I received this reaction in my mailbox.
A lot of people experience these type of
doubts one time or another in life…

“Dear Conrad,

What is the benefit of spiritual/personal growth? What is there to gain? Note I don’t mean it negatively.
I’m in the fifty years old, or young it depends on how you look at it.
I can tell you stories about my life. About compassion, love, losses, gratitude, regrets, etc.
It remain stories. Of success and failure.
The only thing which remains is the not knowing. The not knowing of how to do something or how to leave something.
It is making choices or have others make choices.
Behind every truth there lies another truth. According to different persons/ perspectives.
Pure emptiness, becoming dispassionate about my own story and that of others.
Beautiful words about connection, coincidence that doesn’t exist. Spiritual people who talk down other nationalities.
According to me, based on fear. Own people first?
Everything is love, whichever religion. Why than is the world the way she is?
Where does that love go when you don’t follow? Not give what is expected?
And how about money? When does it come to you? Storytellers with beautiful ideas, power, the right friends?
You know I’m open to many things, always have been. I like to learn many things. I’m also frustrated because I wonder if it makes any difference. Whatever you do or don’t do in your life. Eventually it are your own thoughts and emotions with which you are left behind.
And whatever you think about it is that of these to we don’t know where they are coming from. And why is it that we have precisely those thoughts/ emotions.
Meditation brings a temporary other awareness. Beautiful.
Yet, the world remains a chaos, at least until now. It has been going on like this for 2000 years at least.
When will the duality stop. When will the hunger stop, the war, the aggression?When will what we visualize come to us?
Practice patience in patience and waiting?
The years are passing. Not tomorrow, but now.
Now I would like to see results, feel, hear, smell, taste… experience.
For how long still… Do you know? Not only for myself, since who am I? But for humanity, mother earth, the animals, the cosmos?

With kind regards,
Riekie”

Well, I’m moved by a story like that…
I know this issue is one that sooner or later pops up for lots of people.
And that is a pity!

The only reason why these types of doubts rise to the surface, is because people don’t have a clear picture of the path of spiritual growth.

Why People Are Confused About Their Evolution And Spiritual Development?

A big part of the somewhat general knowledge about spiritual growth at this time, is a remainder from the hippy period. Vague translations, selective information without context, interpretations according to one’s own culture and more things that have diluted the information, have become the base for a new age spirituality.
The feel good – pink glasses approach to spirituality, where some nice elements from here and some nice elements from there are thrown together, without much coherency… is the way to confusion.

It is definitely not the way to get the results which are within the human potential on the path of spiritual growth.

Not only that, it is also due missing a rational framework, that people:

1) don’t know what they are looking for or should be looking for
If you don’t know where you are going, what your destination is… how could you ever  find the way to get there?
Very difficult… unless you stumble upon it by pure coincidence, luck, preparation from past lives and/or a dose of good karma.

2) can’t see the forest for the trees
If there is no coherency, no rational framework, no blueprint of the path… then the whole process plays in the form of collecting information, learning techniques, receiving insights… like you are collecting lots of pieces from a puzzle… only the puzzle is never put together.

This way you can collect hundreds of visions or theories, where you follow one theory for one week and another one the next month, and yet another one the month after that…without ever gaining a clear overview.
Let alone consistent practical application being possible… while just in that lays the key to real growth.

Some of the things you mention that disturb you, are stemming from an interpretation of that new age spiritual soup… now there is nothing wrong with that if those are your values and ideals… but you cannot confuse them with spiritual growth in itself.
For example the part about spiritual people there attitude towards other nationalities…

I have met some really advanced spiritual figures, of whom I especially recollect the xenophobe part. There was this Chinese guy for example who, within his lineage of spiritual development, had a not so nice attitude towards the not Chinese. While it being not so nice, I cannot judge him about this from out of my own culture/ views, I can only have understanding and accept this by trying to understand his behavior from within his culture and traditions.

How About Money?

Money, money is simple, like I explain in The Evolution Manifesto. Money is just a way to standardize the exchange of value. If you want money to come, you just find a value which can be a appraised in monetary terms. Do you want more money? Then you just find out how you can ad more value for more people.

The law of attraction groupies sometimes forget to point out the importance of taking action. And with that I don’t mean the action of hanging pictures of your dreams and desires on your wall and such.
Another problem I see rising up in that field, is that there are all these ‘attraction experts’ popping up like mushrooms out of the ground.   Under whom mainly people who know some mental principles, yet have totally no clue about how the mind works and its influence on the physical reality.
Instead of helping you in practice on your path of spiritual growth, they fill your head with increasingly more ideas, laws and rules. Instead of first critically studying them , testing them, and learn from their own experiences and research how the mind operates, they focus themselves on selling stories.

Eventually this is easier. And it sells better to, since people have become accustomed to collecting theoretical principles and making their heads more full…instead of first training their mind and body and gain the results they are really after.

War and such will probably not be ending anywhere soon (it has been going on since the time of the first people, much more than 2000 years). What can change is your role in it and your response to it.

How To Get Results NOW

The way to get results now…is to stop collecting theories about spirituality and instead focus on the practical spiritual development.

The scientific process where one first formulates a theory and then test it within the strict framework of the available knowledge at that time, is not useful for spiritual growth…

For spiritual development it is better to first have the practical experience yourself and based on that formulate a theory and then test it.

Not having results with visualizing? Keep doing the same thing and yet expect another result, seems not really useful. Give another technique a try for a while and notice when you are having results. Next you can analyze the underlying factors… and then optimize those.

The faster route is of course learning them from people who have already experienced the result in practise.

I have spend the last years searching for the practical steps in the process of spiritual growth.
A big part of my time was spend on searching people who had already accomplished the step I was looking for and were willing to teach me.
This is not so self evident as you might think. Contrary to what lots of people think, it is not so that these people are lining up to teach others or share their knowledge and experience with others.
Over the last years I have spend a lot of money and time on travelling, translations and such.
Sometimes I lived and ate in the house of my spiritual teachers, which allowed me to witness first hand how they lived and what they were doing from morning until evening.
Sometimes I slept in remote areas in the jungle or on the floor outside temples. Nothing was to much in search of the truth.
I had the good fortune and blessing that I could go through the practical training in a bunch of systems.  This allowed me to study them from within, gain my own experiences and compare the different styles of development. Because of this I could test my theories and adjust them, based on real world hands on results. In several of these there had never been any Westerners going through the training.

Where Does It Al Ends Up

I have compared the complete trajectory of spiritual development in numerous philosophies and religions. I found that there is a common line.
Where there is a clear starting point and a likely end stage.

Not every system allows you to reach the same level of development on that path.
Different systems attain a different maximum  level of attainment, a maximum level of growth which can be reached.

In other words, the ultimate stage of spiritual growth that can be attained in different systems, is not the same.

If you really want to go the full way, you need to know what the steps are, and which system can bring you to what step of the ladder.

Personal development is automatic side effect of climbing the ladder of spiritual growth.

What Are The Advantages Of Spiritual Growth?

Ultimately the only benefit over time is an increasingly greater understanding of reality (what is real and what is not) and an increasingly greater control over that reality.

The benefits of going through the true process of spiritual development, become evident in the latent potential in the power of the mind, paranormal or supernatural powers.

In each of the different paths in which the process of spiritual growth advances beyond a certain level, the practitioners will gain access to paranormal abilities or supernatural powers.
In several ancient texts these are described with words like: “perfections”, “accomplishments”, “successes”.
Which is an indication of them being considered as a positive result of going through a certain trajectory.
They are nothing more than a natural result of the increased insight and control over reality. The last is the real goal of spiritual growth. The awakening of these extra abilities is not the main goal, but they have the potential of making reaching the main goal easier if they are applied towards that.
I see over and over again that after people have developed a certain paranormal power and they test it in the real world for the first time… how fast they start to see it as something normal, just like when you first learn how to ride a bicycle or how to swim… that it becomes something you find normal pretty quickly.

The eventual end result according to me (at the time of writing this…) is self realization, in the sense of having total insight in to reality, accompanied with total control over that reality.

The increasing  level of control follows out of the increasing levels of insight into the nature of reality. The more insight you have in how reality operates, the more control you can have in this process.

There is a difference between insight in the form of dry knowledge and insight that is derived from deep realisation through your own experience.
By reading  ten or one hundred books on how to swim, you would still not be able to do it. You can only learn how to swim by going into the water.
It is up to you if you go in and if you jump in, go in carefully one toe at a time, slide in graciously, fall in or let yourself be pushed in.

So the specific advantage that you can obtain in your life depends thus on up to  which step of the ladder of spiritual development you have climbed. But these advantages already  become available in a practical way on the first couple of steps in the form of telepathy, clairvoyance, remote viewing… an improved emotional stability and well-being, a greater insight in your unique situation at this time, inner piece, overcoming obstacles more easy, increased energy levels… and more.

It is available to all, but at the same time it is up to each individual to go through the necessary steps.

Karma seems to play a role in this: the reaction to every action (in thought, speech, and doing). And this across several lives, when you suppose that consciousness survives after the death of the current physical form and can take on a physical form once more later on.
That role becomes apparent through the rising of hindrances, obstacles, in daily life to achieving exponentially higher levels of insight and control over reality.
Ultimately there are no obstacles; they are only steps on the stair.

Everyone arrives in this life with a certain optimal trajectory, one which will allow for you, in your specific situation, to achieve higher and higher levels of insight and control over reality. The degree to which you bring your life in line with your optimal path in life, dictates how fluent you can go through the process. Recognizing your optimal path in life and aligning your life with it, are skills that can be learned.