Stages of Spiritual Development–The Formal and Institutional Stage

The Confession by Dicksee

 

Throughout this personal development and beyond blog I invite you into an awareness of stages of spiritual development.  Each stage of spiritual development involves resistance. and each stage or phase of spiritual development involves expansion.  What is loved and nurturing in one phase of spiritual development becomes the resistance to the next stage.  Each stage becomes a station when you are able to move between such stages through an act of will.

 

The stages of personal and spiritual development are not necessarily linear.  This means that they do not necessarily proceed from a to b but might in fact leap to stage f or g and back again.  This is why you might feel you are making progress in your personal spiritual development plan and all of a sudden you find yourself returning to old patterns that are reactionary and involve a degree of personal pain.  There is no one map that shows the stages of spiritual development.

 

However, with and open mind and an open heart many of the maps that are available can provide you with encouragement along The Road Less Traveled.  The Road Less Travelled is a book written by Dr. Scott Peck, who in a following book entitled Further Along the Road Less Travelled mapped out stages of spiritual development.  In this Further Along the Road Less Travelled Dr. Scott Peck breaks the stages of spiritual development into the following four stages

 

1. Chaotic/Antisocial.
2. Formal/Institutional.
3. Skeptic/Individual.
4. Mystical/Communal.

 

The writing that is featured here at this Personal Development and Beyond blog will suit those who are moving our of the Formal/Institutional stage of spiritual development.  The writings at this blog will also suit those who have moved beyond this second phase of spiritual development.  The personal development aspect of this blog will sometimes appeal to those at the Chaotic/Antisocial stage but they are unlikely to be attracted to the expansive invitation that is beyond the limited idea of the persona.

 

Formal/Institutional Stage of Spiritual Development

Stage II individuals (formal/institutional) tend to be attracted to dogma and ritual.  This dogma and ritual comes, not out of direct revelation, but out of a need to connect to a group identity.  These are individuals who often feel threatened by other individuals and groups who subscribe to some other form of dogma.  These are the kind of individuals who take their religious teachings quite literally.  They tend to give their authority in religious matters to a recognised institution and do not like to move beyond the subscribed teachings of such religious institution.    Such individuals take as fact the myths and stories of their spiritual teaching.  For example, the Stage II individual will take as fact the biblical story of the Garden of Eden.  They will assure you that there was once a man called Adam who was made from the earth and a woman called Eve who was made from this man’s rib.  They will assure you that the world was made in a period of six days and on the seventh day God, some form of superman, rested on the seventh day.

In this stage of spiritual development there is the satisfaction of feeling that you belong to the in crowd.  You never really question the authority of the institution because to do so would lead you to be cast outside the group.  I have seen this time and time again when individuals begin to move beyond Stage II and expand into questioning exactly what it is they subscribe their authority too.  Not all people who attend at religious institutions are at the Stage II level.  Fundamentalists of any kind tend to be living at this level of spiritual development.  They are very rigid in what they can allow themselves to believe and so to experience.  The spiritual direction that such Stage II individuals receive is vey much more of the same.  They berate themselves for having doubts and loss of faith when such experiences are often intimations from the soul that is breaking open the limitation that they cling too for dear life.

 

While in the Christian tradition the Bible maps the spiritual journey and the various stages of spiritual development in the highest level of spiritual experience called Christ consciousness the individual living at the Formal/Institutional stage of spiritual development pays such spiritual direction lip service.  They are content to try and live a life that they consider to be a life of doing good and avoiding sin.  They feed of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and try and avoid on part of the whole.  They do not follow the instruction of their teacher who told them

 

Greater things than these shall you do.

 

 

There is little or no point in trying to convince someone who has an entrenched view of the Formal/Institutional stage of spiritual development.  Theirs is a very rigid world view and your view of the world as more unified simply threatens them and the group consciousness to which the are aligned.  You see this rigidity in the laws of fundamentalist Islam.  Just in case you think this is exclusive to Islam it is not.  It is the history of witch burning and the history of the Crusades and various religious programs that took place throughout world history and are still taking place today.  When you challenge the established view of Formal/Institutional individuals you will meet with much resistance.  The security that exists for the individual within this stage of spiritual development will have to be given up.  Usually this means leaving the security of the established group but not always.  This does not only apply to religious groups but also to political and social groups.  It equally applies to families and friends.

 

Personally speaking this writer and storyteller thinks that it helps to know that levels of spiritual development exists and that everyone in time will journey through these different levels until they finally expand into the unity that created all things from no thing.  This is the meaning of the end of the world but has nothing to do with the extinction of the world.  The stage II individual takes the teachings about the end of the world as being the end of life on earth when in fact it means the direct experience of the end of time which is an experience the Stage IV individual is interested in living in and loving from.  For those of you who are interested in learning more about stages of spiritual development I list below books that I read on a regular basis and which I find inspire the invitations that are offered here at this Personal Development and Beyond blog.  Here are my recommendations for learning more about stages of spiritual development that will deepen your spiritual development.

 

 

1. Further Along the Road Less Travelled
2. The Essential How to Know God: The Essence of the Soul’s Journey Into the Mystery of Mysteries (Essential Deepak Chopra)
3. Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality
4. The Five Stages of the Soul: Charting the Spiritual Passages That Shape Our Lives

 

If any reader of this blog is interested in having a free 30 minute Spiritual Life Coaching session to discuss direction for living the wild and precious life simply email this storyteller and writer at  storyteller@tonycuckson.com to arrange such a session via Skype.   Only sincere, committed and disciplined individuals need apply.

OTHER GREAT CONTENT Here is some other material that will further your personal and spiritual development and your understanding of the various stages of spiritual development.

spiritual life coaching
NEW DIMENSIONS - Over the years, a wealth of practical knowledge and perennial wisdom has accumulated in the audio archives of New Dimensions, a virtual treasure trove of timeless wisdom.
SPIRITUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION - The study shows student life is enhanced if students engage in "inner work" through activities such as meditation or self-reflection
SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS MAGAZINE - SuperConsciousness is an inspiring, content-rich, evidence-based science and spirituality magazine focused on exploring innate human potential.