6 Signs That You’re Reaching Spiritual Maturity
TRANSLATE BUTTON AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE
In our culture, we have a fairly two-dimensional notion of adulthood.
Most people describe it as the collection of experiences that occur as a result of the aging process.
But this isn’t entirely correct.
The fact is that maturity has nothing to do with our exterior experiences and everything to do with how we perceive the world on the inside.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a lot of trials and hardships in your life.
If you weren’t paying attention to what was going on and how it could help you learn and grow, you didn’t learn or grow at all from your experiences.
While we have no control over aging, we do have some influence on our capacity to develop.
Maturity is something that comes with deliberate purpose; it grows as we become more conscious.
It’s also not how “knowledgeable” or “clever” we are, since knowledge is a result of prior anxieties, mental patterns, memories, responses, and false self-concepts.
True maturity, on the other hand, means being able to think, feel, and act freely inwardly, and being responsible enough to know how our ideas, emotions, and actions will affect us, others, and the world at large.
True maturity has ramifications in so many aspects of our lives.
I’ll explain more below.
1. Maturity Necessitates Bravery
Maturity entails inner freedom, and freedom is the outcome of bravery—the fortitude to think and act differently.
We live in a world where “maturity” is defined as pursuing jobs or marriage or kids or buying things.
It takes a lot of guts to be truly mature and follow a path with heart and reconnect with our true selves.
2. Maturity is sincerity
Many individuals ignore the reality of who they really are by clinging to ideas, identities, and roles in their lives.
The mature person, in their lifetime quest for self-discovery, sees all the ways in which they fool themselves into a false sense of existence.
Avoiding the shadow aspects of human nature, believing that we have transcended our “lower selves” and are in touch with our “higher selves” (as if our “lower selves” aren’t equally part of our wholeness), and confusing the fearful voices of our core wounds with our intuition are all examples of spiritual immaturity.
3. Maturity is Love
The majority of people’s concept of love is to love just for the sake of receiving affection. “I need you to love me so that I can love you back.” is not a mature approach to love.
To be mature, you must be able to love someone unconditionally, even if they do not love you back, since your own self-love is sufficient.
Love extends the spiritually developed person’s limited concept of self and reconnects them with the divine.
They don’t merely want to be reassured that they are lovable in the eyes of another.
And if the other person is grown enough to love back, in the same manner, the love is amplified.
You’ll frequently come across folks who believe that love is the greatest spiritual form conceivable, which it is.
When you want to feel this kind of love, however, you must first have earned the personal freedom and responsibility that are needed to unconditionally love someone.
4. Maturity in Compassion
Many religions encourage you to do “good” out of obligation via pity and compassion (both of which entail feeling sorry for someone because they are in a position inferior to you), as opposed to empathy, which allows you to experience and understand their sorrow as equals.
Many people are empathetic because of the underlying stimulant and the possibility of “rewards” in the hereafter.
However, this is totally damaging and exemplifies immaturity.
The spiritually developed person does not act out of a duty urge to “do good,” which is polluted with all sorts of unconscious impulses like self-gratification, power, status, and control.
To do any kind of good deed that is mature and altruistic, we need to start from a place of calm and freedom inside ourselves.
5. Maturity Makes Forgiveness Possible
Resentment of others is addicting.
It offers us a false feeling of strength because we believe we are defending ourselves from more harm and are on the “moral high ground.” It deceives us into having an unhealthy feeling of self-importance; “I’ll never forgive you.” “What you did to me was unbelievably cruel.” It’s just another way that our unhappiness and self-pity make us joyful.
True forgiveness, on the other hand, entails accepting responsibility for ourselves and deciding not to excuse or attach ourselves to sentiments of hate and resentment.
We are self-aware enough to see how harmful such weighty emotions are to us and the quality of our lives.
6. Acceptance is a Sign of Maturity
Maturity entails understanding what you can change and accepting what you can’t.
A person who is always at odds with the outside world is imprisoned by their own internal responses.
They are unable to react.
People often ask me how I can be so at peace with the condition of the world; the unfairness, turmoil, and inequity that upsets them to the point of melancholy or makes them feel that their sensitive natures don’t belong in this world.
This is strongly related to the forgiveness I described earlier.
I’m not okay with the world’s unfairness, but I’m also not opposed to it.
But I’m conscious enough to see that change can and never has come from an external system, but rather from an individual’s personal determination.
It’s important that I be able to accept and acknowledge the mess we’re in without resisting it and retreating into my own ideas, without judging it and condemning others so that they become defensive and lose their openness to my message.
When you operate from a position of inner anguish, you can’t fix the world’s chaos.
Acceptance of oneself and acceptance of others is like learning how to flow in a stream without becoming another solid stone at the river’s bottom.
The spiritual awakening process of adulthood is the start of the path of inner flowering; it is the start of the road toward realizing your own potential.
To properly understand that potential, you must understand that you need equal parts of light and earth to be anchored, but also to dance in the breeze.
The Enlightenment Journey is a remarkable collection of writings authored by a distinguished group of experts in the fields of spirituality, new age, and esoteric knowledge.
This anthology features a diverse assembly of well-experienced authors who bring their profound insights and credible perspectives to the forefront.
Each contributor possesses a wealth of knowledge and wisdom, making them authorities in their respective domains.
Together, they offer readers a transformative journey into the realms of spiritual growth, self-discovery, and esoteric enlightenment.
The Enlightenment Journey is a testament to the collective expertise of these luminaries, providing readers with a rich tapestry of ideas and information to illuminate their spiritual path.