Shangra-la,

Tree of Life

"Love is the Key"

When you first start your spiritual journey you are as a leaf on a tree. Each individual represents one of the leaves. At a lower state of spiritual awareness, we think that all the leaves are separate. As we grow in soul maturity, we start to understand that love permeates us from some greater source, but we might not understand that greater source and the connection between us.

As you increase your understanding, you see that you are not alone on your branch, but there are a number of leaves on the same branch. As we go deeper, we see the family connections or religious connections with other souls. Each branch on the tree could be said to represent a religion.

Most people see themselves as separated from the members of other religions and see no connection between the religions. As you increase your awareness, you realize that the sap that feeds your branch must come from somewhere. And as you look deeper, you see that your branch is connected to the same trunk that upholds all the other branches on the tree.

When you reach the highest level of understanding, you become aware of the roots and you begin to see that the roots feed all of the branches and all of the leaves. What feeds the branches is the sap that runs from the roots up to the farthest leaf–and that sap is love. That is why "love is the key" to increasing your spiritual awareness and obtaining oneness with your spiritual source. You have to follow the flow of love back to its source.

The Four Stages of Spiritual Awareness

First Stage - Greater Awareness to your Spiritual Connection

The first step in spiritual awareness is to realize that you are not alone, that you are connected to something greater than yourself. It takes love to let go of the sense of aloneness and to explore this sense of connection.

The goal of all religions is to help you change your state of mind and attain this greater awareness. It takes love to be willing to let go of the old state of mind so that you can transcend its limitations and rise to a higher understanding and awareness. Your spiritual growth accelerates when you develop enough love that you have a positive motivation for your involvement with religion.

In order to have the desire and will to transcend the human state and the limitations of the lower mind with its sense of separation, you must have something greater inside yourself to impel you, and that something is "love". All forces of the lower state of mind are anti-love and it takes love to overcome the anti-love consciousness which is ultimately based on fear. Thus, the key to beginning your spiritual growth is to move away from the fear-based mentality and to approach religion through love.

Second Stage - Awareness of what Opposes your Spiritual Connection

Once you have sufficient love to see your greater connection to other parts of life, you begin to realize that there is opposition to this understanding of being connected. There is a magnetic pull that makes it difficult to let go of the lower state of mind and accept higher truths.

You begin to see that the forces of fear and anti-love exist within and without yourself. You start to recognize that this opposing force exists and needs to be overcome, or it will continue to pull you down.

The key to higher consciousness is to love the light more than this darkness within and without. The lower state consists of poisons that infect or darken the consciousness and prevent right action.

Knowledge and illumination (light) help you overcome the darkness or poisons that keep you tied to the lower state of consciousness.

After recognizing, through knowledge and higher truths, that there is a human consciousness consisting of poisons (i.e. selfishness, fear, anger, pride, greed, etc.) versus a higher consciousness or divine consciousness (i.e. love, joy, compassion, hope, courage, etc.), you must turn to what spiritual tools are available in your religion.

These tools will give you the strength and ability to overcome the poisons. The driving force to use the tools that each religion gives is love of something greater than the lower state of consciousness.

Third Stage - Discovering Who you Are

After you have increased your awareness of the forces that work against your spiritual growth and have used the spiritual tools to free yourself from their influence, you begin to gain a deeper understanding of the spiritual path.

When you attain greater awareness of truth, religion helps you discover who you really are. You discover that you have been a spiritual being from the beginning. Your true identity was hidden by the entanglements with the lower self or consciousness.

As you discover your spiritual identity, your capability for love increases and that love seeks to find and understand itself better in the greater scheme of life. Your beliefs are expanded, and you understand where you came from, your roots or divine origin. Life begins to take on a new meaning and your love seeks to express itself and break out of the limitations of self.

Fourth Stage - Transcendence to the Inner Way

In the process of expressing yourself, you choose the higher way of selflessness, sacrifice and the willingness to serve and surrender to a greater, or higher, will. You now discover that following an outer religion isn't enough to get you to the next step.

You discover that there is another path besides the path you have been taking. There is an inner path that was always there, and it transcends all outer rules and religious dogma. The outer religious path that has helped you heretofore, which was created by man to provide a secure and comfortable framework for spiritual growth, becomes a hindrance to complete union with your divine source.

It takes a higher commitment of love to leave the security and comfortability of the outer path in order to discover what the inner path is all about. In order to let go of the comfortability of the outer rules and discover the inner "way", you need to begin to trust the inner guidance (the inner man of the heart) that various religions call intuition, the Higher Self, the I AM Presence, the Atman or the Self. This is called development of the soul faculties and through love and trust and the will to Be you begin the path of spiritual being, which is expressing all that you are.

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