The tragedy for many of us is that we begin this miraculous journey and then we get stuck along the way.  Everyone is born into this miracle of life but many never begin the journey of the stages of spiritual growth.  Everyone is called to make this miraculous spiritual journey that is the journey of evolutionary consciousness but due to fear of the unknown choose to stay where they are.

The masters and avatars of all times have mapped in full the staged journey of spiritual growth.  They have put signposts along the way that point the way into the fullness of the unknown but the knowable.  Their lower level of consciousness followers, however, formed an organised religion around these signposts and gathered followers around such signposts.  They then forbade such followers to take the journey and made them into believers.  Believers are those who know the signposts rather than the experience of the journey of faith into the unknown beyond the written word.

At these higher stages of spiritual growth one walks the way alone but also in company.  The company is not like a hierarchical church that say it knows how you should walk the way but is the inner guidance that is available from realms beyond the senses, beyond linear thought and beyond prescribed scripts.

For the most part hierarchical religion wants those who walk the Way to walk the prescribed way which is the way of their given belief system.  The hierarchical institution is not interested in facilitating the glory of the journey but is more interested in maintaining the prescribed map that takes you only as far as the institution allows you to go.  For the most part the hierarchy of religious institutions are at the level of mythic consciousness.  They have throughout history fought tooth and nail the advance of science and spiritual freedom of the individual.

The real walking the pilgrims way begins when, metaphorically speaking, you take up a certain kind of walking staff.  This walking staff is your personal authority in matters of your spiritual growth.  This does not mean you are required to leave the church or religious community you belong to but it does mean that the church is not your authority in spiritual matters.  Your authority arises from within.  It is your still small voice speaking from within you.  In the spiritual move The Wizard of Oz this still small voice is represented by the dog Toto.  This is the representation of companionship and unconditional love.  In the Russian fairytale of Baba Yaga and Vasallisa the Beautiful this authority is represented by the little doll given to Vasallisa by her dying mother.  Vasallisa keeps this doll in her pocket as she travels deep into the dark of the forest.  The little doll signals wrong turns by becoming animated.

The Way begins in earnest when you begin to walk your talk and not the talk of the group dynamic or some outside authority that tells you how to think.  This beginning of the Way is beautifully illustrated in the Mary Oliver poem

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice–

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

In this poem Mary Oliver finally decides to risk the inner way.  She is tired of listening to all those voices that clamour for attention and who are shouting all their bad advice.  Finally she decides to recognise her own voice.  She strides the Way determined to do the only thing that she is able to do and that is save the only life that she can save.  This is her own life.

Where does your authority lie?  Are you one who has integrated those aspects within yourself that are unloved and who can then as a consequence affirm your real sense of self and say, “I can.”  This is the voice of your true authority.  This is a pre-requisite for moving further along the Way.  From this sense of integrity and the sense of your own strength you can, metaphorically speaking, move higher up the mountain where you will ascend into high states of spiritual growth that with practice become plateaus.

Or are you listening to the authority of your pastor, your priest or your guru who tells you that they know the Way.  There are even those who have the arrogance to proclaim that theirs is the only Way and that it is the truth and the Life.  It may well be that in reality but they are more often than not talking about an experience that they themselves tend not to have journeyed into and more often than not abort as a possibility in those who they profess to give spiritual direction to.

The Way is not easy.  It is easier to cling to signposts along the way.  It is easier to simply give one’s authority in matters of spiritual growth to someone outside yourself who seems more assured than you do.  All true teachers of the Way point the pilgrim of the Way inward.  All false teachers tie the pilgrim to the signpost.  There are plenty of signposts along the Way.  There is the Bible, the Koran, the Gita and the Dharmapada.  All of these signposts where written from the direct experience of the Way.  This direct experience is for the most part interpreted by those who talk about the journey but have never had the inward experience the signpost point to.  They have never journeyed to that place where the knower and the knowing are one and not simply something that one knows about.  This knowing is at least a sixth stage spiritual growth experience.  It is a stage where one has at least, for one glorious moment, seen the end point of this journey that is invited in this dimension of time and space.

The miracle is that this is happening to each and everyone of us.  It is happening now and it is happening forever.  The tragedy is that the very invitation to this glorious journey has been so filled with signposts by other lower level consciousness authority figures that the poor pilgrim cannot even move into their own space.  Nor are they even allowed to do so without great upset and resistance.  The Way is a glorious way but you have to travel it alone.  You have to become the one who truly authorizes the journey.  This journey will take you to places where you will not know what to do or how to go on.  The choice is then to cling to the signpost or move on and acknowledge that you don’t know where you are going but you are prepared to be faithful to the still small voice within.  You have to choose to leave behind all the bad advice and finally discover that

there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

This movie entitled The Way is for me a wonderful spiritual cinematic experience.  All my friends who watched it with me agreed that it was a wonderful uplifting movie.  If you watch it you might be inspired to find a new voice and recognise it as your own and stride out into the world and save the one life that only you can ever save. Enjoy this spiritual cinema experience with friends who you might choose to walk the Way with.  Hunt out move spiritual cinema experience and make it part of your spiritual practice.  It really is great fun.