What do I mean by Personal Growth? How is it different from personal awareness or spiritual growth? The distinctions are significant and important for what I wish to communicate.
Between 1979 and 1981 I had a series of amazing experiences. They transformed my understanding of myself completely. The first happened whilst I was watching a war movie with some friends. I had just had a row with my girlfriend and so was in an agitated state. In the movie air-raid sirens went off, and as they did so I felt my body flood with fear. Then, in the movie, the ‘all clear’ sounded and I watched as the fear disappeared from my body. I thought a lot about this over the next few days and realised I was in my mother’s womb when London was being bombed in 1944. Each time the air raid sirens went off my mother would have been terrified – and I would have been flooded with her fear. And the fear would disappear when the all-clear sounded.
The second experience occurred whilst undertaking a fantasy journey called the Christos experiment (this is described in detail in Chapter 2 of Who I am). The fantasy was very vivid for me, it was like watching a movie running inside my head. I was a young lad in the fantasy and at one point, about half way through, I fell from a beam in a barn and badly hurt my shoulder. When the fantasy was over I got up off the floor where I had been comfortably lying – and found that my shoulder hurt like hell!
The third experience was when I decided to try to recover memories of my childhood using psilocybin. I had read that if one had a clear intention and controlled the dose and the environment, then it was possible to explore regions of one’s unconscious using hallucinogenic drugs. When I started I could not remember anything of my childhood prior to age 11. I carried out the process in a room that I had sound proofed and made soft and comfortable with cushions and mattresses so that no one could hear or see what I was doing. I not only discovered my childhood memories, I relived many whilst screaming and crying. It took me something like 30 sessions over a three month period to discover all the details of why I had blanked out my childhood. It was horrendous – and very violent.
The fourth experience was on my first Enlightenment Intensive, working on “Who am I?” On the second evening I had a powerful experience of being Divine Love. That has never left me, I still cry when writing about it like this.
All these experiences had a dramatic impact on my personal awareness . I knew far more about myself and my consciousness than before. I was not as ignorant as before and understood more about why I reacted in certain ways and so on. And that first direct experience of myself as Love opened the door to my spiritual development.
But, and this is the main point I want to emphasise, growth requires more than just experiences. My personal awareness had increased, but my personal growth had not advanced. Although experiences have been primary for me, I have also observed other people having similar experiences but without much impact on who they are or their lives. I have witnessed people come on an Intensive and have an extremely powerful experience and turn up on another Intensive two years later facing the same issues with no apparent change since the previous Intensive. So I have often pondered why it is that some people use spiritual, and other, experiences to make significant progress whilst others do not.
My deepest experience of my Self is that I am the one who chooses. I cannot choose what happens, but I have complete choice about how to interpret what happens, what meaning I take from events and how I respond to them. In many situations my choice can be made unconsciously, but it is nevertheless I who makes the choice. I think this operates in relation to personal growth. Some people choose to prioritise it, others choose a different priority – for example bringing up a family or changing the way some part of the world functions.
So for me Personal Growth arises when a person chooses to integrate and make use of their increased awareness, their new experiences and their insights, in ways that increase their ability to choose consciously and live their life as they wish. This choice, to make use of experiences, can be made or unmade at any time in an individual’s journey.
People can cease prioritising growth at every stage of growth. Early on, in the discovery phase, it’s often a choice to do something else. It may also be because making a change in the person’s life is perceived as too risky. In the consolidation phase it can be because the person has achieved their growth goals – for example a good relationship or freedom from trauma. Achieving a level of peace and satisfaction is enough for many people – and is more than most achieve. In the mature phase probably the most common reason for ceasing to prioritise growth is because the person considers that there is nothing more to be gained – they cannot imagine what further progress would look like. Or perhaps they have an idea of what further progress would be like and think that attaining it is simply beyond their ability. This is true when people have an idealised view of saints or spiritual teachers or gurus.
The point I am making is that to continue on any path of personal growth requires a continual commitment to prioritising that growth. There is nothing wrong with ceasing to do so, it simply means that progress on the chosen path ceases to occur.
A Master's Path 
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