Stages of Spiritual Growth and Changing Your Relationship with the Trials of Life through Spiritual Growth

Join me on a transformative journey as we navigate the rich landscapes of spiritual development. With each step, we confront the challenges that shape our soul's quest for meaning. Our latest episode takes this intricate expedition and lays it before you, offering a map through the stages of spiritual growth, from the fresh sprout of discovery to the rooted wisdom of the sage. Joined by insights from a recent heart-to-heart with Alex, we weave personal anecdotes with universal truths, providing you with the companion you need for your own spiritual trek and changing how you see the 'trials and tribulations' in your life.

For more information about Rev. Rachel Harrison and Recover Your Soul- visit the website www.recoveryoursoul.net  use the code TRYASESSION for 40% off your first Spiritual Coaching session when you book on the website.  Visit the website for all events and groups to get involved in Soul Recovery and the community.

Soul Recovery Support Group on Zoom -The 1st Monday of the Month, 6PM Mountain Time. This is a drop in support group where we can come together to explore, connect and support each other on our Soul Recovery journey.  Visit the website to register and receive the meeting invite.  Free to attend and donations appreciated.

Join others on the Soul Recovery journey on Monday July 1st from 6-7PM on Zoom for the FREE Soul Recovery Support Group. This month we will be talking about 'Criticism and Judgement.' I will give a brief talk, open for questions and then we will break into small groups.  Register on the website, or if you have already registered- be on the look out the day of the meeting in your inbox for a reminder email.  

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:59

If you've ever felt like life is just one test after another, one difficulty after another. It can be incredibly overwhelming, but once you start your spiritual journey, what you recognize is that it is actually part of your development, that we're learning tools and principles and soul recovery on this spiritual journey that allow us to be present in anything that's happening from a new way of being, that we can walk along this spiritual journey, this path of awakening and understand that there is actually something to the trials and tribulations that will benefit us in the end if we're able to see it from this new perspective. Today's episode is about the stages of spiritual development and then how to allow yourself to be in the difficulty of life what feels like the tests from a more empowered way, a way of strength, learning and curiosity. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 2:13

I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to Recover your Soul. I'm Rev Rachel and I thank you very, very much for choosing to spend your time with me here on this podcast today. I want to just say thank you to everybody who comes week after week and, if you're new to the Soul Recovery Community, welcome to this incredible journey of self-exploration and healing. I know that maybe you walked through the doors, through Al-Anon or codependence, maybe you have an addiction or you know somebody who's an addict. Maybe you just found this by some beautiful, miraculous event. But here you are, walking through the door, thinking that you want to change the outside world, and really what you're about to learn is how to find inner peace, how to use spiritual practices and tools to be okay when the world around you doesn't feel okay. And it's really a profound practice to learn how to regulate yourself, to learn how to use the tools and principles of soul recovery and spirituality to be able to handle life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:47

Life is not easy. We are here as this community and I hope that you come to our support group. That's once a month. That is amazing that we all get together on Zoom and support each other in a mini workshop kind of style, and also just knowing that this podcast is here to support you along your journey. And maybe you're on the Facebook group and you're connecting and posting and getting some sort of inspiration each week. To me, this is community and when I'm speaking, I want you to know that I'm speaking to you. I hope that you hear me reaching out to you wherever you are, offering you inspiration, strength and hope, and I hope that you hear me reaching out to you wherever you are offering you inspiration, strength and hope and this knowing that you are doing this work to find yourself that if I can do it, you can do it. My life is so transformed that these principles I just want to share with everybody.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:39

So for today's episode, what I wanted to come into was going into some reflection around Alex's visit. If you listened to last week's podcast, it was my interview with him and how he's doing and I just loved that conversation with him and coming back to spiritual principles around us, being able to see the world in healthier ways, understanding the spiritual journey and stepping into this process of our own healing. So I'm going to use Alex's visit as a reflection for that. But it's really this process an initiation, maybe you could call it where we're moving through our spiritual journey and how do we take the steps not only the nine steps of soul recovery, but these internal steps with ourself to be able to handle the complexity of life. I'm going to kick off my talk by talking about the stages of spiritual development, because I think it's really important for us to understand that wherever you are is exactly where you're supposed to be, and that this is not about trying to reach some pinnacle somewhere where you're better than everybody else or you have it all figured out. It's about you learning how to be in the complexity of life and how to feel the connection with a higher power so that you can handle anything, so that you can be in the midst of anything. So part of understanding the journey is what is the map, what are the spots on the map that I might be looking to try to get to? And knowing that in any journey that it is a windy road, it isn't about just going from one place to the next, and it's about enjoying each step, noticing where it takes you, noticing how you get from one place to the other and sometimes you go back, sometimes it's all of it, sometimes it's remembering and being present in all of it, and that you are just here to begin to see it from a different perspective.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:47

Stage one in the spiritual development is innocence. And if you think about when you were first born and that birth of a baby and how they just don't know yet, and if you see little toddlers, how they're just so excited about life and they think everything is marvelous and they wear their emotions on their sleeve and they're angry or they're happy or they want something or they're joyous it's everything and they believe that anything can happen. They haven't learned yet how to be held down by the world. And then they start to be socialized and of course we have to be socialized and so on some level we end up moving into the second stage, which is our ego transformation, our really attaching to this part of our brain that is teaching us how to survive, and it has a lot of fear involved. And we're in this place where we realize that we're at the mercy of the world around us, that we have to fit in, and maybe that just unbridled exuberance that we had as toddlers starts to melt away a little bit as we move into. How do I fit into the world and what do I do to be rewarded? And that's part of survival, that we need to do that to develop our personality. And we begin to develop that personality for the better and sometimes for the unhealthy, and that's okay.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:15

Part of soul recovery is around us learning how to accept ourselves, to accept the shadow, to accept the light, to stop judging anything as having been bad or good and just seeing it as part of the experience, part of the journey, part of the transformation that we're here to learn and grow and expand. And of course we needed to set into an ego. Of course we did, and that when you move into the next phase, which is power, you realize that you need to become somebody, that you might need to control things, that you might want to have a career, that you have a purpose. We have to develop our personality and become someone. And this is that part of our life where we're creating who we want to be and how we want it to be around us. And this is where most of us live in adulthood and adolescence as well.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:15

But this is where most of us get, where we realize we have some dominion over the world around us and we crave to try to figure it out. We want power to figure it out and a lot of people stay here. Truth is, a lot of people stay here and never leave this section because this is the 3D world. This is the place where you go to work. You have your relationships with people. You see how you want it to turn out. You work hard to make that happen. It happens. This is life.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:51

Now you have a choice. You have a choice in this place where you start to realize do I want more? Is this making me happy? What is this? You start to realize that your connection to the world feels very if you do this, then I'll be happy Very result and transaction oriented, that you start to question if there's a deeper meaning. And what is that deeper meaning?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:22

This next step of transformation is a powerful place because it begins to open us up to even more potential, more possibility, and then we have giving. The next stage is that opening up to this concept that there's more, that we can help others, that we can be altruistic. There's giving and receiving. We start to realize that we could be part of a bigger picture. Now the giving as a codependent, as I was, is interesting because we can get caught up in this place where the giving becomes who we are and it actually becomes an attachment to who we are. And then you have another choice. Am I going to give to get something from people which means approval, it means actual things to give to receive something because you want there to be some sort of transaction in it? You start realizing that actually the giving can become ego-driven instead of spiritually driven, that it has a cost to it, and this is another place for a choice. Am I going to be a giver out of a bigger spiritual consciousness or am I going to use this as a transaction?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:49

If you're ready for soul recovery, as a spiritual coach I can support your healing to help make real changes that will bring you a life of peace, happiness, connection and abundance. You can also work in smaller groups by taking a deep dive in a Zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Join others on the Soul Recovery Path, once a month for the free Zoom support group or daily on the private Facebook page. Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet to book coaching sessions with me or find all the information you need about soul recovery dates that are coming up and how to register for those groups and workshops. To support the podcast and the community, check the links in the show notes to make a small monthly donation or a one-time donation of your choice. That will make a huge impact to support this community and the soul recovery mission. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:47

And then you move to the seeker, and the seeker is realizing that there's a deeper meaning. You start creating a spiritual practice, you start listening to podcasts, you start reading books, you start soaking in information and you start disseminating all of the beliefs and the patterns and the principles that were taught to you in your socialization and in your way of being told who to be when you were younger. You start looking at a different way of being. This is a powerful place to be because the seeker lets go of there being only one way. The seeker starts to question whether there's other ways to see, other ways to participate, other ways to be in it, and not from that stage that you're in your ego power stage, but in something bigger and greater still. This is where you start to open up to spirituality and you begin to really understand the journey and be curious about the journey and stop trying so hard to get somewhere and you start being present in the moment.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:59

And then it says the sixth stage is the sage, where you open up to your awakening, you become a witness of the actions and you realize that you're just a player in this larger role of life and that you actually are creating your own script for your play and you start to see the world differently, you start to participate in it differently. And then this is another place where there's choice. You've come to this place where you can choose to live by ego or to live to be in spirit. And maybe it's a place where you realize that the way is kind of windy, that you bounce back and forth between these two ways of being I know that's been my experience and you're opening up. Are you ready to die of your old, to actually live these principles, to actually be in the way of spirituality? And then the seventh stage is spirit. It is being in complete connection to something greater still and living truly from the principles of spirituality and soul recovery. And it's an incredible oneness with everything.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:27

As you know, with my spiritual journey, I do a lot of reading and listening, and I recently listened to Alberto Villaldo's book, the Illumination Process, which was something that I wanted to have more of him after I had read his book, the Four Insights, that I read while I was in Indonesia, and he's a shaman and he worked with people in South America and has these incredible books on spirituality. What I wanted to talk about in this particular podcast comes from something that he talked about in the Illumination Process book and I wanted to get through those stages of spirituality because it gives the story of kind of how you are on the map in your spiritual journey, and he was talking about how, within each of our processes of life, either on the spiritual journey or even more in the stages of life moving, say, from adolescence to young adult or from young adult to mature adult or mature adult to the next phase you know that we have these actual development phases in our humanness and if you don't allow yourself to initiate and move and flow carefully with intention from one to the next phase in your life, we can be attached to what we thought that that previous stage was going to give us and it provides an enormous amount of suffering as we age and get older. Here I'm 54 years old. I will never look like or feel like I did when I was 20. But if I'm constantly regretting my life now because I'm stuck in not being a young, beautiful girl anymore with that body that I had when I was 20, I'm going to miss out on what the next stage is. And by being in that, I'm also stuck in that spiritual stage of fear and ego that you have to be willing to go through this process, to move through each of these stages spiritually and physically in our lives, to be able to open spiritually, to get to that seventh stage of being, of spirit, or even just the stage before of being a sage.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:47

He was talking about how there's four stages of illumination in the initiation to illumination, the awakening, the great departure, the tasks and then the illumination. And when I was listening to this, what really inspired me that I wanted to talk about is in soul recovery. We've been talking about the awakening. We've been talking about this awareness that all of a sudden we come through the door Maybe you heard this podcast because you searched Al-Anon or codependence or addiction or something and then you think that you're walking through for that and then you come in. Like I said in the beginning of the podcast and you go wow, this is actually about me. That's an awakening, that's a change in how you are seeing, it's a change in perception, it's the realization that you are in charge of how you choose to be in the world. But then you have to move into the great departure, which means that you have to be willing to do these changes within yourself. You have to be willing to make big changes in how you process what happened in your life before, how you are going to choose to show up today. You might need to really look at how you're participating in your family, how you participate in a job where you are in your mental thought process, how you're taking care of your body. You start to look at how you can improve yourself in.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:17

The great departure includes the being the seeker, looking at what are you watching, what do you listen to, what kinds of words are you using, what thoughts do you have? You're departing from how you used to be, how you used to show up, how you used to be attached to your image or who you think you are in the world. And then you come to the next stage, which is the tasks and the tests. Now this is here. We are this far into the podcast, and this is the piece I really wanted to talk about, which is when I first heard this, I thought what do you mean? There's tests after you have this awakening. You have this awakening, and shouldn't it just be easier then? And this is where I really had an epiphany around this continued journey that I'm having with the people in my life, in my spiritual development is, if I continue to see the relationships in my life as difficult and I continue to bump up against them as if I want them to be different, I'm coming back to the beginning. It's like I'm bringing myself back to a place where I need to be in the great departure again. I need to remember that I want to be awake. I need to remember that I need to let go of what I want to control. I have to let go of control. But when we're in the tasks, when we're in the testing phase of it, we begin to see that this is actually where the rubber hits the road. This is actually where the healing truly takes place, to allow us to integrate these new ways of being, these new beliefs, this new phase of our life, this new development and to actually be able to live it, to be it, to have the true, true changes that are happening within us.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:19

So, going into Alex's visit a couple weekends ago that you heard his lovely podcast last week he and his girlfriend showed up for a 420 concert, which happened to be in Denver. So they're getting to spend time with family, so that was enjoyable, but the whole reason that they came was because they wanted to come to a concert that celebrates pot right, that's around 420. And I had the same situation that I had the last time Bodhi came, that I talked about, which I am doing this work, people, friends, I'm doing this work so hard and I still get hit every single time with expectation. I still get hit with this moment where I realize that in my mind I'm creating how I envision it being, even though I was totally relaxed and even though I just said this is his trip and they're staying in our house. If we get to see them, then that would be great, but if we can't see them, that will be fine, I'll just be open.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:26

And what I realized is I opened my schedule and then I just waited, and then I just waited for my turn, and in that turn of waiting, I found expectation, and it caught me by surprise because I didn't think that I was doing that. I thought I was really consciously not doing that, and so when I heard Alberto talking about this concept of the tasks, it made me realize that this is the part of all the stories the hero's journey stories, all the mythology, all of the things that we love in terms of movies and good books where there's hardship that happens. That is there to show you your strength and the hardship can be really hard and in some cases it doesn't even have to be that hard. It just is emotionally hitting us in a way where we go, ah wow, there it is, there's the test, there's the task. Can you say that your son's going to come into town and you are going to be grateful if you get any time, but truly not have any expectations of what you think it's going to look like, how much time you think you're going to have, what you think that you're going to do?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:47

But I watched myself not have expectations of him so much, but expectations of me and how I wanted the house set up, how I wanted to have activities ready if they wanted to do activities. I watched myself jump into those old patterns of pleasing my son and making him happy and I was so grateful to have the chance to see it because I'm still working on it. And if we don't have these tests, then we can't actually move into the illumination, we can't move into being spiritually awake, because we won't have actually done the work that it takes to practice these principles in all of our affairs. And they had a fabulous weekend and we actually had a fabulous weekend together. But in the middle of it, just like when Bodhi came, I caught myself having all these emotions that weren't about them. It was about me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:56

It was about me and how I show up for myself and what my relationships are in my head, of how I see it, of how I'm putting it out there, of what I would like it to look like. And while it's all happening, it's actually happening just fine. It's good, people are happy, we're enjoying dinners, we're enjoying conversation, we're finding things to do. We were arguing a little bit about what to watch on television, because I won't watch violence, but we found something to watch on TV together and then including asking if he would do a podcast and him saying, yeah, if it works out time-wise. We'll see if it does, and me just letting it go and me just letting it go.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:49

But when I looked at this concept of how resistant we are to having difficulty in our lives, having any feelings that feel crunchy or any feelings that are pushing our buttons, and we switch it and we look at it as being one of the stages of illumination switch it and we look at it as being one of the stages of illumination. You have this opportunity to completely change how you show up in it, and it has helped me in the last couple of weeks in terms of dealing with Rich that we've had all these projects happening at the house to remodel the bathroom and then get them done before Alex came into town which, by the way, he was still hooking up the shower head and the sink on the day that he was supposed to arrive and I found myself having to do some spiritual work and do the serenity prayer and remind myself to just let it go and it will be whatever it will be. But our house is kind of turned upside down right now and when I think about it as part of my spiritual process, that this is a stage of initiation is to be in this test. Instead of wanting it all to be perfect, I realized that it's a gift to be able to be in it and this process of coming back to soul recovery, of looking at it from the eyes of love, the eyes of expansion, the eyes of spirit, letting go of control, realizing you're powerless over everything outside of yourself and being present with what is, and coming back to this moment right here. How am I in this moment right here? Am I okay? Right here, right now? And the answer is almost always yes. In this moment, in my body, I'm okay. It might feel overwhelming and out of control outside of myself, but I'm actually okay and I get to choose how I'm going to interact with that. And I take a deep breath and I come back to my center and I come back to right now and something beautiful happens. I realized that was the test, that was the part of me that's learning how to change the way I feel and interact with each of these situations and it is literally changing your brain structure. It is literally changing how your neurons work for the better. This is the illumination process, this is the healing process, this is the moving towards the sage and the spirit process. This is leaving the ego and fear behind.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:27

It took this little moment of hearing somebody say you get this spiritual juiciness and then you move into the tests To remind me to love my human life, to not get so caught up in wanting to be a spiritual being that I forget to enjoy being human. It's a choice that we can make about whether we're going to resist it and be pissed or whether we're going to open to it and be curious and ask ourselves how we attend to ourselves. What is our piece in it? How can we see it differently? Where can we draw boundaries that are healthy? How can I make sure that I'm okay here, not expecting anybody else to be different, but for me to look at myself, and sometimes it means that you have to make difficult choices. Sometimes it means you have to walk away from things, but you're always choosing yourself, your expansion, your healing.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 29:35

And in the end, as always, when my kids leave, my heart just is full and I loved the interview that I had with Alex in the podcast because he was being him. They had smoked a big joint before they came into the studio and I watched him as a man, as exactly who he is being okay and his life does not look like what I thought that it was going to look like when I decided to have kids, but it's his life and you know what he's doing just fine, and sometimes that means that there's a little bit of trial and tribulation, but isn't life like that? But if we see it as part of the illumination process instead of as hardship, it will be and feel and be experienced differently. So, as I do that for myself, I'm going to be reminded that they need to go through their initiations, to move through each segment of their life, to allow themselves to build their personalities, to be in those spaces, and that spiritual growth will happen for them when they're ready. It will look like what it's going to look like for them and I'm going to continue to work on what it looks like for me because that's the only place I have control anyway. So I'm going to empower myself to have my own experience. So I'm going to empower myself to have my own experience and through that I'm going to be present in every scenario in my life, from this place of expansion and curiosity and wholeness and connection to my higher power.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 31:11

And, as always, if you want help with this, you can either work with me directly in one-on-one coaching, and I now have the new work, the steps on your own program, being rolled out on the website for only $97. You can do a module. The first step is out and ready to go. I want to support you on your soul recovery journey so that you, too, can be moving along in this initiation of who you are, to be your fullest expression of self. You were brought here on purpose. You were brought here to be your true, happy self, with gifts that are uniquely yours. I want to be here to support you in whatever way I can to see it as the way you choose, to see it out of love, out of compassion, and to show up in your best self, the one that is just uniquely you, and to let go of all the stickiness that's underneath and to be able to be in this process of spiritual growth and to see the trials and tribulations from a new perspective. Until next time, namaste, thank you for listening to the Recover your Soul podcast and if you loved what you heard here, every Friday we have a bonus episode and you can access this by becoming a subscriber through Apple podcasts for only $3.99 a month, or become a Patreon member and on this platform you can choose $5, $15, or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with. On both of these subscriber platforms is an entire catalog of back episodes intended to inspire and support you on your soul recovery journey.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 33:01

I really want to invite everybody to attend the free once a month, every first Monday of the month, support group. This is on zoom. Everyone is welcome to attend and by giving a like or a review and sharing this with your friends and family really helps us to share the soul recovery message with even more people. We are on social media. We are on all the platforms. I am on TikTok. You can listen to Guided Meditations by Rev Rachel Harrison on Insight Timer. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for being part of the community. To find out more about soul recovery and everything that's being offered, visit the website wwwrecoveryoursoulnet. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.