TRANSCRIPT

We must realize that, just as a child must grow and mature, we as grown adults must continue to grow and mature in our consciousness, in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls. We must commit to becoming more spiritually mature human beings. And it is a pursuit. It's a lifelong pursuit, and it is the pursuit to self mastery; the mastery of oneself. And this, my friends, is God consciousness.

“Nothing You Do Matters Unless What You Do Matters”
I’m Amadon DellErba and this is “Get Real or Die Trying”

How we doin’? And welcome to Episode 30 of my podcast. Today I wanted to talk about spiritual maturity. I wanted to talk about this because it's something I, myself, am trying to grow in every day. And I think many of us who are on the spiritual journey are. But then again, many of us have an understanding of maturity and what it means to be mature from a psychological and a social perspective. But do we understand concepts of spiritual maturity? 

The dictionary definition of mature basically means, “being fully developed physically, fully grown, or having reached the most advanced stage in a process.” So what does that mean from a spiritual perspective? Sometimes we can discover more about something by defining what it is not. Spiritually immature people often expect others to believe what they believe, are self-righteous and pompous (one of my favorite… people do that all the time), they have a better-than-thou attitude, they're judgmental, they can be small-minded, they can be presumptuous - thinking one's beliefs sets them apart rather than their actual actions,and that's an important one right there. They think because they believe differently that they're different than somebody else, but the belief doesn't change anything. It's their actions that separates one from another. If they have higher, spiritual actions, they are separated from someone who doesn't. Too many people think just by believing about love, and kindness, and purity that you are being more loving and kind and pure. No. Because you can believe you're loving and kind, but actually, are you actually loving and kind?

You know, the funny thing about pompous people, and spiritually self-righteous people, is that they think they're so ascended and they think they're so spiritually mature when they're actually quite immature. They're kind of like the kid on the basketball court, when you're a child playing basketball… and you might be a little bigger, a little taller than the kids around you. You got a better shot. You're a little better player. And therefore you start making fun of everybody else on the court. Well, that nullifies your better abilities. It completely nullifies everything. And that's kind of what it's like when someone who is “woke” all the sudden, and they think they know so much, and they have that self-righteousness about them, and they judge others, and they think they're better than others. It's kind of like that. And so they're very immature. The actions of that child on the court, making fun of everybody else is totally immature. Calling them names, making fun of them, blah, blah, blah. Where you’d say “quit being immature, play the game.” In life, you got people who are just like that little kid on the basketball court. Quit being immature. Play the game, the game of life, get real. You know, it's not about what you think you know more than somebody else, because anytime you think that you know more, you've already become stupid. I mean, it's just the truth because someone always has something to offer, a different perspective. That's it, a different perspective. They grew up somewhere else. They saw different things, they think in a different way, and that's all valuable things that can be offered to you and your process of maturing and understanding things. Somebody who grew up in the beautiful countryside in England under nice, easy circumstances is not going to have the same wisdom and the same understanding of life as someone who grew up in the inner city of New York. Now these two people may meet and they're worlds apart. They both have things to offer each other, that’s spiritual maturity, understanding that, accepting that, and being willing to learn from all people.

A spiritually mature person has a sense of self-awareness in who and what they are. They do not need confirmation and affirmation from others to qualify their beliefs. They are okay being set apart. They are confident in their own pursuit of being Holy, which being set apart is being Holy, because the more holy you become, the more apart from humanity you often become. When one commits to the path of true self-improvement, enlightenment, holiness, there is of course, failure along the way, and mistakes, and not meeting the mark… happens all the time. And as human beings, we can easily be too hard on ourselves. We're not realistic in our perception at times. This is where becoming more spiritually mature is helpful in dealing with the disappointments that life can bring, and believe me, there's a lot of disappointments in life at times. 

Let's approach our understanding from this avenue here, okay? When a pro athlete commits to being the best in their field, they have two strong guiding principles. One: is that losing is a part of the game. You learn from it and you move on. Success and wisdom, my friends, are two very different things. You gain wisdom from learning from your failures. I don't think you ever gain wisdom from winning all the time, and anyone who's become successful in life will tell you, and they do tell you all the time that their wisdom was gained from their failures. And number two: If you're an athlete, you find a coach to train you to be the best and hold you accountable to get to your goals. Now let's just picture for a moment and imagine if individuals approach their personal religious and spiritual life with the same tenacity and discipline as an athlete does well. Well, you become a spiritual athlete. You accept not meeting your goals in every moment as a part of the great spiritual journey that we're all on to becoming more perfect. And you find yourself a great coach, a spiritual teacher, a mentor, a guide, and you let this spiritual teacher help refine your character. This often means correction. And why is it that an athlete will tolerate a coach very strongly pointing out their weaknesses and confronting them? But as human beings in other areas of our lives, we really refuse to have feedback and correction from our elders, or anyone around us, our friends, our wives… we don't want to be corrected, our husbands, our sisters, our brothers, our peers, our bosses. Nobody can correct us or tell us where we need to improve. What's up with that? It's like the intangible and non-physical world is off limits to so many people. But frankly, the spiritually mature individual desires the spiritual coach. They also learn from their mistakes and get better just like a good athlete does. When a good athlete makes mistakes, isn't really training right, is doing things that are not optimum, it's pointed out to them constantly by their coach. In life, someone who wants to ascend spiritually, has an elder who points those same things out to them. And oftentimes it's thinking patterns, and it's not just physical actions, it's what's in the mind and heart, and it's hard to identify. And that's what I mean by the non-tangible physical world. 

Some other traits, my friends, of spiritually mature people that I've noticed are these: a spiritually mature person focuses their life from serving themselves, to serving other people. You see, immature people are typically very selfish, mature souls are selfless. They gain pleasure from helping others, not themselves. All humans are innately pleasure seekers, I believe. And so when we spiritually mature, we shift this, this journey and this seeking for pleasure from self, to service to others.

Rodan of Alexandria, the great Greek philosopher that is mentioned in The URANTIA Book said this: 

“Emotional excitement is not the ideal spiritual stimulus. Excitement does not augment energy; it rather exhausts the powers of both mind and body. Whence then comes the energy to do these great things? Look to your Master. Even now he is out in the hills taking in power while we are here giving out energy. The secret of all this problem is wrapped up in spiritual communion, in worship. From the human standpoint it is a question of combined meditation and relaxation. Meditation makes the contact of mind with spirit; relaxation determines the capacity for spiritual receptivity. And this interchange of strength for weakness, courage for fear, the will of God for the mind of self, constitutes worship.”

Wow, what a beautiful quote. You know the spiritually mature have the courage and desire to face the truth about themselves, their lives and things around them, instead of running from it. One thing we see a lot in the world in immature souls and spiritually immature souls, is the inability to come to terms with the reality around them, themselves, the people around them, the situation they're in. And so they live in kind of a “LA LA land” and they choose this every day. Ties in with my last podcast, the concept of “Ignorance is Bliss.” People choose to be ignorant and choose to stay in this ignorance because the truth is too hard to accept. 

When we think of what it means to be spiritually mature we can easily, in our minds, associate the simple concept of maturity of a child vs. a grown adult. But oftentimes grown adults are very immature, and they have immature actions, and they have qualities and decision-making processes, and emotional responses that are still childlike even in their grown state. Spiritual maturity starts bringing in (in my own opinion) spiritual concepts that govern our psyche, that govern our mind. It's kind of like having a religious lifestyle. When you have a certain beliefs and you live a certain way and you believe certain things you choose not to do certain things. You live your life by these principles, by these concepts. So to be spiritually mature means that you are governed by these choices, these higher choices, these higher ideals. I say govern because every human being innately wants to be unbridled, wants to do what the hell they want to do, but a high spiritual being and the true teachers of time, the mystics and the sages of history, allow themselves to be governed by their higher mind. Their animal mind is governed by their higher mind. It's a spiritual self-mastery and that is a key point of being spiritually mature.

Here's a big one about spiritually mature people; a very important concept and milestone that separates the spiritually immature from the spiritually mature: internal vs. external. Spiritually mature people care more about what's going on inside of them than their outward appearance. It's about what's inside, not outside. They build their edifice of their soul rather than the materialistic house and image. They’re not worried about the four car garage, the image of the physical appearance. They're worried about what's going on in their inner life and their inner soul. Another one is cooperation vs. competition, and this is a big one for many ambitious souls, I feel. Because when we spiritually mature in life, we transcend the need for competition, and we turn to cooperation. And this is something that I'm still learning all the time, because when I evaluate myself and my day-to-day actions and the many, many associates, comrades, family, people I work with, there are times that I still have competition and not cooperation. That is spiritually immature behavior.

Back to Rodan of Alexandria, he states: 

“Another requirement for the attainment of maturity is the co-operative adjustment of social groups to an ever-changing environment. The immature individual arouses the antagonisms of his fellows; the mature man wins the hearty co-operation of his associates, thereby many times multiplying the fruits of his life efforts.” 

What that basically says is that a mature person understands and appreciates and values cooperation, and the people around him in using them. A mature person really seeks to be a team player, something I'm still learning and trying to improve in myself. Spiritually mature people are always seeking truth. My friends, there is no “arrival.” Okay? There is always more and it's hard to face the truth, but mature people know this and have courage to face it. Accepting truth means change in your own personal life. 

So again, Rodan sums it all up when he talks about it in his “Lures of Maturity” paper in The URANTIA Book. He says:

“Human life consists in three great drives—urges, desires, and lures. Strong character, commanding personality, is only acquired by converting the natural urge of life into the social art of living, by transforming present desires into those higher longings which are capable of lasting attainment, while the commonplace lure of existence must be transferred from one’s conventional and established ideas to the higher realms of unexplored ideas and undiscovered ideals.” 

One thing, you know, that I like about that is I was just talking about last week on my radio show on KVAN Radio 91.7 (broadcast all over the world on KVAN.FM) I was talking about, “what is a mystic?” What does it mean to be a mystic, to be a spiritualist? And one thing I said is, a commonplace person talks about what they already know. A mystic is talking about what is unknown, constantly venturing forth, and trying to determine, and explore and speak upon what is unknown. And that last quote from Rodan, he talks about the “unexplored ideas and the undiscovered ideals.” And so a mystic is in search of these. We all have them. And every human being is in an ascent process to discover these things. And it does take that courage and that spiritual maturity to commit to that. 

You know, in all of our own unique journeys to this self-mastery of self, we must realize that just as a child must grow and mature, we as grown adults must continue to grow and mature in our consciousness, in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls. We must commit to becoming more spiritually mature human beings. And it is a pursuit. It's a lifelong pursuit, and it is the pursuit to self mastery, the mastery of oneself. And this, my friends, is God consciousness. God consciousness in the attempt to stay in that God consciousness at all times, is spiritual maturity. Because when you dwell in a place of God consciousness, what filters down from that high state of consciousness is spiritual virtues, spiritual disciplines, that then turn into actions. And when you're acting in high spiritual disciplines of love, compassion, empathy, tolerance, forgiveness, all of these things, humility, true spiritual meekness… when you conduct yourself in these fields of consciousness, you are spiritually mature and you're not a separator you’re a connector. There is no competition, it's cooperation. It's not about self, it's about others. So true spiritual maturity comes from the constant pursuit of God consciousness. Thanks for listening to my show. I'll see you guys next time.

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