Let’s look at the concept of “Spiritual Development.” It’s very popular in the world right now, yet at the same time, there are many myths and misconceptions surrounding it. In this article, we’ll examine the 3 main myths about spiritual development and what spiritual life really is.
Knowing this truly helps a person expand, grow, and move forward.
Misconception #1: Separating Spiritual Development from the Rest of Your Life
Separating spiritual development from the rest of your life. Thinking that spiritual development is some distinct part of life—esoterics, or certain meditations, or some external practices.
Many people generally believe that spiritual development is just one part of life. Even those who consider themselves part of the spiritual development sphere often say you need to find a balance between the spiritual and the material, and they see human development in the following way:
- There’s a person who goes to the gym.
- A person who goes to work.
- The same person at home with their family.
- They have hobbies or personal pursuits.
- And then, separately, there is “spiritual life.”
Someone might say: “So, I spent 2 hours at the gym, 8 hours at work, and 5 hours a week on spiritual development, which means I’m developing spiritually.”
Or, for example, someone says: “I’ve meditated for 20,000 hours, so I’m spiritually developing. I’ve gone to 48 retreats, so I’m spiritually developing. I’ve attended a huge number of different programs, trainings, coaching sessions, family constellations, practices, getaways, and energy sessions. I’ve taken all sorts of supplements or substances. Of course I’m developing spiritually because I do all these things.”
But in reality, this person is in a state where they separate their spiritual life from the rest of their life. Essentially, they’ve divided their life into segments.
- Therefore, if I go to the gym, that is part of human life, part of my life, and certainly part of my spiritual life, because life is spiritual.
- If I spend time at home with my family, that is part of my spiritual life. If I take care of my health, that is part of my spiritual life.
- If I read books, that’s part of my spiritual life.
- If I go to work, that’s part of my spiritual life. If I start a business, that’s part of my spiritual life. If I go on a trip, that’s part of my spiritual life—regardless of whether it’s a family vacation or some kind of separate practice. The question is how you’re living that life.
When you look at it in this light, it becomes clear that spiritual development is happening constantly.
Here, by “development” I mean true, genuine development that leads a person to expand, as well as “development” that leads a person to degradation.
It’s a major mistake to assume that going on a retreat once a year will make everything super-great in terms of spiritual development.
Meanwhile, every day you’re living in anger, anxiety, placing demands on other people, seeking control over them, mocking, judging, gossiping, clinging to countless illusions, and wanting to seize things.
Then suddenly—poof—you drop out of life for a week, spend it meditating, and everything’s all good. It doesn’t work that way and never will under any circumstances.
Strictly speaking, it works in terms of ordinary human life. In reality, it’s spiritual degradation because it’s life degradation from a human perspective. The person doesn’t understand the true cause-and-effect relationships that really lie beneath the surface and are truly happening. They don’t know what actually causes events in their life, what genuinely develops them, and what leads them to decline.
It’s a very powerful misconception.
Simply recognizing and observing the fact that life is spiritual—even that is an incredible force for a person’s development. It greatly helps a person grow. Just the mere recognition of it. You can spend five minutes every day paying attention to this, even if you don’t believe it, even if you doubt it. But if you have any desire at all to move forward and genuinely develop, bring this into your awareness. Not by studying “what is spiritual life” as if it were separate, but by recognizing that your entire life is spiritual, that the foundation of your life is spiritual, and that you are a spiritual being. You’re not just a material aspect that appeared in this world. You’re not just a physical body. You’re a fully-fledged spiritual being.
People believe that a person is a physical body and then say that when they die, they become an angel. Why does that happen? What’s going on in that person’s head? You are already a spiritual being.
Misconception #2: Believing Spiritual Development Is Always Positive
The second misconception is assuming that spiritual development is always positive. In fact, we understand perfectly well that if spiritual development is a person’s life, then obviously in a person’s life there can be different events, both positive and negative.
And there are events that really do move someone forward and lead to expansion (what I mean by “expanding one’s scope”), as well as events that “develop” them in a way that leads to decline.
A huge number of practices, techniques, and everything labeled “spiritual development” can lead to a person’s decline. They do everything possible to steer a person away from genuine freedom, from being truly free, from true expansion, from a sense of beauty, love, kindness, and joy. And not just joy in having earned 10 times more money, but joy in absolutely any event that happens. Whether a person is hanging wallpaper, hammering nails, leading a meeting of a thousand people—it doesn’t matter. Seeing your child or someone else’s child can bring you a state of joy in life, in the life you currently have.
There’s an enormous number of books offered, an enormous number of suggested actions. Note that I’m not saying any particular action is wrong. I’m pointing out that many things under the heading of spiritual development actually lead to decline, lead to falsehood. True spiritual development, the kind that expands and truly develops a person, is the kind that follows the laws of the universe and truth.
- People want to know: “Okay, Alexander, so what is genuine development then? And what are the truly authentic actions? Authentic. How do we determine if an action is genuine or not? How do we tell if it’s real or not?”
- And at this point, once again, I suggest the following: it’s not so much about having learned how to identify truth or untruth in an action. Rather, it’s about the fact that you’re trying to study it and find out. If you don’t know, at least remain open to doubt. You will encounter situations where you’re very clearly, absolutely, and unambiguously 100% sure that a certain action is genuine and authentic. For instance, I know that a genuine action is one guided by values and that doesn’t deceive others.
A genuine action is when you want to bring benefit to other people, not harm.
A genuine action is when you truly see other people as people, not just as objects for your own gain.
And some things are questionable. Suppose you’re unsure whether a person is a spiritual being—though in reality it’s hard to even question that. But let’s say you do have doubts, as most people in the 21st century do. At least don’t deny it outright; keep it under observation.
Observe it and consider how various events unfold—are they really confined solely to aspects of the physical world? Even if you view life as partly spiritual, then identify where you draw the line for that spiritual life.
It’s like the gym. You’ve decided there’s this gym part of your life. Similarly, you set boundaries for spiritual life based on some factors and aspects. Then figure out where exactly it begins or ends. But can you really define those boundaries? For instance, why is it that some mornings you wake up in a lousy state of mind? In the gym, you could say, “I added too much weight, I did too many exercises, I miscalculated.” How do you explain waking up feeling bad, or suddenly experiencing negative emotions or apathy during the day? Or why does someone else say they’re always in a state of love, while you’re in a state of anxiety?
This is an excellent area for observation, and it clearly highlights this second misconception—that spiritual development only leads to positive things. It does not.
Misconception #3: The Existence of a “Point B” in Spiritual Development
Let’s move on to the next misconception, which is the idea that a person believes there is a final “Point B” in spiritual development. Basically, they assume there’s a certain state where they are now…
Often someone will say, “You’re not doing anything spiritual at all, you’re not developing, you’re at zero.” And then there’s some future state where they say, “I’ve reached the final stage of spiritual development.” This is absurd and surreal.
Every person is always in a state of spiritual development. Absolutely everyone—me, him, her, you who are reading this.
At this point, you might say, “Well, look, from the standpoint of spiritual development, I’ve spent all these hours in meditation and practice, I’ve gone on retreats every year. Look at Petya, look at Masha—they’ve never done anything like that in their entire lives. They don’t even know those terms.”
But here’s the thing: judging someone’s spiritual development based on how many socially-spiritual activities they’ve done (what society labels as spiritual) is a complete illusion. Because that Masha might truly have no knowledge of fancy terms, no idea about energy centers or chakras, no understanding of spiritual hierarchies, etc.
Yet that person could be genuinely advanced in how they treat others. They might be on a completely different plane of spiritual development—living in kindness, calmness, love—rather than doing an endless series of tasks in order to label themselves “spiritually developed.”
That’s one side of it—there is no zero.
The other side is that we should stop trying to compare ourselves or be certain we know how to measure people’s spiritual development.
In essence, there are no criteria or concepts for comparing people’s levels of spiritual development. That’s an illusion. In the context of a person’s life, their spiritual being, and their spiritual development, there’s no truth in trying to rank people by importance or unimportance, significance or insignificance, higher or lower levels of spiritual development. It just doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion of social norms, a construct of the social world. Never do that—don’t allow yourself to. It’s a massive manipulation that wildly inflates your ego.
You have to stop comparing yourself in terms of feeling superior or inferior to others, and it’s important to pay attention to this. It will help you see that there are no levels, that the essence isn’t about levels of spiritual development—there are no levels, no medals, awards, rankings, or ratings.
There’s no scenario where you walk in and say, “Okay, I’m done, I’ve achieved it all.” Because if you had truly finished your spiritual development, you would become an absolutely blissful, incredible being—you wouldn’t even ask the question; you would dissolve. You wouldn’t be living. You definitely wouldn’t be living as a human being. In fact, you wouldn’t be living at all. Because any spiritual being in the universe, in all worlds, is living in a process of motion and development. There’s no final endpoint. The final endpoint is death, dissolution, disappearance—but that doesn’t exist; it simply doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion.
What to Do About All This? Maybe You Want a Quick Fix?
You need to keep these points in mind—simply hold them in your awareness all the time. You need to treat them like an axiom, like “one plus one equals two.” State it to yourself as an axiom. There are certain things that are very clear, precise, and definite, and this is something you simply need to know. You just need to know it.
- There are a huge number of organs in my body that I’ve never seen in my entire life. I don’t know if I really have them or not. I don’t know if I have a heart, kidneys, a liver, intestines. People tell me I have them, but I’ve never seen them. I haven’t dissected myself. I haven’t seen them. Sure, someone may have done an ultrasound—some image with all sorts of stuff there. There isn’t a camera or photograph that so easily shows me everything. I don’t know all of it.
If we look at it in a simple descriptive way, from a purely material standpoint (not from the perspective of “I sense my organs” but purely materialistic), then I don’t know my blood is moving in my body. Who even said so? Who said that’s happening? I don’t actually know it. But because I was told about it, I can observe and study it. And that’s what you need to do with these three misconceptions—observe and study them.
The problem is that someone told a person their blood circulates, and then they just forgot about it and stopped paying attention or studying it. They’re deeply convinced it’s true but don’t explore it. I’m suggesting you not blindly believe, but observe it and study it. In the same way, study how blood flows, how the nervous system works, how bone tissue is structured. Understand the difference that the blood you see when you prick your finger is not the same blood that’s moving inside you; it’s something else.
You see a different thing, not what’s inside you. You even see a different color. It’s not the same color that’s within you. Who would have told you that’s actually inside you? Some might say it changed color once it emerged, but we both know many things change color when exposed to different environments. Moreover, blood outside the body is no longer “living.” It’s not alive.