Stages

 Spirituality and the spiritual path is way more simple than people make it. In fact, it is the most simple thing you can do with your life, everything else is just complicating the issue. 

Michael Singer

I think we are all on a spiritual path whether we know it or not, whether we call it that or not.  I think the term "spiritual" trips a lot of people up and they tend to walk on tip toes around it.  Still we are all on this path. We are all attempting to feel okay. The "spiritual path" (just a label) is simply  a destination derived from wanting to feel okay. It is the only way we can feel truly okay. 

The Wheel/ The Wrong Path

 Instead of owning that natural and healthy desire to be okay, however, we tend to look to unskillful and unwholesome desires. We  grasp for and cling to things out there. We pull in what we "believe" makes us feel well and push away that which we believe makes us feel bad. Our mind becomes preoccupied by that motivation....it becomes hyperactive in trying to get us what we want and avoid what we don't want.  All our energy becomes involved in controlling, manipulating, fixing the external world so it gives us what we want and protects us from what we don't want.  We externalize the truth that we want to be well. This makes us crazy! 

When we realize this way is not working in making us feel okay inside, that our desiring and our averting is not getting us anywhere closer to our goals, that it doesn't make us happy. ...we begin to question if there is another way. There is another way...there is the spiritual path. 

What happens when a person becomes spiritual?  They give up on their wants and not wants.  They get off that hamster wheel, Singer uses as analogy,  that exhausts them without taking them anywhere. So there is a process...a series of steps that Michael Singer shares in The Stages of the Spiritual Path that I hope to relay in the way they were intended to be relayed. 

Stage  One :  Realizing That What We Are Doing Is Not Working

This stage is all about  realizing that the hamster wheel is not getting us anywhere but crazy and exhausted. We realize that there is something wrong with the formula we have been using all our lives. There is something wrong with working nonstop, thinking and planning non stop all of our lives at something that is supposed to get us somewhere and give us what we need...but that never gets us  there.  Isn't there? 

Stage Two: Let Go of the Mind!  

Once we  realize this " you relax in the face of what your mind is saying" . We stop listening to the mind.  We decide not to go that route anymore.  We get off the wheel.  At this point we may have no idea where we are going.  We are not thinking about "spirituality"...we just want to feel okay and we know our past ways of getting there were not working.

We might say:

"I have no idea.  I am just not doing that because it doesn't work. 

The mind may throw a tantrum...in an attempt to  keep us doing what we have been doing. It will do whatever it can to convince us to get back on that wheel. It is important here not to listen. We relax into it and refuse to fall into its attempt to convince us that it will give us all we want and protect us from all we  don't want. Just relax and  watch the temper tantruming mind  as we watch what is happening around us

The mind is just a thing in the universe...it is not yours. Everyone has one.  It just says what it says because it is programed to do so. 

We need to  relax behind it and let it be what it is. When the mind says "I want this and I don't want that!"...just relax.

Commit to not Listening to what the Mind says.  Just observe and begin to see yourself as the observer. 

We let go, here,  of clinging to the idea that life should be a certain way. It is our will that has been getting involved in the mind. We have believed, identified and got lost in the mind's tendency to grasp and avoid. We must see that we are not that.

Don't listen to any of the mind.  First learn who you are and relax in the state of whatever the mind has to say...you will start to be aware you are there. 

Step Three:  See who you are

We will, in this stage, begin to see that we are  "Solidly seated in the Seat of Self" and not scattered around as we  were when we followed the mind. 

When we are solidly seated in the Seat of the Soul we have traded neurosis for peace. From this place, we start to feel love, joy and enthusiasm emerging from within us because the energy that was once directed towards getting us to  do what the mind was telling us to do... is now  free to flow through us.  We no longer get so disturbed by what is happening out there. 

Relax deeper...be aware of our experiencing without trying or effort...noticing and allowing what is in front of us.

You are beautiful...not your mind, not your personality...you...the person that is in there. 

As long as we don't get involved in what the mind is saying...we are happy and at peace

We appreciate and settle into the spiritual life...living in the shakti flow...needing nothing...

Other things and ppl are not needed to feel okay but  they allow the flow of love to  keep getting stimulated

From here we learn to say: "whatever is unfolding, I will get involved in"

We become detached to external circumstances.  We realize we are in the world but not of it...

Stage Four: Leaning into the Energy

At some point  of feeling good, we  will wonder where the  energy is coming from. We may lean back a little further to  feel it flowing in behind us, pushing on us.  In this stage we learn to lean back into the energy and just rest as it expands around us

Up until now consciousness was settling down into a focal point but now it is getting beyond focal point. We recognize the expanding consciousness and begin losing "self"  as we fall into the source of all this shakti...We are still "me" bathing in ocean of energy. This is the beginning of samadhi

From here we can learn from great masters...those who have leaned back as far as a person can lean, losing  all sense of  duality, finding "yoga" or union...and may decide to follow their example.

Stage Five: Lean Back as Far s You can Go.

In this stage we let go of  the need to be separate.  If we fall back far enough we will see it is  not us experiencing the energy...just energy. 

Imagine  a drop of water falling into the ocean from an eye dropper...find it"

We become one with everything.  We tap into the reality of Einstein's unified field of energy...We have attained complete enlightenment in a continuum of relaxing away from what you were experiencing. This is a true letting go. 

This enlightenment does not change the outside of us.  We go on playing our roles:

There is a role for you to play in life...it will unfold in front of you...Don't sweat it...just let it go...it will unfold before you.

Well that is how I see the stages of spiritual awakening after listening to the linked podcast below. Key point?

Use every minute of your life to let go of that which is trying to get you to not let go. 

All is well!

Michael Singer/Sounds True . The Stages of the Spiritual Path: A Continuum of Letting Go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W23Qob0d6rA