Are you a Spiritual Adult? 3 Things that hold you back
By Elinor Svoboda | June 8, 2023
The term Spiritual Adult is something we introduce in our Foundational course, Level 1. We use it to describe the maturity that comes with taking responsibility for your spiritual path, choices and overall wellbeing.
While we all automatically become adults biologically, Spiritual Adulthood can come at any time in life, or not at all!
One thing is for sure, Spiritual Adulthood doesn’t happen overnight. It emerges from the healing journey, where we shore up all the parts of ourselves that are still locked in childlike dynamics. Stunted maturity is often a result of where we were hurt or unsupported as children to develop naturally into our potential.
We become Spiritually Mature when we embody the truth of ourselves, embrace our inner wisdom and step by step, become who we were meant to be.
So while we might all be adults, are you a Spiritual Adult? Here are 3 things that might be holding you back:
1) Placing a parent-role on your connection to the divine.
Some religious traditions will assign parent-like names for the divine force that we connect to through prayer or meditation. While this can nature the feeling of being cared for, it can also create issues if your parental relationships were challenged or not rooted in unconditional love. Let’s be honest, it’s hard for humans to hold unconditional love for another human let alone themselves. Even if you didn’t have a religious upbringing, supplementing a parental figure on your divine relationship can happen without us even realizing it.
This can create an avoidance around reaching for our spiritual connection and bring up issues around worthiness to unconditional love. For example, perhaps you only get to connect if you “follow the rules” or if you are “good”. As we mature to the Spiritual Adult position, we can recognize that it’s our choice to connect and we are accepted no matter what. This is what the word unconditional means!
By all means, bring your inner-child into your meditation or prayer time and shower them with love. Let this force heal the pain that conditional love created. As the Spiritual Adult, you foster a connection to these younger parts of self and parent them to wellness, rather than allowing them to run the show.
2) You compare your spiritual journey to others
A spiritual path is rich with discovery and transformation and it is natural to want to share this with others and to invite them to participate. This invitation is a magical thing and is how many of us find the community and modalities that suit us.
But if there is a lack of spiritual maturity, sometimes the sharing can move into judging others or comparing yourself to them. What I have learned over the course of my two decades as a spiritual student and teacher, is that the spiritual path is the most personal path of all, we can only truly understand our own and that is on the best of days!
Through Spiritual Adulthood you will come to value how each stage of your growth is distinctive as you are. Respecting the free will of others and is a key part of maturity and reflects your personal recognition for your unique path as the seeker.
3) Finding the Courage to Change
If you seek to evolve through a spiritual journey, embracing change is a key part of the process, which we discuss in our post on fostering a sustainable Meditation Practice.
The relationship to change is often where our less mature parts show up. Though we might be consciously ready to change, it doesn’t mean that there won’t be inner resistance that comes up in all sorts of ways.
By fostering our Spiritual Adulthood, we can provide support for those smaller parts of ourselves and thus reap the invaluable growth that comes from the courage to change.
Spiritual Adulthood emerges out of a daily commitment to ourselves and to living an authentic, healthy life. If you are looking for a community who is fostering this maturity for themselves through healing and meditation systems, join us online for our Free Meetup sessions.
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