Enlightenment sometimes seems like a slow, arduous process that takes great tenacity and perseverance. Enlightenment begins with what I refer to as “the awakening of soul consciousness”. How or why it happens to individuals is still that great mystery that only you can discover. Generally this “awakening” happens when people get tired of life being the way it has always seemed to be. A person wakes up one day and says they don’t believe any of the lies they have been taught or been living as their life and salvation anymore. They begin to search internally to discover who they are and what will give them purpose in life. This experience feels as if you are breaking free from some invisible prison you’ve been held within. To others it is like shedding a skin or coming out of a new womb and yet for others it is like the death of the old and birth of the new. No matter what the individual experience, this is always where the quest for enlightenment begins.

Here is the starting point where you now become a neophyte in a world of mysteries that you may have never even imagined existed. Like a newborn babe you are drawn to books, adventures, and tools to help you through this process of change and discovery.

Enlightenment is a vast field of learning that can seem somewhat overwhelming at times. Your appetite for learning is so ravenous that you read everything you can get your hands on. You soon find that some things make sense and you can agree with them and others are simply just too far out. Suddenly you may wish to study mysticism, ancient religious texts, past lives, dreams, shamanism, gods and goddesses, and mythology takes on a whole new meaning as does origins and history. While you go through all this new learning, feelings within your being begin to awaken and a kind of remembering begins. You have Deja Vue experiences and simply know that you have been to certain places or seen certain things. It is as if your senses are becoming alive in a way that they had been dormant before.

Nature now becomes much more alive and intriguing than you remember and you develop a keen sense of understanding and love for the earth and her inhabitants. You begin to enjoy more of the silence in life and you realize that you are the only person you are really at war with. You decide that you should try some form of meditation or yoga and Ti Chi, all the while realizing that something inside of you is moving and driving you now to discover new purpose in life.

Soon you discover some new tools and disciplines to use to help you silence the mind and begin to heal the pain and suffering of the past that you’ve carried for so long. This is old emotional and mental baggage and what I refer to as old conditioning and beliefs about self, life and others. Now you have the opportunity to discover that you do not have to be any particular personality, that you can change or just unload the past and begin to create anew. Because when we first discover that there are many layers of the onion we are to heal, peal and eliminate, this part of our journey seems to be the most arduous. It is so because the layers of the onion that you begin to eliminate may have been with you for many lifetimes. You may actually have become very accustomed to the conditions of the lives you’ve worn as your armor. You will discover that some things are easy to let go of and that others will take more time.

In order to move from the neophyte to the place of the Initiate is to begin freeing the Inner Child. Who is the Inner Child and why is this so important? The Inner Child is the innocence, love, trust and spiritual light that resides within each and every individual. The Inner Child becomes damaged or buried early on in each lifetime due to the stress of environment and survival. Retrieving this sensitive emotional part of self is mandatory to complete a connection with spirit. Spirit is innocence love and trust. You must restore this knowingness within you to know spirit. One cannot know spirit through scholarly works and reading, nor can they know spirit from outside actions alone. One can only discover and remember who they are as spirit by going back to the core of the child within that they are. Those who do this have the opportunity not only to heal themselves and the child within, but also become their own best friend for life.

There are many rays of light that are written about with different arenas of learning that we walk each lifetime, much like the keys of a piano. We must learn to advance and experience all of our levels of consciousness in each lifetime to become a Great Initiate and later an Adept. Initiation is an experience that we adhere to as a means of achievement and accomplishment. Without initiation there is no movement, without movement no growth.

Spiritual growth is attainable and sustainable only by those who have the perseverance to go through and receive the many initiations necessary to master the self. The human is weak the spirit is strong and the soul is the intermediary. Studying what your soul is and how to use it along with your Chakra centers and energetic vibrations will be the greatest tools you acquire. Without the awareness of how you are energy and consciousness you will not develop quickly. Remember the Inner Child is key to all of this.

The neophyte part of the journey is somewhat like the honeymoon. Here you see and feel everything as being new and exciting, you begin to use and develop your intuition and see how it helps guide you in a benevolent direction. As you reach the beginning stages of initiation the path of enlightenment begins to get more serious and you need to concentrate and focus on yourself and the changes you need to create.

Initiations come in cycles. You may have several small initiations happening at the same time while working within a grand initiation that you started some years or lifetimes ago. Initiations seem like tests yet they are the necessary steps to evolvement. Through many initiations we feel as if we have already handled or healed a condition or pattern that we no longer wish to associate our self with. Yet it is the pattern that has not been resolved at the root and core level that you will work on until it is healed and integrated. Just as we change our patterns of feeling, so must we change our patterns of thinking.

The mind is an interesting and complex device that has been running our life and telling us how to feel and think for way too long. When one evolves and begins their journey of awareness and consciousness they realize that they must also re-train the mind. The conscious mind, or left brain hemisphere, acts solely as a computer memory. The information you receive from this hemisphere is the information you stored and experienced somewhere along the way this lifetime. If you want your rational mind to share new information with you, you must directly input new information and remain intent on doing so. Paying attention to how you think and feel are the only way you will accomplish this feat. Continual use of affirmations and self-dialog will assist you every step of the way. Remember that you are now solely responsible for the realities you create in thought and feeling.

During the initiate phase of ones journey they learn to open and heal the heart. The heart has many chambers within it and holds many secret mysteries that each person must reveal before becoming an Adept. The heart is your treasure chest of wealth and wisdom. It contains the hidden mysteries of where you originated from and where you shall be going after death. It is the sanctuary for the Inner Child and for spirit as well as record keeper of unconditional love and enlightenment. When the heart is open and the innocence returned you can then begin to manifest and create your own personal world. Now you inter into the beginning phase of being an Adept.

Being an Adept simply means that you have studied and now understand some of the Universal, Cosmic and Divine laws that govern the path of enlightenment. You now have healed into the light of love that you are and have done a degree of service to that love that now allows you to move forward in your divine evolutionary path of light. You can now take your tools and awareness and create for yourself.

Being an adept in no way means that you will not experience initiation, actually just the opposite applies. Being an adept means you understand the purpose of initiation in life and you adhere to it as a major process that will always be with you. Initiation now becomes a tool for advancement that you cannot live without. Your intuition is now guiding nearly every phase of your life as you become more and more familiar with all of your senses working together, rather than just the outer ones.

Becoming the Adept, you now have a responsibility to yourself to live the truth of light you have discovered. You must walk the talk, as they say, and stand in your truth even in the face of the mighty opposing forces of materialism and survival. You are now to find a balance that will suit your spiritual needs as well as your practical ones. It is as if you have a new tightrope you must learn to walk, balance and master. This journey is both exciting and explorative as you develop your skills to create and manifest new realities.

Throat Chakra and Causal body is where you create and manifest. Causal body is where the laws of cause and effect take place. It is also the consciousness that connects us to the awareness of the laws governing karma.

The word Adept itself sounds to have a ring of prestige and knowledge about it. It leads one to believe that they have now have attained good judgment and awareness that shall allow them to strategically advance with greater ease. Actually being an adept is another phase of spiritual evolvement that requires the earnest attention to learning and creating thus far. You now become the teacher and example to others while still learning to balance your own human and spiritual needs and desires.

Being the Adept you now also answer to the spirit essence of light and life within and without. You create and stick to your disciplines of meditation and contemplation. Your decisions include you first checking your spiritual intuition and surrendering to your highest potential of light. Clarity is a more visible as you inspect what is truly of value and importance in life. You see the big picture now and understand that you are part of a force and a cycle that is moving with all other cycles.

As an Adept you realize the importance of such things as Sacred Ceremonies, Mantras and Affirmations. You are experiencing realizations on a fairly regular basis now and are actualizing as much as possible. You still have many doubts and become aware that though you understand truth from your perspective, that there are many others who do not agree with your awareness or perspective. You begin to realize how alone your spiritual journey really is.

With this alone time you discover that being alone and lonely are two distinctly different things. Being alone is where you discover who you are as spirit. Being lonely is when you seek the company of another in order to feel a part of. You can be alone and know you are a part of the whole, but when you are lonely, you feel isolated and depressed.

It is during the journey of being the Adept that you are addressing all the whys and wherefores of how you feel and transmute them. You learn how to identify all of the inner parts of self and heal and integrate them at a new level. The many parts or facets of each individual make up the entire person and need healing at each level of growth and development you sustain. So many times individuals think that because they had addressed certain aspects of self while being the neophyte and initiate that those patterns from the past will not ever resurface again. This is misnomer. At each stage of growth and expansion you reach you will discover that there are old patterns within that still need attention and evolvement. From what I can perceive the need to heal and integrate the emotions and past continues with you all along the path of life.

Too often the Adept finds fault with the self, thinking they should be more advanced than they are. They feel that you should have already attained mastery over themselves and get discouraged when realizing they still have a long journey ahead. Sometimes the Adept will fall down from their tightwire because they lose their balance. Being an Adept seems to carry more of the dark night of soul experiences than they had foreseen. Yet for those who dig their heels and determine to shed new light and awareness into their soul and themselves, the experience is rewarding and inspires them to new heights of love and compassion.

Becoming an Adept requires us to learn to love ourselves in the most intimate and spiritual manner. Walking this path requires tenacity and a lot of faith in what one believes.

When I began my path I spent approximately seven years at each of these three phases. The Neophyte, The Initiate and The Adept. After about twenty-one years of being on my spiritual path I reached the next level called Mastery.

Mastery is involved with the Higher Chakra Centers all learning to work in unison while teaching the lower. It was not me that told myself I was at the Mastery level, but The Masters themselves as well as the wonderful Archangels I work with.

Mastery does not mean, as some have said, that you no longer need your human experience. Mastery does bring more responsibility to your spiritual truths and values and helps you to express and share them more readily with others.

Just as being the Adept was a journey in time and timelessness so is mastering your own human nature, being a spirit in human form. This is another level of balance that one must procure to go even further in their spiritual development and evolutionary process of enlightenment. Mastery is just that, learning to master your life and every level of life you have ever been. Though the Ascended Masters are rarely in physical form, they too had to attain different degrees of mastery to become ascended Masters.

No matter what part of the path of light you are on, there are and always will be degrees of attainment and mastery to discover. I can not tell you what comes beyond Mastery, as I have not yet reached that point. I can tell you that I am still early on in Mastery program and since I spent seven years at each other level I assume I will spend at least that amount of time at this phase as well.

Remember that time only exists in ones own mind. Remember that timelessness is forever and when you dwell within the whole of evolution and enlightenment each life is but a phase of the others.

Each of us is part of the collective consciousness and the collective unconscious. We each have the ability to tap the awareness contained within all realms of eternity and light through the use of consciousness. The order or steps upon which we do this has been presented to you here today as it was presented to me and all of the others I know who follow their spiritual path of light and enlightenment.

When we choose to follow our spiritual path of enlightenment our life and focus change. Our commitment and dedication to our own evolutionary path are what defines our progress. Since life itself is no great bundle of joy, walking the path of spirit is a joyful reprieve. Spiritual enlightenment will take you places in peace, understanding and love that you never knew existed. It can free you to be the authentic true Inner Light of light you were originally designed to be. What a wonderful blessing to have.