Monday, October 10, 2011

Spiritual Counseling: The Seven Perceptions of God

The concept of God varies from soul to soul depending on each individual’s stage of evolutionary growth. When the soul is in its “infant stage,” it views God as a parent who looks after it, protects it and nurtures it. Our very own existence depends upon our faith in this God to take care of us and when someone else does not follow our God, our fight-or-flight mechanism is activated, threatening our very sense of survival.

As the soul matures into its “toddler stage,” the soul begins to develop its ego. At this point, a new God emerges, and this one is all powerful and mighty. We worship this God because we need to compete, achieve, and succeed in life. We need to feel superior to those around us and our God mirrors this need. He rewards those who are faithful to him and follow his commandments.

When the soul reaches “preadolescence,” we need to feel peace amongst a world that is hostile. This peace is only found when we turn to a God that provides love and comfort for us during times of great stress, anxiety, and chaos. He is a God who brings us peace of mind because we pray to him and follow the rituals of his doctrine.

The adolescent soul begins to understand that “being good” and “doing the right thing” has a greater reward than merely following the whims of the selfish ego. It’s accessing its intuition now and needs to learn understanding, forgiveness, and right action. It turns to a God who reflects these same inner, intuitive, and moral attributes of the Self. This God validates that we need to be a good person, practice high ethics, and exude strong moral values.

As the soul becomes a “teenager” its creative abilities evolve. New thoughts about the world emerge as we turn to a God who exemplifies our own creativity. We become inspired and motivated to become independent, rebel, follow our own path, and create something from nothing. Subsequently, we become devoted to a God who reflects these same qualities.

In the adult stage of the soul, we commune with a source of awareness or consciousness that feels like pure joy and bliss. This source is not of this world, but of a place beyond what we can see, smell, taste, hear, or touch. We turn to a God who performs miracles for us. We begin to notice serendipity and synchronicity in our lives. Our God is now genderless, yet is still perceived as a personality. This God allows for the supernatural to exist simultaneously with the ordinary and mundane.

In the final stage of the soul, or what I call the “butterfly stage,” the soul transcends its perception of the prior six stages completely. It is ready to become conscious of it Self. This is the stage of the sage, mystic, shaman, or yogi. When we reach this level of evolutionary consciousness, we understand that life is merely a reflection of our inner being. And that being is inseparable from God. Our concept of God broadens beyond the world of form to a place of the unmanifested no-thing-ness. This God is one with the all and in no way can ever be separate from any sum of its parts. This God reflects our own unconditional love for all of humanity. This butterfly stage is also the stage of the Next Human.

Jason Lincoln Jeffers is a spiritual counselor and personal life coach. His online life coaching program incorporates pain-body counseling, wellness coaching, law of attraction coaching, relationship coaching, astrology readings, and spiritual counseling.

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