I have experienced the spiritual path as long, unfolding, and leading toward joyful realization of our true being—unity with God and life.

Ernest Holmes writes on Immortality in The Science of Mind: “The spiral of life is upward. Evolution carries us forward…Eternal and progressive expansion is its law and there are no breaks in its continuity.” Holmes was referring to our movement up and out of our present lifetime in the experience we call “transition.”

Yet the same process of spiraling up happens within the life we are living now and not just when we leave it—there is a natural lifting that seeks to carry us upward to higher awareness and greater freedom in living. We open to this lifting each day by feeling the flow of life through us, elevating our thoughts and behavior, healing past wounding, living consciously and spiritually to the best of our abilities, realizing more and more of our divine nature, expressing love, and giving from our talents and skills. To me, this lifting is what awakening consciousness is all about.

In the spiraling up, we may revisit issues—money, relationships, career, health, or others—that we’ve met and worked on before. “I thought I handled that,” is a statement often said when an old challenge appears again. And it was dealt with—but at a lower level of consciousness and with the skill of an earlier time. If eternal and progressive expansion is the law of life, then in each moment, we stand at a twist of the spiral higher—with an expanded perception and a deeper experience.

Dr. Peggy Bassett, a beloved colleague to many in our movement, once said, “We are still confused, but at a higher level and about more important things.” Her humor revealed something about unfolding consciousness. We spiral upward, sometimes covering ground we think we have walked before, but also seeing with fresh eyes that are increasingly wise. The movement of life is onward and upward every day if we will cooperate with its trajectory.