The Importance of Different Spiritual Approaches (Consciousness and Evolution Program) — YouTube from the CEC Library

Why are there so many different spiritualist approaches? This question is fundamental to understanding the difficulty of choosing a path of growth and evolution. Finding happiness and light requires effort. It is not enough to declare that you are going to evolve and have everything you need in order to be happy; life does not work that way. A human being is born into a family nucleus where each person is different. If we were alike, we would have identical physical bodies, but that is not the case. The effort is personal; our experiences and the way we deal with life are individual work. The greatest work we have on this planet is ourselves. Profession has no relation to what we need to do internally.

Regarding the various approaches to spirituality, my path involved visiting many places. I believe we will not find answers outside our own individual searching and questioning. We should be open, because following one line of knowledge can take us to unexpected places. Our work is one of liberation. In order to free ourselves, we need to free ourselves from ourselves. There is no podium or absolute pleasure at the end of the line. The path is one of continuous improvement, balance, and happiness, but it is individual and requires constant questioning.

We cannot claim that we hold the absolute truth about spirituality. In my searching, many places did not know how to answer my experiences, or their answers were contradictory. This leads us to keep investigating. The path I followed was one of on-site spiritual searching. Reading about spirituality is valid, but at some point we need our own experiences, which demand effort.

Reading books on spirituality does not make someone a spiritualist; it makes us candidates. Practicing once a week is only a rehearsal. We need to incorporate what we say into our hearts. We seek masters, gurus, and messengers because that is how we learn and how we put into practice what we have learned. Once, a person said that, after reading a collection of books, they were sorted out and had no problems. That is already a problem, because no one has enough competence to be. The path is a constant search, facing a powerful adversary: ourselves.

Ask yourself whether you can deal with your sexuality. We have a lot of difficulty, because we are bombarded with information that generates neediness, fears, and desires, whether consciously or subliminally. Subliminal advertising, for example, influences our desires without our noticing: in movie theaters, a message such as "Drink this beverage" was inserted every 24 frames, making people leave wanting to drink it. Questioning everything is important in order to understand spirituality better. Our questioning should lead us to ourselves. We cannot simply follow someone and expect to find the truth in an organized, linear way.

It is important to explore topics such as behavior, bioenergies, the vehicles for the manifestation of consciousness, the astral environment, physical and spiritual relationships, and the energies of the chakras. Each experience provides us with points of light. Meditative and energy practices lead us to a deeper understanding of life. Knowledge should be broad. Learning about different areas—such as planting, harvesting, or building—broadens our understanding of life and activates various rays of the chakras. The more we learn, the more we evolve as consciousness.

Spirituality meets us through our own effort. Knowledge should not merely be read, but lived, with openness to new reference points. There are no absolute truths; the universe is vast and full of possibilities. We should keep an open mind and always seek the next step, without becoming attached to dogmas. It is important to have mental flexibility in order to explore knowledge without barriers. We should search with an open heart, exploring different paths and sects, because each person has their own search for self-knowledge. Each person's level of consciousness determines their search, which is always a search for oneself.

We came here as an experience. You are your own experience and, suddenly, you ask yourself: "And now, what do I do?" Now, you should work on yourself in order to be better, broaden your universe, see beyond, and free yourself from the limitations we constantly create. We keep creating barriers. I remember a phrase by Reich that said we walk through life toward a prison.

We do not walk toward liberation. We create reference points all the time and, instead of helping us, they become stakes that surround us and keep us from seeing beyond. This is something we need to reflect on. We have dependencies on ourselves, brought about by human ignorance, of which I am also a part. Our ignorance keeps us from seeing others and ourselves. We need to overcome this. To do that, we should open windows and doors and observe the whole landscape without judging it as better or worse. In this way, we will win a space of happiness, which I consider very important.