What does conscious development look like?

Human beings have an instinctive desire to grow and develop. It’s an integral part of our design - encoded into our very existence. Our soul starts out on its learning journey with a vague sense that it must acquire knowledge and experience. But early on in our development, we often get sidetracked. We delve into our incarnations with enthusiasm, but without the requisite wisdom to process all our experiences. We become enamoured of our temporary identities and lose sight of why we entered into that life in the first place. We mistake the created self as the source of our being and fashion mini-fiefdoms in its name. 

However, all through our journey, the soul’s innate desire to grow and develop is felt as an inner calling to continue on our way. Few people can put into words exactly why they feel compelled to seek, or what it is they are searching for, but almost all of us feel that influence in some way. And as we develop, that call gets stronger and more insistent - until it eventually becomes the sole guiding force of our lives.

What is it that the soul is learning? And why do we need to take human form in order to complete our lessons? 

Human incarnation on Earth is considered one of the ‘harder’ curriculums for the developing soul to take. The almost total amnesia (of our divine origin) that descends on us once we enter a physical body requires tremendous focus for the soul to penetrate. And of course, human emotion and thinking have a way of distracting us from the presence of our soul and the deeper aspects of our nature. Plus, life on Earth is almost always bound up with the necessity for survival - and we get busy!

To overcome these conditions, the soul must become conscious of itself and its origin. Consciousness is the only faculty that can break through the most immediate aspects of our human experience and connect into our lighter, freer (and truer) Self. Human incarnation is therefore the perfect test of the soul’s ability to develop conscious awareness. The ever changing nature of matter, emotion and thought teaches us to discern between truth and illusion. And the stranglehold the ego identity has on our sense of self can only be dissolved through persistent conscious attention.

It takes many incarnations before we become aware of the presence of our soul whilst in human form. And a great many more before we learn how to listen to, and act upon, the soul’s inner promptings. It is only in the final stages of our learning journey that we are able to maintain continuous conscious awareness of the soul and allow its nature to be fully expressed through our human faculties.  

The soul does take pit stops on its learning journey. We get ‘downtime’ between incarnations to regroup and reset intentions for the next. However, most of the soul’s ‘knowingness’ about its intentions for any particular incarnation is not immediately accessible once we take on another human form. We have to make an effort to connect into that; to ‘wake’ ourselves up from inevitable human forgetfulness, and remember what we came here for. 

This is where self-development comes in. An effective self-development journey should do the following (as a minimum):

• Give you a context for your human life so you can see the bigger picture

• Help you understand your being; its design, nature and function

• Provide a roadmap to help you navigate human experience - consciously

• Support you to keep going when life-lessons get tough

• Offer you a higher vision of your being that you can work towards

And I’ll add a few more that are personally important to me… 

• Share the Truth (universal realities that apply to all of us beyond personal preference, faith & expression)

• Extend love, compassion, care and kindness to all souls on their journey (even so-called tough love needs to be delivered with genuine kindness)

• Marry individual development with collective good (because we’re all in this together)

• Honour the beauty and intelligence of all forms of Life on our planet (as equal contributors to the web of life, and therefore deserving of our respect)

If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that your feet are already on a path of intentional, conscious development. And although each of our journeys is unique - because no two souls are exactly the same - there are commonalities in our learning experience. For instance, anger is felt pretty much the same way by all beings. Only the cause of the anger changes.  So too with love, joy, jealousy, greed and every other emotion we can think of. This is because the ‘hardware’ of our being follows the same design, and so it functions the same in all of us. Once we learn about our design, nature and function, we understand how we got to our present state, and we can generate the experiences we wish to have going forward. 

However simple that sounds, the journey from unconsciousness to full consciousness is not a straight line. Many learners express frustration at going around in circles (sometimes for years) as they try to be more intentional and conscious, overcome limiting patterns and habits, and reach for (seemingly elusive) higher states of awareness. Real and lasting conscious development takes commitment, perseverance and perspective. We have to re-dedicate ourselves to the task after every apparent setback or disappointment. Along the way, we have to foster almost super-human levels of willingness, acceptance, trust and faith - not to mention humility (that rarest of human attributes).

Put like that, you may wonder why anyone would undertake the journey in the first place. Why not just stay cosy and comfortable in our human sleepiness, and take our wins where we find them? The bald truth is - we don’t have a choice, at least not indefinitely. Our soul might allow for the occasional diversion, but it has its own agenda, and wants to get on with it. The higher aspect of our soul which is forever connected to our Higher Self (our Divine Self), knows that our true nature is one of expansion, light and harmony. It knows that if we can become conscious of this, we get to experience unprecedented levels of pleasure and enjoyment (far beyond the fleeting highs of the ego). It also knows that as we grow in consciousness, we also grow in influence. We become a conduit for love, light and higher frequencies that are made available to others coming along the path behind us. And finally it knows that our Divine Self is our true self. At some point any limitation on that feels more uncomfortable than the effort required to move beyond it. 

We are now entering a stage in our collective development where humanity is finally grasping that there’s more to life than meets the eye. And although this is not yet widespread, and there’s still no universal agreement on what a human being is or what Life is, there is a noticeable shift in consciousness. Awareness of subtle energy, the intelligence of nature, quantum realities and even consciousness itself are seeping into the zeitgeist and becoming more accepted. 

There is a bubbling up of new ‘discoveries’, new insights, new realisations. There are new studies that reveal the hidden (and often miraculous) workings of our world. There are new initiatives that seek to incorporate a more holistic worldview and instigate a more rounded social approach. There are new business enterprises that try to marry commerce with purpose (a few genuine ones). At the time of writing, we are still waiting for the majority of our politicians, financiers, scientists and academics to understand - and represent - our true reality.

Widespread collective change happens when the groundswell of consciousness shifts from one paradigm to another. And although this can be supported by a top-down (governmental) approach, the current ‘awakening’ of humanity is being driven by the millions of individuals who are answering the call of their soul and striving to align their human lives with the Truth of their (whole) being. 

So that just leaves me to say - thank you. Thank you for answering the call. Thank you for being willing to go through hard lessons. Thank you for every kind thought, word and deed. Thank you for caring about the state of our world.  Thank you for trusting in the goodness and beauty of Life. 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

And keep going. The world needs you. 

With love and appreciation,

Jeddah