Spiritual advancement

"When we speak of advancement, we speak of advancement in Knowledge and Wisdom."

"True spiritual advancement is the result of a growing desire and capacity to experience Knowledge within yourself and compassion, affinity and purpose in your relationships."

"Advancement here means that the time between seeing, knowing and acting is diminished."

"Your understanding of the world and all things in the world will change as you advance in The Way of Knowledge. Certainly your understanding of yourself—your needs, your purpose and your direction—will change as you progress. This will give you a different perspective and a growing perspective as you proceed."

Directives

"You must advance. Without advancement, there is no real understanding. All understanding in place of advancement is only a form of false self-assurance. It has no meaning or foundation."

"Those who advance in The Way of Knowledge must be advancing in their maturity and understanding. Yet those who cannot or will not advance are doing so for personal reasons. Be aware and be careful with them."

"The ones who will succeed are the ones who focus on their preparation and allow the course of their life to unfold without determining its result and without determining what it will look like, how it will be and so forth. Here you must develop a great and growing faith in yourself, in the beneficence of those people who assist you, in the Unseen Ones who guide you and help you and in the power and presence of Knowledge within you. Without this trust, you cannot begin, and you will not be able to proceed. However, because these are living realities for you, you can proceed and you must proceed. But you must leave your need for self-assertion and self-validation behind."

Stages in spiritual advancement

"An advanced student of Knowledge is learning new things while a beginning student is unlearning things primarily."

"Beginning students always think that they are on the verge of accomplishment. Intermediate students think they are on the verge of mastery. Advanced students realize they are on the verge of simply learning the next step."

Requirements for spiritual advancement

"For anyone to advance requires meaningful involvement with many other people."

"You will need Life Force to progress, to advance and to carry on your preparation and your contribution."

"All that we speak of in the Books of Knowledge represent a mystery and a great opportunity for you, but they are not easily accessible. You must study and prepare, and you must pass certain tests in life. You must demonstrate your sincerity, your humility and your self-honesty in order to advance and to gain access to the greater powers that we speak of, which are meant for you."

Consequences of spiritual advancement

"Your errors become more costly as you become more advanced, and you will need to be more guarded against them."

"Humility, honesty, openness, discernment, restraint, discretion, tolerance and compassion—these are qualities that result from preparation and advancement in The Way of Knowledge."

"You will see yourself going in a different direction from everyone else. You will see yourself valuing experience more than ideas, insight more than assumptions, patience more than acquisition and affinity more than possessions. You will travel a different path, and the discrepancy between your growing understanding and the assumptions of your nation, of your culture, of your group and even of your family will become greater and greater."

"Most of the miseries that confound and imprison the human mind are escaped as one advances in The Way of Knowledge, but not all suffering is escaped. Life continues to be difficult and problematic. Your body has its aches and pains. Your mind has its problems and troubling thoughts, feelings and experience, but they do not dominate your attention now, and as you advance they cannot hold you back or limit your experience."

"When you leave this world, if you are successful in cultivating Knowledge and in allowing it to give all of its gifts into the world, you will then be able to become one of the Teachers of those who remain behind."

The universal potential for spiritual advancement

"All beings everywhere have the possibility for advancement towards reunion in complete harmony with life itself."

Impediments to spiritual advancement

"The impatient, the ambitious, the zealous and the fanatical cannot travel this way, for they cannot abide with a greater journey. They cannot be without definitions or explanations because they are too unstable to do so."

Spirituality beyond this or any one world

"In the Greater Community, those who have advanced have realized the nature and purpose of God in their respective worlds, but their understanding has gone beyond the comprehension of God’s Will in specific matters, even beyond the concern for the well-being and survival of their race. They have gone beyond these concerns to a greater spirituality, a Greater Community Spirituality—a spirituality of all time and all worlds, a spirituality that is mysterious, that is not defined and embodied in rituals, ideals, beliefs, historical accounts or fantastic images, a spirituality that can be completely translated from one being to another with words or gestures, or without words or gestures."

Metaphor for spiritual advancement

"You have come into the world from a small learning group. You are learning for yourself and for your group. You are contributing in the world for your own advancement and for the advancement of your group. Your group will evolve to join with other groups, and like rivers and streams joining together on their way to the sea, you will experience greater and greater union as you advance together."

See also

Metaphors for the journey of the individual

Metaphors for vantage point

Pitfalls along the Way

Spiritual Family

The Greater Plan

Verication

Further study

• Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 10: How do you prepare?

• Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 14: What must be avoided?

• Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 15: Who serves humanity?

• Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 17: How does revelation occur in human life?

• Relationships and Higher Purpose, Chapter 9: Stages of Development