Technician
Although it would be ideal to begin our spiritual journey in our early 20s, it makes little difference whether one is in their 30s or even 40s. Once we have dealt with our apprenticeship issues, we are ready for a much deeper self examination and transformation. This will also include changing a number of our attitudes and behaviors.In our vocation, a key focus is to develop a win-win attitude toward our peers and colleagues. It also means learning to think through issues in a different way until we can deal with the causes underlying problematic situations in our life. It will naturally further include committing time and effort to further developing our expertise and leadership skills.During this phase of growth, we also learn to live our entire life based on a new orientation. This is a consistent orientation of generosity to others, being self-responsible for our energy expression and balancing our internal masculine and feminine nature in order to remove our projections and expectations regarding those key individuals in our life.By the end of this phase, we have made both internal and outer self-adjustments to live our life and relationships based on other centered, not me centered. We have firmly in place a strategic orientation to and goals within our chosen vocation. At the same time we have reviewed and resolved key issues with the opposite sex and our romantic relationships. Our focus on change and transformation now covers both our vocational and home life.Leadership
This next phase of growth can be viewed as living the life of Job. We experience key successes and accomplishments, especially within our vocation. We also experience various changes, some chosen while some inflicted, that reveal and integrate a number of soul characteristics into our personal life. Even though this phase will seem the most arduous on our spiritual journey, we will have more spiritual help now than any other time on our spiritual quest.Vocationally, and in life, we now learn to live our agreements or change them based on a consistent set of principles. We also face our "shoulds and should nots" to remove key limitations and internal obstacles to our future. We further develop a means of deep listening and serving others with a sense of joyous humility. At the same time we're developing a new level of creativity, we also learn to qualify our life activities based on conscious intent and an intuitive spiritual focus. Additionally, we further become able to identify our life's "Achilles' heel" and how to transform it into our greatest spiritual gift.Our life of Job becomes the crucifixion of our Personality and Ego in living our new Soul directed life with faith and gratitude in our spiritual source. In doing so, we gain a new understanding and appreciation for key spiritual terms including obedience, integrity and truth. All in all, we are forced to face not only the remaining unpurified parts of our Personality, but also our various Soul problems from past lives.This part of every spiritual Path is designed to separate those who strive for spiritual growth and those who live it. Our saving grace is the powerful and expanded spiritual forces which become our allies and catalyst to persevere through this difficult period. Various intuitive and inspirational faculties open up to us, which can include telepathy, spiritual healing, inner vision, pure reasoning, realization and revelation. As drastic as this phase is, we are at the same time even more powerfully motivated to living spiritually regardless of the changes that will come.The Professional's Spiritual Path
by Jef Bartow
Most all of us spend from a few years to many decades working in a vocation or career to make a living. Our spiritual endeavors become our focus in other areas of life and time away from work. The traditional guru/Master/ teacher of many spiritual Paths are not usually a part of any vocation, whether in business, science, the arts, education or government. With the Aquarian Age of self-responsibility for spiritual growth, we now have an opportunity to integrate our spiritual passion with our means of making a day-to-day living.The “Spiritual Path” is most assuredly a path of psychological transformation and human transmutation until we each become our potential as a spiritual Being. Most of the specific Paths defined during the Piscean Age (about 500 B.C to the 1600s A.D.) rely on a guru/Master/teacher to provide the structure and direction for the student. Within psychology, our guide is usually the therapist. As we fully move into the Gemini (communication/education) phase of the Aquarian Age, we can replace the Piscean guru/Master/teacher with an integrated structure and process for psychological/spiritual growth to Mastery.The process for spiritual growth in the past would seem to be very different depending on which Eastern or Western philosophy/theology one embraces. In actuality, they can all be synthesized by what has been defined within metaphysics as the "Initiatory Process" (accelerated growth vs. evolution). Insightfully documented by Alice A. Bailey during the first half of the 20th century, the Initiatory Process does not utilize symbols or terms from any one growth Path, but integrates aspects of many. Unfortunately, neither metaphysics nor other growth Paths have been able to provide a systematic structure for accomplishing conscious attainment of our higher spiritual "Self" within the parameters of normal day to day life or life expectancy.
Images on this page provided by: Jenny McCarthy
By looking into the energetic science of astrology, we find a powerful key to a systematic structure which can reduce and finally eliminate the need for our therapist/guru/teacher. The process-centered astrology of Dane Rudhyar integrates our life processes of involution, evolution and devolution with a psychological astrology. Through integrating this process-centered astrology with the Initiatory Process in spiritual growth, a truly Aquarian Age spiritual Path for Professionals becomes possible.An Aquarian Spiritual Path for Professionals
Different than each and every spiritual Path defined and utilized in the past, this specific Path is based on utilizing our career or vocation as the primary catalyst for key parts of our spiritual journey to Mastery. Naturally, it is well-suited for today’s professional, whether in business, the sciences, the arts, education and even government. This unique spiritual Path can just as easily be utilized by anyone who enjoys their vocation and the major focus of time it takes to make a living in life.The Initiatory Process for spiritual growth, regardless of Path, teaches us to develop spiritual relationships and behaviors with those in the outer world and with a variety of inner spiritual Beings, including our own internal Soul and God Within. Our Aquarian Spiritual Path for Professionals will certainly cover our current and past day-to-day relationships. It will also help us orient to key spiritual relationships and behaviors that will help accelerate our spiritual journey. In fact, many of the spiritualizing practices will also directly focus on creating a different orientation and attitude toward various parts of ourselves. Spiritual growth, like life, involves various cycles and phases. Utilizing the cycles of life defined within astrology provides an excellent way of incorporating various life cycles into our spiritual growth. For our Professional’s Spiritual Path, key phases can be defined consistent with other Paths to spiritual Mastery.Each of us in each embodiment must build a Personality. A significant part of our psyche and Personality are built based on the conditioning from our childhood and adolescent experiences. Until we build a conscious connection with our Soul, we are as much a product of the outer world as we are of our internal character. Therefore, the first two phases of this spiritual Path are focused on fully developing our self and a new orientation to our career. Once we have completed these two phases and have a balanced integrated personal self, we're then ready to become Soul focused on our way to becoming a spiritual Being.Apprenticeship
Success in the outer world has been accomplished in the past and present through apprenticeship. One apprentices with a successful artisan, businessman, etc. to learn the trade. Today’s “conventional wisdom” of being all you can be now says we must later identify a mentor to help us accelerate our development and success. This mentor provides us with wisdom, instruction and connections to help us along a difficult journey to higher success. This very much parallels the spiritual growth relationship of the teacher/student or the guru/chela. Today’s colleges do not teach us a trade, but normally prepares us for the outer world through a nurturing maturing period of self development. This continues in our first job or work situation until we develop our own plan for further progression. As far as our vocation goes, we apprentice in our chosen field as the beginning of a career.Besides the natural maturing that takes place in our 20s, we can also begin our accelerated growth process by focusing beyond our conditioning. Facing our fears and insecurities is a good first step. Identifying and resolving how we behave with the "Herd" instinct and parental conditioning will bring us to a point of defining our own set of values. Within our vocation, first steps on our spiritual journey include developing a strategic vision for our career. Other spiritual practices will help us develop a proactive non-competitive team orientation to our work environment. As may be obvious, this will already set us apart from our peers and "business as usual."Integral
This last phase to spiritual Mastery is far less about vocational accomplishments as it is about spiritual success. Our strategic vision will have gone through significant change, even though we still may not have a clear indication of our destiny in this life. Outer world recognition of our internal transformation may not be evident or appreciated. But since we have internalized our source of inspirational and direction, it is of little consequence.This phase of grounding our spiritual nature into our day-to-day life becomes characterized by charity, compassion, balance, equanimity and self surrender. In our glass of spiritual accomplishment, we become truly focused on the air, not the water while learning to know when it's time for change. Many times it also includes a new focus in developing and expressing our expertise, both personally and Soul revealed.We also begin developing additional spiritual senses which can include knowing, higher creativity, comprehension, synthesis and discernment. Consciously, we now operate daily from our spiritual Self (Christ Self). If we continue to pass our spiritual tests, we make the "Assumption," which initiates us to the position of Master or Adept in Earth’s spiritual hierarchy.What is fantastic about this spiritual growth Path, like all others, is that we may not become a CEO, Nobel laureate, famed artisan or community leader. Our life will most certainly have changed in most areas, most all for the better spiritually, but not necessarily materially. What we do realize is that we’re always in the process of transcending our past and present to touch, then embrace and finally live our God Within.
