Spirituality and consciousness again - Part V

The point made in the previous post was that, if you are committed to your own growth - that is, to becoming (more) conscious - then this can not be achieved on your own. Ongoing feedback from someone - ideally someone with whom you share your life - is necessary to continue to grow in consciousness. A close friend can also play this role, as can a therapist, a spiritual teacher or a seminar facilitator. But having a relationship with someone able to provide feedback is not sufficient. You need to have enough trust in the other person to surrender (not to submit) to the whole process. As always with these things, the ideas are easier to convey than the reality of what is required. You need to have reached a certain level of maturity in your own growth, a level at which you feel comfortable enough and secure enough to be humble without being self-effacing. The humility I am referring to has nothing to do with the sham humility encouraged in some cultures. This kind of humility actually comes from strength. Only when you feel strong enough within yourself, when you have a strong sense of who you are, can you allow someone else to reflect back to you information that can potentially threaten your false identity, your false self concept, your inaccurate perception of yourself. Who you are can not and will not be threatened. Who you are - your essence - is indestructible. Its essential nature is goodness, beauty, peace and light. Nothing can touch that. When you are conscious, you know this beyond words and you can therefore trust that if someone who loves you and cares for you gives you information about some aspect of yourself that is negative - and even, perhaps, that feels offensive or insulting - it is your false self that is being challenged, not who you are. In addition, you know that they can only feed back what is true for them, that, at the end of the day, you are the final judge of what is true for you [To be continued]