Balanced development of spiritual abilities
- This page is part of an ERW course: Spiritual exercises, section Articles.
- By John Eagles, December 7, 2009.
The level of spiritual awareness that we reached during our lives on earth is what we are going to take with us to spirit world after death of the body. If our spiritual senses haven't developed much during physical life, these senses are not suddenly going to work in the afterlife.
True love is the most important in our existence. True love is also what reigns the spiritual world and it is what binds and unites the spiritual reality with the physical world. Ideally, the development of our spiritual abilities and of our good love go hand in hand. There needs to be balance between our growth as a religious person, as a child of God, and the development of our spirituality, our ability to live as a spiritual being.
Because of the fall, Adam and Eve lost not only their good connection to God, they also lost many of their spiritual abilities. It is of paramount importance that in the course of individual restoration each person restores the spiritual abilities, the awareness of the spiritual world. As completed individuals we are to dominate the world with God's love. The world as a whole, that is not only the physical world but also the spiritual world.
Most people are aware of the dangers of relating to the spirit world. When we browse the internet in these days, we can find countless of sites with information that was said to have been channeled from spirit world. The alleged or true sources of these channelings are many, they range from Jesus to the angel Michael, from angels of light to intergalactic rulers, from ancient deities to common ancestors. How are we going to find our way in all this? What should we believe and not believe to be real and valuable?
Eventually this is going to be an individual decision. Even if we trust, for example, True Parents' judgment, it is still our personal decision to do so. How can we learn to rely on our personal good judgment? All these questions are interrelated.
We must develop our spirituality, we also must learn to have good judgment of what goes on around us. More important than anything else is that the development of our spiritual abilities occurs in a balanced way.
There is to be balance in more than one way. Most importantly, our ability to observe and affect the spiritual world should always be centered on God. To be centered on God means to be living in God's love. It means that all that we do serves God and fellow man and all of creation. Also our spiritual abilities should serve God. If the greed to know about the spiritual world surpasses the desire to do good, there is going to be a problem.
In this context it is important to know that when a person has developed certain spiritual abilities, for example if he or she is able to receive messages from the spiritual world, these abilities are connected to the level of society that this person is serving. Some messages from spirit world only have a personal meaning. If a person receiving such revelations thinks that he or she is very special and therefore should take a central position in a group or church, there could come a problem.
Imagine that a spiritual person, for example a medicine man in a native American tribe, would want to offer his abilities to serve the entire nation of America. There doesn't need to be something wrong with this, but it is clear that when you serve a tribe you have to deal with fewer spirits than when you are serving a large nation. At the moment that a person begins to operate on a larger level, becomes some kind of central figure in a greater group, he or she has to deal with the difficulties on that larger level. In other words, more indemnity must be paid when a larger whole is served.
Often people over-estimate their spiritual abilities and they become arrogant in relation to other people. This is an example of unbalanced development of spiritual abilities.
Another field in which balance must be maintained is spiritual life in relation to physical life. Some people get so focused on being spiritual that they forget the importance of physical existence. Also in such a case, the spiritual person tends to become proud and arrogant and thinks that his or her contributions are more important than those of others.
It is important that the development of abilities in the physical world go along with developments in spiritual matters.
Finally, although knowledge about the spiritual world is essential, for example by study of the Divine Principle, knowledge alone won't do. And it also isn't right when a person tries to have contact to the spiritual world without understanding God's principles.
To summarize: Our spiritual development should be balanced in a number of ways. First of all, any development of spiritual abilities that is not centered on God or under God is very dangerous. True spirituality can only be acquired through a good relationship to God. It was because of the fall that man lost the spiritual awareness. It is by overcoming the fall that good spirituality can be gained back.
Second, there needs to be balance between the development of our spiritual and our physical life.
Third, spiritual experiences need to be accompanied by principled understanding, and principled understanding of the spiritual reality needs to be deepened by real spiritual experiences.
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