Growth is the only evidence of life. John Henry Newman
I watched a Masterclass online for the first time last night. It was given by Robin Sharma who is an author, coach, motivational speaker, and leadership expert to many big companies. I clicked on Conscious Life News at around 6:30 p.m. in my mail and learned about this online class there. It was the last day to watch for free and I became interested because it said: “Robin Sharma says that the #1 purpose of life is to GROW!” I saw there were only two sessions left and I decided to watch the 9 p.m. which was the last one.
It is my personal belief that we are here to become the best version of ourselves that we can and that this state of being can only come through constant growth. I had the feeling that Robin and I had a lot in common. As the masterclass began and I watched, I realized that whatever growth I have experienced in life and will experience hadn’t come through goal setting. It came through the school of hard knocks and situations that no longer fit the “me” I was becoming or had become. It also came about through situations I wanted to change. “An authentic and genuine life grows like a sturdy tree. And like a tree, it grows slowly. Every time you make a different and better decision, it grows a little. Every time you choose to do the right thing, even when nobody would find out otherwise, it grows a little. Every time you act with compassion, relinquish your right to strike back, take a courageous stand, admit fault or accept responsibility, it grows a little.” ~ Steve Goodier
Robin Sharma’s sees growth as a goal and I see growth as inevitable in life. That is because I am sixty-eight and have had many life experiences and growth opportunities. This growth and opportunity has come to me through living. If I were younger and about to climb the corporate ladder, Robin’s teaching would be something that would appeal to me. He has excellent tools for growing and I learned a lot from the Masterclass. He comes across as a genuinely good human being. I have to admit that a lot of what was said, I already knew. “It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.” ~ Mitch Albom
As I’ve been traversing this life, I have been constantly learning. Many of the beliefs that I held when I was younger had to be thrown out as I became aware of actualities. E.g. I always believed the fairy tales that ended with: “And they lived happily after.” Usually the prince would somehow rescue the young girl and they would walk off into the bliss of everlasting love.
I believed in a fairy-tale kind of love until people near and dear to me starting divorcing and remarrying. Some people I know remarried three times. This experiential kind of learning cannot but help one to see that people do not all live “happily ever after.” The fact is that it is possible to love many people in a romantic sense more than one time in the course of a lifetime. I had to grow into a different belief. “If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch outside your comfort zone, then you are forced to expand your consciousness.” ~Les Brown
There is the kind of growth by default and the kind that is conscious. It may be that a person is conscious of their dissatisfaction with their living and working life. They decide to take a course in a different subject and upgrade their skills over the course of a year. After completion of the course, they are able to acquire a different position at a higher salary. With this higher salary, they are able to move from a bachelor apartment to a one-bedroom. This gives them a better lifestyle and at the same time their self-confidence grows. They decide to take more courses and upgrade their skills further. In this scenario, growth takes place in many areas of this one person’s life. “The key to growth is the production of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” Lao Tzu
In lots of other areas of life, there is a conscious movement towards growth. Many people are consciously seeking spiritual growth these days. They don’t seem to be looking to follow any particular religious group as most of them already belong to one. I notice they are more focused on getting in touch with the “Higher Self” within. As Amrit Ray says: “Spirituality is not adopting more beliefs and assumptions but uncovering the best in you.”
For myself, I feel that I’ve been experiencing what might be called spiritual growth in more ways than one. I’ve been coming to feel the Oneness and interconnectedness of all things more and more over the last five years. I’ve noticed too that I feel that I don’t need very much by way of material things. I feel that food, clothing, and shelter are enough. Where other people are concerned, I feel that where I was once judgmental, I am becoming more understanding. The feeling that the most important thing is to have a peaceful mind causes me to “let go” when a situation may be getting difficult. There are a few others but those give some idea of what I consider a smidgen of growth.
If anyone would have told me that Robin Sharma’s masterclass would have caused me to write a post on growth, I wouldn’t have believed them. We are all growing in so many different ways throughout a lifetime and as long as we’re on the journey, growth never ends. We are all works in progress. Since the last area of growth I spoke about was spiritual growth, this Martin Luther quote is a good one to end with. “This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
