Spiritual Growth Overview
What It Means and How It Unfolds
What Is Spiritual Growth?
Spiritual growth is the process of becoming more fully who you actually are. Not the acquisition of beliefs or practices, but a genuine inner shift ~ expanding awareness, deepening self-understanding, and developing a more conscious relationship with life. It is a lifelong process, not a destination, and it unfolds differently for every person.
Signs of Spiritual Growth discusses the observable patterns you can recognize, as well as that spiritual growth is not about being perfect, linear, a competition, nor a belief in a single doctrine.
Waith, who channels through Mushiba, has a focus on Spiritual Growth through all of his teachings. In his discussion in the Search for Self he states that Spiritual Growth is meant to bring a greater understanding of the fine balance between the abstract (spiritual) and the concrete (physical) and finding our own answers within Self.
Examples of Spiritual Growth
Spiritual growth shows up most clearly in the quiet changes of daily life:
- Responding to conflict with calm rather than reacting.
- Developing a genuine capacity for forgiveness ~ of others and of oneself.
- Releasing the need for external validation.
- Less attachment to ego and to outcomes.
- Becoming more honest, with oneself first.
- Meeting uncertainty and loss with greater equanimity.
Why Spiritual Growth Matters
The quality of a person's inner life shapes everything else ~ relationships, decisions, sense of meaning, and capacity to meet difficulty. Spiritual growth also addresses the questions that external achievement cannot answer: Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? How do I meet suffering and mortality honestly? These are the questions people eventually face, and spiritual growth is the process of learning to live with how growth gradually changes your daily experiences.
Waith recognizes that spiritual growth helps us acknowledge that we are all living as spiritual beings in a physical world (balancing the abstract and the concrete).
The Spiritual Journey
The Spiritual Journey moves in cycles, not a straight line ~ expansion and consolidation, clarity and renewed confusion. It typically begins with an awakening catalyzed by loss, longing, or unexpected insight, followed by sustained inner work and gradual transformation. The Self that begins the journey is not the Self that continues it. And while teachers and traditions can offer support, the path is interior and must be walked by each person alone.
Signs You Are Growing Spiritually
- Response to difficulty ~ quicker recovery, proportional response.
- Relationships ~ curious, honest, genuinely caring.
- Inner state ~ stable, content, less ego-driven.
- View of others ~ humanized, valued, served.
The Stages of Spiritual Growth
While Stages of Spiritual Growth are given by many different sources (see below for two), they have a common theme: they are indicators of a direction, not a destination, and are not strictly sequential. A person may move through them in different orders or experience several at once.
Waith has given a Stage of Spiritual Growth that he names the Guidelines for Growth ~ and which are consistent with his teaching that you need not master one step before the next:
- Respect Self
- Love Self
- Respect Others
- Love Others
- Be of Service to Self
- Be of Service to Others
- Be Joyful
- Be Serious
- Be Single of Purpose
- Be Unified in Purpose
Another Stage of Spiritual Growth can be found in the document Understanding the Stages of Spiritual Growth:
- Awakening
- Seeking
- Deepening
- The Dark Night
- Integration
- Maturity
How to Grow Spiritually
How to Grow Spiritually also has many different forms, as does Stages of Spiritual Growth. Below is one such guidance:
Define ~ Locate ~ Identify ~ Recognize ~ Distinguish ~ Reframe ~ Refuse ~ Continue
The Guidelines for Growth, as given by Waith, can also be seen as a framework for how to grow spiritually and is detailed in his document the Search for Self.
Spiritual Growth and the Teachings of Terra Lux
The Community of Terra Lux is built around the teachings of Waith, an Archangel communicating through the channel Mushiba since 1987. Waith's central teaching ~ the Search for Self ~ frames spiritual growth as a deeply personal process of Gaining Self Awareness: coming to know who Self actually is, beneath the layers of conditioning and circumstance.
A defining feature of Waith's approach is its emphasis on self-sufficiency. His teachings consistently direct people inward ~ toward their own knowing, their own authority, their own direct experience. The teachings illuminate the path ~ the walking of the path belongs entirely to the individual. Terra Lux makes nearly four decades of Waith's teachings available at terralux.org.