by Jonathan Robinson: Technology is changing our lives in an ever-accelerating manner. Just 15 years ago, smartphones didn’t even exist.
Now, virtually everyone owns one. While technology has long transformed how we communicate, work, and live, it has just recently begun to impact how we search for God, inner peace, and all things spiritual. Yet, in the near future, how we go about spiritual development will be dramatically renovated by new ideas and methods.
Before the internet, people had a hard time learning about different spiritual paths and “secret” methods. If you wanted to know about a certain guru, you often had to visit him or her in person. Nowadays, every teacher and teaching known to humankind is available for free on YouTube. Yet, such technological changes are not necessarily transformative. For the most part, people still practice their childhood religion, go to church, meditate, and pray the way they did 2000 years ago. What’s needed is a more effective and quicker way for people to find the “heaven within.” Luckily, such approaches have started to crop up.
In a perfect world, our desire for inner peace and spiritual advancement would occur similarly to how we currently get medical assistance. When we go to a doctor, we expect them to diagnose exactly what’s wrong with our health and give us a remedy that will—as quickly as possible—restore our health. In general, the recommendations of our doctor are based on extensive scientific studies, and therefore tend to be quite effective.
On the other hand, when we go to a church or a spiritual teacher, they largely fail to diagnose our specific spiritual condition and needs, and therefore can rarely offer us precise, tailor made spiritual remedies. This “one-size-fits-all” approach to spiritual assistance is neither efficient nor effective. After all, just because you grew up as a Christian does not necessarily mean that going to church is currently your most helpful path to spiritual evolution.
So, given the current situation, how might people become spiritually mature more efficiently? There are many ways that new spiritual understandings and methods could help people to evolve. One simple way people could better tap into their spiritual nature would be if we had a better way to “diagnose” exactly what they needed. Isn’t that the way doctors work? They do various tests to determine what’s wrong with you, then based on that information, they offer a remedy.
Unfortunately, until recently there have been few good models for diagnosing what a given seeker needs. Without the ability to identify what someone needs, being able to offer an appropriate remedy has been mostly guesswork. The good news is that authors Ted Strauss and Carole Griggs have recently developed a model that can effectively diagnose the state of someone’s spiritual health or maturity. They call their model “iConscious.” Their book about this model is called, “iConscious: Accelerating Human Potential.”
The iConscious model attempts to identify exactly how “advanced” a person is in each of five different spiritual Domains. The categories they attempt to measure are labeled as Consciousness, Uniqueness, Mind, Emotions, and Body. When using the iConscious model, participants are asked to answer approximately 80 questions, after which they get a score that signifies the level they are at (from level 1 to 14) in each of the five Domains.
The five Domains were chosen to represent five ways of measuring spiritual maturity. A person who is advanced in all of these domains would be a very evolved person. Unfortunately, most of us are good in a couple of these Domains, and not so hot in the others. This lack of consistent maturity in the different areas of personal development can cause many problems. For example, a person might be very facile with their emotions or consciousness, yet be obese and in poor health. Such “weak links” eventually create obstacles on one’s spiritual path, and/or severe problems in one’s life.
Like with a good map, the identification of exactly what level a person is currently at helps to inform them as to the direction or next steps they need to take to evolve to higher levels. For example, let’s say you score a “7” on the “Emotions” scale. This “7” represents that you have a medium level of maturity in how you relate to your emotions. Your next task, according to this model, would be to come up with an efficient way to evolve to a level “8” (or higher) in how you relate to your emotions. The iConscious model even offers specific methods known for helping “move” a person from a level “7” to a level “8.”
When I took the iConscious Assessment online (at iConscious.global), I was impressed with how it seemed to accurately identify my strengths and weaknesses. More importantly, I liked how it gave me specific methods and even specific teachers I should look into in order to evolve in each of its five categories. I finally felt like I had an accurate map based on data and science, rather than just a wild guess as to what I might need for spiritual evolution. Then, as time went by and I tried out the iConscious suggestions, I noticed that it indeed did seem I was growing at an accelerated rate.
When people imagine the future, they often imagine a dystopia of robots, AI, and greed run amok. Yet, another future is possible. If we could truly learn to spiritually mature ourselves in a balanced and accelerated manner, humankind could potentially create a utopia. The internet allows us to disseminate information better than ever before. Now, with better maps such as the one the iConscious model provides, accelerated evolution is possible. The ability to know exactly what you need to further your spiritual maturity is a gamechanger. The future of spirituality is already happening…if you’re ready to give it a try.
Jonathan Robinson is the co-host of the popular podcast “Awareness Explorers,” the author of 14 books and his website is FindingHappiness.com
