BackIndexNextText Box: The Importance of Spiritual Growth by Jeffrey Pierce Used with permission of author One of the commonly overlooked portions of any pagan path is the need for personal growth and development. We spend vast amounts of time on technique and accumulating knowledge, but very little effort is directed toward spiritual evolution. It should be obvious that any spiritual path needs to incorporate standards, philosophy and tools for personal growth. But if you deconstruct almost any Tradition that has a progressive training program, you will find it long on ritual and divinatory techniques and short on spirituality. A survey of available paths will find countless programs designed to teach you certain abilities or encourage you to memorize certain bits of knowledge, but how many direct you to develop a spiritual perspective? How many couple knowledge with spiritual philosophy? How many set standards for personal and spiritual growth along with the accumulation of knowledge? One of the concepts that I teach is that in ritual work and magick, what we seek to do is move ourselves from a mundane perspective to a position that is capable of interacting with magickal or spiritual energy. It's the reason why we cast a circle, why we raise energy, and why we approach things in a ritualistic manner. What we're trying to do is shift our own perspective and position so that we are in a place where we can interact with those energies. The problem isn't that those energies lay beyond our grasp. If this were the case, then even the most advance ritual techniques would be unable to bridge that chasm. The problem is that there is something between us and that energy which we have to move beyond in order to connect with the spiritual energy needed to empower our rites. In order to do so, we create a neutral, sacred space that is devoid of the mundane in our lives. We'll often smudge the room to be used (or the entire home) with white sage or ritually sweep the old energy out of the area. We purify ourselves, either through fasting, ritual bathing, or simply clearing our minds of mundane thought. Why? Because we're trying to move beyond one energy (the mundane) and interact with and embrace another (the sacred). If we establish firm spiritual criteria and seek to meet it in our own lives, we begin to shift our personal energy and our base point of reference. As we grow and develop spiritually, our personal energy begins to change. By adhering to spiritual standards, we begin to mirror those spiritual standards in our lives. We change and grow. As we do so, the gap between ourselves and the spiritual energy we attempt to connect with in our rites begins to narrow. The effort required to connect with that energy lessens and eventually disappears. Imagine being able to move the same amount of energy you connect with in deep ritual simply through your intent. It's a concept that I was taught years ago through the use of shamanic herbs. I was working with an old crone who was teaching me how to use some "lesser" herbs (copal, yerba senta) to assist in achieving a shamanic state. "You know," she said, "these herbs are just tools. They're intended to show you a place you can reach, then you're expected to learn to reach it on your own, without their aid. Even the more hallucinogenic herbs are a crutch and a tool. You use them to show you where you can go. Then you focus on your growth and developing your own abilities and use less and less of them until you can reach that place on your own." Our ritual techniques are used in much the same way. They're intended to take us to a place we can't reach without them, until we've developed ourselves and grown to the point that we can reach that place without their aid. Much as shamanic herbs are used while we develop our own journeying abilities, so ritual techniques are used while we learn to shift our energy on our own. The key is to manifest in our own lives the energy we seek to connect with. In shamanic work, we develop abilities akin to those enhanced by the shamanic herbs, shifting our perspective to interact with the spirit world, rather than perceiving only the mundane. In our personal practices, we seek to interact with spiritual energy, so we should also seek to manifest that spiritual energy in our lives. If all we do is gather more knowledge, then we're only acquiring additional tools to bridge the first step in the journey, not actually progressing on the journey itself. The simplest way to manifest a particular type of energy is to break it down into its various qualities and intentionally mirror them. For instance, if we were working a ritual geared toward finding a new job, we would break down what we wanted in that job and bring those qualities into the rite. If we were seeking a position in a office, perhaps we'd bring a tie or a photo of a cubicle or a computer into the ritual. We would write a salary amount on a scrap of paper and ritually burn the paper, releasing its energy into our rite. We would focus our intent into a candle of a color we associate with money or a new job and ritually ignite its flame. The key is that we're manifesting the qualities of a new job into our ritual in order to bridge the gap between our unemployed state and the energy of being hired in our new position. Likewise, we need to manifest the qualities of the spirit world in our own lives in order to bridge the gap between our "mundane" lives and the "spiritual" energy of our rites. By mirroring the selfless giving of the spirit world, so we too become a part of that energy. By learning to love, to teach, to comfort, we manifest the energy that we seek to connect to when we reach out to the spirit world. Each spiritual quality we incorporate into our own being brings our base position in life a step closer to the places we try to reach in our ritual work. Eventually that separation no longer exists and we can achieve the same results that once required specifically designed rituals, simply through focusing our intent. So what's the use of acquiring the knowledge required to do rituals and work magick? It shows us the way. It allows us to perceive a place that we can work to reach on our own, without the aid of ritual techniques. With each step forward in our spiritual development, the point we're able to reach in our rituals moves a step deeper. Eventually we're able to reach a level we've only dreamed of. In his book "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice," ethno botanist Mark Plotkin tells of South American tribes and the herbs they use to cure conditions and diseases that western medicine has not learned how to treat. Moving deeper into the jungle, Mr. Plotkin connected with a tribe whose abilities to heal we're legendary even among the native peoples. Where did they gain their knowledge? Directly from the spirit world. Entering a shamanic state, they seek out a specific spirit who, "...will teach you how to cure by singing and by using healing plants." Through this and similar methods, the native peoples have learned medicinal remedies that are more advanced than we in the modern world have at our disposal. If we as pagans embarked on a similar journey and sought to continually move closer to the spirit world and deeper into ritual, what wonders could we add to our own culture? What blessings could we bring into our own lives and the lives of those who share our world?
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