Reflections on Spiritual Growth - 2018

by Robert Wilkinson

Each year I take an inventory of how I’ve grown since the last Solar Return this time last year. This year I’ve been remembering when I was much younger and had no idea about the spiritual Life I’ve led these past decades, and thought I'd post a few reflections.

I recently offered you a sentence from the Tibetan Master about why we incarnate: "Each incarnation continues the experiment, deepens our experience, and relates the expression more closely to the latent unfolding Divinity." I believe NONE of us can possibly anticipate how much we’ll grow spiritually as a result of our willingness to take the ride and find the truth.

That certainly is the case with the clueless wonder of a young male who incarnated in 1951, moved to the Florida coast in the middle of the Cold War, and was raised with the threat of being nuked within as few as 8 minutes if the Russians launched. Fear pervaded the atmosphere of my early life.

All of the adults wore their fear and fatigue on their faces. Remembering “the gods that walked the Earth” during my parents’ lifetimes helped me to understand they also had been in fear since childhood, and so had their problems coping with life. That led me to realize that most of us are not born to Saints or Sages, and we grow up through what a great one called “main strength and ignorance,” doing the best we can while not having the slightest idea what we’re doing or why.

Though the Eternal Self always peeks around the corner as we are growing up, we are shaped more by the family and cultural matrix, and peer pressures, than we are by Spirit as long as we stay within the confines of that matrix. In my case, even my rebellion was of the 60s, involving a lot of hair and attitude. Still, my Eternal Self seemed to witness me doing all I was doing, a constant presence while my ego mind raced in circles trying to “be right” and “know all there was to know” about “being cool.”

As a teen and young man in his early 20s, I can say that while I wasn’t a bad guy, I was certainly and utterly clueless about anything that mattered in terms of higher awareness and personality growth. Even after being exposed to Astrology, and beginning to study it in earnest, I still didn’t have the slightest idea about higher Awareness or the Eternal Self.

And yet, reflecting on the process which seemed slow at the time, I see that with each step I took into the knowledge of Astrology, my moral character was tested, and with each part of the craft I mastered, a greater seriousness and sense of responsibility also grew. That led to a period of exploring various spiritual Paths, and each one I entered contributed to my overall understanding of the perfection of the Path to Spiritual Adulthood each of us travels throughout many lifetimes.

With each new understanding came new choices about “this and not that.” These purified my life, my habits, my intentions, my relationships, and my understanding that ALL works together to spur us to an ever greater awareness of our Oneness with “All-That-Is,” and our gifts to share with others, both strangers and those who also walk the Path we are on.

Though at times it was difficult to stand for the truths I had found, ultimately with every loss of a person or inner emotional or mental response, new ones presented themselves, each time leading me to responses that turned negative karmic patterns to positive ones. And along the way I found we cannot lose what is really ours, even if we walk away, and we cannot hold on to that which is no longer ours to hold, even if we try to put chains on it.

Despite life’s rough edges that put us through severe tests along the way, the goal is worth the effort. Even though life can seem to be an eternal journey of being alone through a cryptic maze of life experience, I also realized we are never alone even for a second on our journey. That’s how I learned gratitude for the others who I’ve met along the way. We all in fact do "get by with a little help from our friends.”

So in reflection, I am amazed at how this life has led me to a greater awareness, a greater compassion, a greater ability to discriminate between the real and the unreal, and a greater understanding of both darkness and Light. The ignorant, fearful, eager to learn child who went through agonizing experiences with others and life itself eventually came to become a self-aware Spiritual Being doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing.

So take heart if you haven’t found your way, since you ARE finding your way with every breath you take, every thought you think, every good and altruistic feeling you have, and every good aspiration you harbor in your heart. We all are moving from darkness to Light, from ignorance to awareness, and from fear to an ever greater Love. All we have to do is enjoy the journey.

© Copyright 2018 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[JM]

Thank you for sharing this Robert💚

You are a great mentor in this realm!

Happy Solar return⭐️⭐️

[Vince Cobalis]

Robert - I'm glad to know you and travel parts of the"long and windy road" with you. You always provide insightful perspective. May you have many solar returns in your future.
PS - look for a YouTube link in your email tomorrow for small gift.
Vince

[Vetch]

<3 Thank you!
For your footsteps lighten the path for folks like me. =)
(And thus we can, when we practise and sometimes struggle, lighten the path for others, too.)