictates that I must shut up here.
I feel another trap is powerlessness and an incapacity of creating or contributing to global change because of fear. A good portion of spiritualists know that we are evolving and will continue to elevate ourselves therefore elevate others. However most people SETTLE, they say this is life, we can’t change the economy, and this is FALSE. The economy is a fairly new idea, a Darwinist related mentality created by one man or a group of men and attached and FORCED down other peoples life. So then this is how spiritualism becomes weak, because there seems to be an error (code 404) in the minds of Modern “Spiritualists” that is incapable of recognizing historically proven facts about how modern economics came to be, therefore financially speaking, their financial IQ is very very low. So they settle. They copy the economic world. HOWEVER. There are those thankfully whom understand that there is power in knowledge and ancient wisdom, they understand how to work with the modern economy WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY working to build and contribute to a freer world. Yes. Everyone has their own process, yet one must NEVER ignore their hearts truth, it is abhorred by the soul. Thanks for the article.… Read more »
This is such a wealth of helpful information, boiled down to its essence. I appreciate the straightforward manner in which you’ve delivered it. Also, I enjoyed seeing a Trungpa quote start it all – so appropriate. Great job. It’s been great to stumble onto your website. Perfect timing for me.
I feel I have cycled through every one of these in the past several years and kind of see this now and so where does that leave me? If I am not in one of these traps, each of which felt so real at the time, then where am I? I feel a little all over the map at this time. A lot of excellent wisdom on this website. Thank you. I am embarking on the Shadow Work journal and hope I am not just make it into a distraction from chopping wood and carrying water.
Kindest regards & Happy 4th as we celebrate here in the US, in spite of everything…
Stumbled across your site and love it! Thank you for the great work you are doing together. I wish you every success.
You a truly wonderful souls for offering all you do to those of us that can not afford the cost that most charge for the knowledge shared. When I become wealthy, I am so going to remember you. Thank you from the center of my heart
seems to me everything becomes a trap and if we only use a small space of our minds we can easily if not always get caught up in the traps. Lots of things to be aware of so little area to keep aware of it all. Overthinking over self awareness and such and the slipping without even knowing it.
Have to make our minds bigger to encompass all !