The stages of spiritual life: how your spiritual life grows

"How can I grow spiritually?" "Can I know where I am on the spiritual path?" "Is there a way for me to be more intentional about my spiritual life?" These are the kinds of questions people often ask me when we sit down together. And if they don't ask them exactly, these are the questions that hide within the other questions and struggles they bring into the counseling conversation.

The short answer is, yes, you can grow spiritually. Yes, you can have some understanding of where you may be on the path. And yes, there is a way for you to be more intentional about your spiritual life. What's more, doing so is rewarding. We are spiritual beings, made by God, breathed into life by God, and we were made to experience the joy, peace and meaning of union with Jesus Christ in the Spirit.

Church leaders often talk about growing the church, but when they do they usually look at age stages or social categories and how each stage and category requires certain programs. They program for young people, families, singles, middle-aged and older adults. But while age stages and social categories are helpful for developing certain kinds of programs, they are not the most helpful ways to think about spiritual growth for people. A person can be young but quite spiritually advanced. An older person can be newly awakened to the life of the Spirit and relatively immature spiritually.  If we think of spiritual growth in only age-stages or social categories we can get stuck, living a more superficial spiritual lives than we were intended to live.

Over the next few weeks, my posts will explore the time-tested stages of spiritual growth and how understanding them will help you grow into "maturity, the measure of the full stature of Christ" (Ephesians 4.13).

These stages are informed by spiritual teachers as diverse as St. John Climacus and the Fathers of the ancient church, the Cloud of Unknowing in the Middle Ages, St. Teresa of Avila in the Renaissance, more recently the observations of Ken Wilber, a contemporary philosopher.  The six stage framework is drawn from contemporary writers Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich (who was my New Testament professor years ago).

To grow in prayer, get this simple book

If I could keep with me only two books and a journal, this book would be one of the books. As far as I'm concerned it's the most important book (and among the most influential) on Christian prayer in the last two millennia. We don't know the author's name, but only that he was a British monk, living in the fourteenth century. The Cloud of Unknowing is a personal letter written to a young person seeking fulfillment in Christ through prayer. The author's lesser known companion essay, The Book of Privy Counsel, is a follow up letter to the young disciple, providing simple yet profound instruction for the life of contemplative prayer.

Carmen Acevado Butcher's new translation is a gem. She draws the earthy language of the fourteenth century into the idiom of our own. You'll feel like the monk is speaking directly to you.

Why being contemplative is the opposite of being escapist

Contemplative prayer may sound a bit escapist or even elitist. It’s not. Far from it. The word itself is comes from the Latin, contemplatio, which refers to “the act of looking deeply”. The word is made up of two Latin roots, con-, which means “with” or “together”, and -tempore, which refers to the “moment”. So contemplative prayer is prayer that, in its most basic form, is rooted deeply in the present—in daily, ordinary life . . . nothing elitist or escapist at all.

Instead, it aims to bring all of you “together with” all that’s happening in the “moment.”

And when you’re all here—all now—then you’re present to all of God and God is present to all of you.

Auditing Your Use of Time: A Spiritual Practice

Awareness is about being where you are, not some place else. Trouble is, most of us live mostly in our heads, absorbed in our thought-life and the emotions our thoughts trigger. But the truth is, what’s going on in our heads is mostly fiction most of the time. What you’re thinking maybe about a real event yesterday or one that’ll come your way tomorrow, but right now, the thought is only a thought. It’s not real . . . not really. So, take a guess: how much time do you think you spend fantasizing about life and not living it? So, how do you increase your awareness and the pleasure that comes from it?

Click here for a link to a concrete exercise for practicing awareness: Auditing Your Time: A Spiritual Practice

Living with a higher degree of pleasure

Dear brave soul; What I've been talking about might sound contradictory—“How can I be present to this moment when I’m thinking about the future?” But give it some time and practice. You’ll learn that it’s possible to plan a birthday party for a loved one or bury your head in a history book and do it all with a high degree of awareness or presence.

You’ll also learn that doing so can bring you a higher degree of pleasure than you’ve known before. What’s more, you’ll learn to let go of planning the party when you’re driving your car or sitting in a meeting at work or having dinner with someone you love.

You’ll become skillful, better able to concentrate your energy on the person or task right in front of you. You’ll learn how to intentionally forget other tasks that nag at you, and you’ll be more able to resist the temptation to multitask (which only scatters your energies).

Let’s be honest, multitasking is a spiritual treadmill; you waste a lot of energy trying to get where you want to go.

Be here, now . . . even when making plans for the future.

May you walk in the Way today.