SPIRITUAL PATH AS DESCRIBED BY ROY EUGENE DAVIS
"A spiritual path is a way of thinking, behaving, living, and insightful examination of higher realities that allows a person's innate qualities to naturally emerge."
Staying steadfast in spiritual practice is a matter of consistently saying "yes" to the thoughts, words, and actions that most fully express our innate wholeness.
It's the journey from identifying ourselves as a separate body-mind-personality self to experiencing our essential Self as an expression of Infinite Consciousness-Existence.
Regularly meditating to a level of superconsciousness that allows the innate purity of our essence of being to illumine our mind and consciousness results in the following benefits:
1. Physical benefits: Stress reduction; relief from stress-related symptoms; slowing of biological aging processes; enhanced immune function; refinement of brain centers through which spiritual qualities can be more easily processed.
2. Psychological benefits: Increased ability to focus, concentrate, and think more rationally; increased ability to let go of distracting thoughts; increased peace of mind; respite from relentless mind-chatter; weakening of addictive tendencies, harmful habits, and troublesome subconscious conditionings.
3. Spiritual benefits: Experience of wholeness; increased compassion; clearing of outmoded thought patterns; increased intuition, insight, and creativity; increased ability to view events and circumstances with dispassionate objectivity; enlightenment (identification as Self instead of self).
SPIRITUAL GROWTH AS DESCRIBED IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI
Paramhansa Yogananda: "I want to know sir - when shall I find God?"
Sri Yukteswar: "You have already found Him."
Paramhansa Yogananda: "O no, sir, I don't think so!"
Sri Yukteswar: My guru was smiling. "I am sure you aren't expecting a venerable Personage, adorning a throne in some antiseptic corner of the cosmos! I see, however, that you are imagining that the possession of miraculous powers is knowledge of God. One might have the whole universe, and find the Lord elusive still! Spiritual advancement is not measured by one's outward powers, but only by the depth of his bliss in meditation.
Ever-new Joy is God. He is inexhaustible; as you continue your meditations during the years, He will beguile you with an infinite ingenuity. Devotees like yourself who have found the way to God never dream of exchanging Him for any other happiness; He is seductive beyond thought of competition.
How quickly we weary of earthly pleasures! Desire for material things is endless; man is never satisfied completely, and pursues one goal after another. The 'something else' he seeks is the Lord, who alone can grant lasting joy.
Outward longings drive us from the Eden within; they offer false pleasures which only impersonate soul-happiness. The lost paradise is quickly gained through divine meditation. As God is unanticipatory Ever-Newness, we never tire of Him. Can we be surfeited with bliss, delightfully varied throughout eternity?
.... meditation furnishes a twofold proof of God. Ever-new joy is evidence of His existence, convincing to our very atoms. Also, in meditation one finds His instant guidance, His adequate response to every difficulty."(Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramhansa Yogananda,1946,pp.148-149.)