As confusion and business gave way to peace and quiet,
I become like the mighty oak before me --
still and steadfast with a strong foundation rooted in truth.
Only an occasional leaf blown by the winds of change,
my essence is pure and infinite.

–Bill Duffin

Rapid Spiritual Growth

It is common for those of us in the Western world to mark spiritual evolution in linear time. Celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, and even the birth of spiritual masters, like Jesus or Guatama or Mohammed, are signified by a date on the calendar. This is reflective of man’s stage of development as a thinker, a creator. There is an opening of consciousness that is moving us beyond physical achievement into the realm of ethereal substance, the domain of meaning that is reflective of vertical time.

In a linear fashion, each birthday signifies physical growth often accompanied by privileges like operating a moving vehicle or casting a vote for governmental leadership. Each anniversary marks the passage of time shared by two people who love each other or invested by someone in his life’s work. Beyond marking time, annual dates are a measure for experience in our world. How many people, places, events occur between the time a child is born and the time of his third birthday? How many circumstances populate the lives of a couple celebrating their fiftieth anniversary?

In an even deeper, vertical sense these special dates mark the growth and expansion of a person’s consciousness; the development of intelligence, mastery of knowledge, level of responsibility, are not determined by the physical passing of time. Rather they are reflected in it. The rapid growth witnessed by new parents in the first few years of life seems to decline after those first few years. By the end of the second decade physical maturity is for the most part complete and by the third decade growth becomes a chain reaction to the physical situations in our lives.

Every parent knows well the “I can’t wait until....” excitement of youth. Do we lose that impulse for rapid growth, that inner urge that expresses as courageous curiosity or do we lose connection to it and thus our ability to fan the flame of spiritual purification?

I believe the impulse for rapid spiritual growth exists in every human being. I believe it is stronger today than it has ever been before. We are older souls, ripened through countless incarnations, wiser far beyond the physical years indicated in this lifetime. As a result of mental and physical genetics, we are closer to our own sense of wholeness than we have ever been before, more mature in our capacity to reason, more open to our intuitive potential.

When we look at children, others, ourselves, as physical beings only we miss the impulse and blossoming of the real growth we are here to accomplish. Awareness of what we are here to give also passes us by.

The celebrations associated with rites of passage are more than personal achievements, they connect us with all of our kind, all of humankind. Birth, family, work, marriage, children, death are universal experiences for physical man. The realization of sharing experiences that your parents had before you, that your neighbor will have next year, that a stranger half way around the world is also having at this very moment, commands an opening of the mind. It nourishes your mind, quenching the thirst for understanding. This is what changes you.

Throughout the past 50 or so millennia the human species has refined and developed the capacity for reason. The rewards of this effort have been encoded and passed on to each successive generation, scientifically, physically in the genetic structure, spiritually, etherically in the mind pattern. Man’s development of memory and imagination are unparalled in any other life form on this planet. Man is as Shakespeare noted half a millennia ago “the paragon of animals.” The time is quickly arriving when this animal-man that we have become will evolve into what we describe as spiritual-man. Individually we quicken our personal evolution by cultivating understanding in every form - cooperation, respect, love, freedom, responsibility, courage, persistence, loyalty, and so forth. Each day. No longer do we wait for a date to bring a reward or permission for reflection and prediction. Well-intentioned action becomes its own reward every moment, lending itself well to drawing upon the best from yesterday and dreaming the greatest for tomorrow. Spiritual truth becomes much more than something to consider once a week on Holy day. Spiritual truth becomes the tenets by which you measure every thought and deed. When this is your reality you can call yourself Spiritual Man.

When 25th century man looks back at the years we are now living, I am certain that it is this transition in consciousness - animal-man sacrificing himself to spiritual-man - that will be remembered and exalted. This time which we are now living will indeed be seen as the birth of a golden age, an age of realizing what is truly of value.

And the beginning of embodying value, living it, as never before seen on Earth.