Twenty years ago, Ron Scolastico had a breakthrough from understanding spirit with the intellect to a deep inner knowledge of a universal source of wisdom. Since then, he has counseled thousands of people in his profession as a Spiritual Psychologist, bringing forth information that helps them in their personal growth and spiritual awakening. Here, he summarizes twelve keys that can lead to a deep spiritual experience, and outlines four secrets of spiritual growth.
The Monthly Aspectarian: Ron, I know that for about twenty years now, you've done counseling as a Spiritual Psychologist. What led you to take that direction?
Ron Scolastico: Well, Guy, I began as a confused young man of twenty who wanted to enter the Air Force and go shoot down enemy airplanes. I had no sense of the spiritual realm. In about my late twenties, I began to have that hunger that many people have these days, to know more about life. I started by studying the spiritual teachings of various cultures in an intellectual, abstract way. So, for many years, I studied the spiritual realms and even meditated, but didn't really have any direct experience. It was all in my mind.
As I learned to do what I call a deep attunement -- to connect with that universal Source of wisdom, I really began to feel the love and the beauty and the majesty of the spiritual realities . . . and that's when I really began to have breakthroughs. As a result of going from a dry intellectual approach to spiritual studies and then eventually to this incredibly deep, loving experience, that has often been my focus with people: to help them really have that deep connection to their soul that they're looking for, or to God, or however they might conceptualize the spiritual reality. In my work, I meet a lot of people who have read books and studied about the spiritual realms just as I had. But they're frustrated because they can't make that personal connection. So that's really been my focus, and my latest book, Doorway to the Soul, is actually a method for making that spiritual connection. I'm very interested in helping people have that personal breakthrough so they can verify the spiritual truths for themselves, through their own experiences.
TMA: Do you tend to work mainly with people who are trying to get more out of life, or with people who are coming and presenting problems?
RS: There are so many complexities in our lives that we all have some difficult situations, things that we're struggling with. At this point, the majority of the people I work with individually, outside of workshops and seminars, are struggling with challenges. Perhaps thirty percent come just for pure personal growth and spiritual awakening. A lot of the people will first come to me with maybe a broken relationship or the death of a child, or somebody who has cancer or AIDS. So often, a very deep challenge will motivate people to come to me for help . . . and it seems that the work I do not only can help them with that challenge, but while they're working with it, I'm able to show that they need to be courageous and strong as a human being . . . and that they have the abilities and talents and courage and wisdom of their soul to draw on to help them face their challenge.
TMA: So, you would take much the same approach either way?
RS: Well, it's a little different. I think in getting what we want out of our lives, if we have difficult challenges and painful things, we have to address those first. I've found it difficult in my own life to have deep spiritual breakthroughs and the feeling of the soul when I'm frightened and confused and under pressure because things are going in a crazy way, and it's the same in the lives of my students. I think to really be fully joyful and fulfilled in our lives there's kind of a two-edged sword. There's the area of our talents, our abilities, our love, our accomplishments, which would include a conscious awareness of our soul and the beauty of the spiritual realms. Let's say that's the positive side of the coin. But for most of us, there's always that negative side, the fears and doubts and challenges. What I've found in my own life -- and the people I've worked with have had similar experience -- if you don't deal creatively and successfully with the challenges and the negative stuff, it's very difficult to open that positive side, the growth, the love, the spiritual connection. They're kind of two different things.
I believe that working with challenging experiences is a matter of gaining the confidence that the challenges are temporary and they can't damage our being. Often, that means if we're feeling discouraged about our lives, we need to enter those feelings of discouragement, live through them, share them, heal them before we can really find the true purpose in our life.
TMA: In a sense, they pave the way.
RS: Sometimes, yeah. Or the fears and the negative feelings block the way to actually experiencing the truth. Let's say I'm feeling that I'm not a very creative person, and I'm stuck creatively . . . and I'm a painter and I've been painting for thirty years. If I'm having that feeling, and I'm just feeling terrible about, Oh, I can't paint, I'm a terrible artist, I'm blocked -- now I know enough to say, Okay, that's a feeling. Before I can open and start painting again I need to address the feeling of not being a painter. The feeling of having no talent. So I sit down and start stirring up those feelings. I even exaggerate them, and I live through them and I try to share them with someone. Then I remind myself those are feelings. They're temporary. They're not the truth. Then I try to go to the positive side, which is the truth, which is, I believe I have very strong creative talents . . . I've been painting for thirty years. So, it's a process of addressing the challenges, getting through them, because they block our perception of the truth.
TMA: What are the ways that you lead people to have the experience of their true selves?
RS: Well, there are variations in the method for having a profound spiritual experience that depend on the individual. People have, of course, different preconceptions and studies and ideas. But in almost thirty years of studying this and in twenty years of having my own spiritual experiences on a daily basis, I've been able to find common focal points that seem to work for everybody, no matter what their beliefs or ideas are. I work with people who have Eastern orientation in the Hindu tradition, I work with Christian fundamentalists, Catholics, Jews, and it seems that these common focal points will work whether you believe in God or Buddha or Moses . . . no matter what your beliefs are. These are focal points that we all have in common. I call them Twelve Keys to Having a Deep Spiritual Experience, and they embody personal growth and they embody spiritual awakening.
TMA: Will you touch briefly on those keys?
RS: The first one is learning to engage your life in the present moment. People with experience in this area have learned quite clearly that your spiritual awakening will happen in the present moment. It won't happen in the past. It won't happen in the future.
TMA: Stop replaying tapes and worrying about the future.
RS: Yeah, if I'm sitting in a period of attunement, which is the word I use to call the process of connecting with the spiritual realms, if I'm sitting in a moment of attunement and I'm imagining how great my experience is going to be tomorrow when I have more experience, then obviously I'm blocking opening my awareness to that profound spiritual presence.
TMA: It's "the now" that's so important.
RS: Yes, right there in that moment. Most people have difficulty staying focused on the present moment, so I teach people to practice that in a relaxed, loving way throughout the day. After a while, when they sit down for their attunement to their soul (or to God or however they wish to say it), they can stay focused on the present moment. That will open the way for deeply experiencing the soul or God in that moment.
The second key is learning to release your expectations. When I first started to try to have a spiritual experience years ago, I read some of the more dramatic spiritual books that talked about these amazing experiences of the gurus, and these extraordinary breakthroughs where people would leave their body and go to spiritual realms and just do all kinds of amazing things. After a week or so of meditating or doing an attunement, I said, Where are my dramatic experiences? They're not happening!
TMA: I remember lying in bed for hours saying to myself, I will not move until I get out of my body.
RS: Right! My expectations were so unrealistic, expecting just lightning bolts in my first stages of opening, that because those dramatic things didn't happen, I thought that nothing was happening. It took me many years to learn that on a much subtler level, beneath my expectations for all of those dramatic things, I was beginning to touch into the soul. But the experience was so subtle and so calm . . . and it didn't match my expectations for a dramatic experience. It took me years to notice I was having it. So, I teach people to just let go of their expectations and enter their attunement experience with gentleness and openness and receptivity.
The third key is learning how to work creatively with our negative thoughts and feelings. Essentially, I just teach people a very simple process of entering those thoughts and feelings instead of trying to hide them or swallow them or run away from them.
TMA: Accept them instead of reject them?
RS: Accept them and live through them and share them with other people by talking about them -- so that you learn those negative thoughts and feelings are just temporary experiences and they can't damage our being. Then, of course, after we've worked with them -- and I always try to do this just for brief periods, maybe ten or fifteen minutes a day -- whatever negative feelings I'm working with I try to exaggerate and make them as intense as possible so that after the fifteen minutes I can say to myself, Okay, I've just lived through the worst negative feelings I could create -- and here I am. I'm not damaged in my being. That's a very brief summary of the work with the negative feelings.
TMA: I like that.
RS: It's very powerful. I've been working with this process for twenty years. I used to be a very frightened kind of person, always expecting the worst, and I was depressed a lot. I had a lot of negative thoughts and feelings to work with. This has really helped me put them into perspective so that now when they come up, I'm not afraid of them. I don't run from them. I go right into them, work with them, and then move on in my life. I'm talking now about our inner patterns, you know, our inner thoughts and feelings.
Obviously, if we've got negative situations in the outer world with other people or we have dangerous situations in the physical world, those need to be dealt with a little differently. We may need to protect ourselves or something. But most of us, I think, struggle with just not being able to feel that love and the goodness -- because we've got all these sad and painful and negative feelings that we're still healing.
Then the fourth key, which many of my students are surprised about, is opening yourself emotionally. A lot of the students I've worked with, especially those who come from an Eastern spiritual tradition, have adopted the belief that to be more spiritual you need to be detached from human life. That the human life is maya or illusion. That the less we feel, the more spiritual we'll be. Now there may be some truth in that, but that never worked in my life. When I took that approach for several years, I just got cold and detached and not a very good person and not much good to anybody else .
TMA: It's also not any fun.
RS: No, there's no joy in it. You might calm down the pain and challenge a little bit because you don't care and you don't feel, but you also smother the joy, the passion and the intensity of life. What I've learned -- after years and years of experimenting with my own personality and opening it to make that spiritual connection -- is that our intuitive abilities . . . that we will use to actually consciously perceive our soul or brain . . . those intuitive abilities are all woven in with our emotional patterns. So when we close emotionally, we also close intuitively. If I say, for instance, Oh, relationships are too painful; I'm not going to care about people anymore, I'm going to draw back and just be distant. What happens is that not only do I feel less emotionally, but I'm less sensitive, less intuitive, and I have more trouble feeling the love from my soul and from the spiritual realms. Opening ourselves emotionally is so important . . . learning to get through the fears and to be more open to other people, to ourselves, to look for more goodness and love in our lives. It's made all the difference in my own life and in the lives of a lot of students.
The fifth key is changing limited thought patterns. This one is pretty familiar to most people who study spiritual things because we're learning that our thoughts can be self-creating, self-fulfilling prophecies. If I think, Oh, it's too hard to have a spiritual experience, it's just too difficult --
TMA: Guess what!
RS: Those thoughts make it difficult. So obviously, we need to work with our thought patterns and create thoughts that say: I can do this. It may take time, but I can make this opening. It's a matter of working with our thoughts and noticing the limiting ones -- and changing them.
The sixth key is expanding our vision of ourselves. Most people I work with -- and this was my own experience years ago when I was very naive about my life -- most people see themselves as not good enough. We're in there with all of the negative stuff we're experiencing and we think, Oh, I'm not a kind person. Oh, I'm too critical. I'm bad here and I'm wrong there. We need to be honest about the patterns that we're working with that we want to change, but I believe most of us severely underestimate our innate goodness. What happens if I feel I'm not a good enough person and then I'm trying to sit and have a spiritual experience in which I'm connecting with these beautiful idealistic realms? I feel I'm inadequate or unworthy; I don't feel like I'm worthy of making that connection. So either consciously or unconsciously, I'm going to feel too small and I'm going to block that experience. I think we really need to work patiently every day to remind ourselves that no matter what kind of personality patterns I'm working with -- maybe I'm impatient or critical or whatever -- beneath that, there's this incredible goodness of my being that's my true nature. So by expanding our vision of ourselves and feeling that we're much larger and more worthy than we might have thought, then we feel, Well, sure I can connect to an ideal spiritual realm . . . because I have that same goodness within me that exists in that spiritual realm.
TMA: That's who we really are.
RS: Exactly. Yeah. It's hard to feel we're that wonderful being when we're struggling with our personality self.
Then the seventh key is expanding our conscious awareness. That really is the actual breakthrough, and it takes practice. But if I'm sitting alone in my room and I'm thinking about my bills and the daily affairs of life, then my consciousness is limited to the human physical world and that's what I'll experience. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's what I do all day! So when I sit down for my attunement I want to expand my conscious awareness beyond the physical. I teach people a method of focusing their thoughts and emotions and tapping the power of their imagination.
Let's say I'm sitting there and my mind is filled with thoughts of daily affairs. In my own practice I imagine my soul as a sort of radiant presence that's kind of like a light. I just start imagining that and I've learned to bring my thoughts and feelings to bear on that image. After a number of years, I've found that using my imagination as a trigger, or to prime the pump, my consciousness will start following that image and it will start expanding. Then after a while, I've gone beyond my imaginary image and I believe I'm actually expanding my consciousness to become aware of the soul. That's a bit of a complex process, but many people are familiar with that in their meditation practice. It's sort of a feeling that you learn for expanding your consciousness beyond the physical.
The eighth key is opening intuitive abilities. Here, I just teach people to practice trying to know things intuitively throughout the day in a very relaxed way. Sensing, maybe, when the phone rings, who is calling. Simple little exercises to practice expanding our intuition.
Then the ninth step is gaining a clearer understanding of our soul. Some people feel that the soul is as limited as the personality. There are some books about taking care of the soul and nurturing it like it's got the same limits as the personality. There's no way to prove what's true about the soul, but I think we're more likely to have a deep spiritual experience if we have a very large vision of the soul. So I envision the soul, and here is where I can define the soul and the personality from my point of view: I envision the soul as this wonderful, beautiful, probably perfect spiritual being that's standing beyond the physical world; and that has projected part of itself into my present body; "my soul" as a protected part of itself projected into my body and that part I call a personality structure. I can imagine it as a bowl of energy that's put into my body at my birth and that's the part of me that feels "I'm me," that I'm this human self. I can think. I can feel. I can will myself. I can take action. But I like to imagine the soul not having the human limitations. I'm the personality and I have the limits and I'm learning from those . . . but I imagine the soul as this beautiful, calm-like spiritual being. As I say, I can't prove that's true. I believe it's true. But I know for sure it inspires me . . . because when I feel limited in my humanness I can sit down and make this silent period of attunement and go to that incredible soul existence that I believe I'm connecting to . . . it's incredibly inspiring. It inspires me to come back and work more lovingly with my human personality.
TMA: That almost sounds as if you mean the soul is another entity than ourselves.
RS: That's a good point that you bring up because I don't mean that, and I think that can lead to a lot of confusion. But it's difficult for some people to understand mentally what you experience spiritually when you connect with your soul. Essentially, you experience that you are simultaneously your human self, your human personality structure living in a body -- and at the same time, you're that eternal soul. But your awareness of being soul is not available to you most of the time. From the human side you feel like, Here I am as a personality; I'm this great separate human being, and out there somewhere is my spiritual self with my soul and there's a gap between us. That's the natural human experience. But I don't believe it's the true perspective. When I'm able to have a deep experience and truly connect with my soul, I can see that as my soul I'm standing beyond earth experiencing this: Here I am as an eternal soul and I'm also that human being, Ron Scolastico, that I projected into this body. I'm experiencing both of these at the same time. That's the way to keep from creating artificial dichotomies in our thoughts.
TMA: In my own current model it's as if the soul part or the God part of ourselves is who we really are. But somehow in the process of experiencing the density of the earth plane, there's a forgetting. That doesn't mean that we're not still that entity. It's just that somehow the physical plane makes it hard to remember.
RS: Exactly. I have the same viewpoint.
TMA: I like to say that the physical plane has this way of simulating reality.
RS: Well, I think the reason why we don't have conscious awareness of our spiritual existence is that it would totally overwhelm our human life, and we wouldn't be able to believe in this life. For example, you've probably read the experiences of people who've had those profound, wonderful near death experiences. Many of them say, "That was so wonderful I didn't want to come back into human form." I believe if we were sent into the human form with conscious memory and a full awareness of our spiritual realm, we couldn't take human life seriously. We wouldn't value it. We couldn't believe it.
TMA: It seems to me we're attracted to the physical plane for its density, though.
RS: I like to believe we're attracted to the physical plane for its intensity.
TMA: I see that as the same thing. I said density; you said intensity.
RS: Yeah, that intense experience of, Boy, I really care about this person and I really care about this job. This is the center of my life, and this is incredibly important.
TMA: Well, at the higher vibrations there isn't the density. The experience doesn't seem to be as strong.
RS: I think the experience at the spiritual realm is so wonderful and full, but it doesn't have the drama that the human life has. It's like if you go to a movie that's very dramatic and you keep reminding yourself these are just actors and this is just a film -- you're not going to really get caught up in that story, and you just sit back and enjoy it. So if we're here on earth and we keep thinking, "Oh, I'm just temporarily this person and I'm an eternal soul, and the things I'm doing don't really count," it would be very flat. But I think we're like actors on the stage. I've come to be myself in my role and you've come to be yourself. If in the middle of our play when we're really caught up in our stories, we keep reminding each other, "Oh, this is just a play," we can't engage in it fully. So, I take a very positive attitude towards the fact that we obviously aren't intended to be consciously aware of the spiritual realms all the time . . . because you look around and most people aren't. So, it's not supposed to be that way.
TMA: Yet our work is in helping people to remember spirit and to not be as imprisoned as people tend to become.
RS: See, there I think you're talking about a balance point. In my own experience, if I go too far in the physical and believe that's all there is, there's a lot of pain and suffering. But, I've had periods in my life when I've gone too far in the spiritual: I was following a guru at the time and all I did was meditate and share stories about gurus with friends. I avoided any challenges and any people who challenged me, and I ended up being useless. I didn't help anybody. I didn't have any relationships. All I did was meditate. So for me, the ideal is to engage this intensity and love it and do the wonderful things as human beings that we're excited about -- such as our careers. For me, the ideal is to have that really intense, passionate engagement with the physical life and then every day, as deeply as I can, have a period where I feel that love and that eternal beauty of the spiritual realm; it doesn't overwhelm my physical life, it just puts it in perspective so that I'm not so desperate about doing what I want to do as a human. I have deep balance and patience but still have strong desires and still live a strong life.
TMA: I'm dying to hear what keys ten, eleven and twelve could be after this.
RS: A clear understanding of the soul. The tenth key is the real meat of the thing. It's having a method for intensely focusing your mind, your emotions and your will on the spiritual realm during periods of silence. Now obviously, a method would be meditation, prayer, silent introspection, communion with nature, perhaps music. What's important is for each person to make sure the method is working for them. I've worked with long-time meditators who followed certain spiritual teachings, and the spiritual teachings said that if you do this method for five years, you'll be enlightened. Some of these people who have been doing this method for fifteen and twenty years have come to me and the first question is, Why am I not enlightened yet? They weren't able to see many years ago, This method's not working. It's a wonderful teaching and it works for some people, but it's not working for me.
Instead of being blind followers of methods that we pick up from wherever, we need to be intelligent masters of our own path and say, Okay, this method looks good. I'm going to try this -- and try it. You do have to try it for a while, because this is a gradual process. But let's say we try it for a year or two and we're not deepening our experience; then we might say, I'm going to try another method. I'm going to adjust this method. So . . . the nature of the method is not the critical thing here. It's how the method works for you as a person.
The method I teach I call "attunement." I wanted a new word because so many people are familiar with the word "meditation." How many people have tried meditation and become frustrated with it because they didn't have results! They think they know what meditation is. So if I say, I'm going to teach you meditation, there are always preconceptions and many people say, I've heard that before, I'm not interested. But if I say, Here's a new method, and it's called attunement and it's a doorway to the soul -- I explain that I call it attunement because it teaches you to tune in to the different energy frequency of your soul; that in the human life we are on one energy frequency and the soul is on another, so we have to learn to change our attunement focus . . . like changing channels on a television.
The attunement method, then, instead of being sort of open-ended and vague like most meditation methods where the general instruction for meditation is to sit quietly, still your mind and then just be passive -- that's the beginning stage of the attunement method. But, I add, use your will to set a direction for that silent period. That direction is a connection with the spiritual realms . . . whether you want a connection with your soul, with God, with your spiritual teacher, however you conceptualize that. So, the attunement method brings the will into play. Then it focuses your thoughts and your emotions and it moves you along an inner pathway toward that spiritual goal you've set for yourself.
Then the eleventh key is persistence in that attunement method. Unfortunately, so many of us in this society, and I include myself, are used to having satisfactions very quickly. Most of us are affluent enough that we can buy whatever we want to eat. We can buy the clothes we want. We can do things rapidly and get joy from them. So when we start a spiritual path and we start making a spiritual opening, we want it right away. We want that love, and we want that enlivenment. But the way it seems to work, and certainly we have to assume it's intended to work this way, is that a spiritual awakening is a gradual process that takes time. Obviously then, we need persistence with a method -- doing it every day in joy and a sense of optimism and expecting maybe that it will take some time. Now we don't need to affirm how long it will take! I would like this to be rapid, but that hasn't been my experience. For most of the students I work with, it has taken time. But you know, perhaps the people who begin this might be different. They might move rapidly. Say, Now I know that I need persistence and I need to do this every day and I need to make it joyful and wonderful -- and that will be one of my keys to having a consistent spiritual experience.
The twelfth key is patience. This one is hard. At least for me and many of my students. When I say patience, I don't mean that we do our attunement and we're sitting there and we feel like, Oh, nothing's happening; okay, I'll be patient and wait until tomorrow. What I mean is a kind of wonderful loving feeling that we try to stir up. If we're sitting there doing our attunement and we're doing all the inner openings and we feel nothing's happening, being patient in that moment means you're willing to accept that moment as being wonderful, even though you don't feel like you're having a profound spiritual experience.
So, you have this wonderful, patient, soft sense of, All right, I'm not having a profound spiritual experience, but this moment is soft and wonderful. It's like if you're sitting -- let's say you're sitting in a park, a beautiful park, and you're waiting for a friend and the friend is late. So, you start getting impatient and you're saying, Where is my friend? and, This is making me angry, waiting. That's pretty typical of a human response. But let's say you decide, I'm going to be patient in this moment. So you simply release the irritation and frustration and you settle into this wonderful, soft sense that this moment is fine, and you start looking around and enjoying the trees and nature and the grass. Your friend is still late and you're still waiting, but now it's a joyful experience, even though your friend's not there. So, this kind of patience that I'm talking about, when you're sitting there in your attunement period and it seems that you're not having a profound spiritual experience, your friend has not arrived -- yet you start looking all around in that moment and, How wonderful to sit in silence and to be able to relax! . . . I wonder what kind of sensations will come forth next. That kind of approach. So, when all of these twelve keys can be worked with patiently and gradually, I believe it leads to consistent spiritual experiences.
In my work with myself and my students, I've discovered what I call Four Pillars of Spiritual Growth. I believe when these are combined with the other things we're talking about, they can really help deepen the spiritual experience. In my book, Doorway To The Soul, I talk about these in depth. The first pillar is the willingness to trust in yourself. That doesn't mean to trust in that personality part of us that gets confused. As we were saying earlier, to trust that there is a wonderful inner part of us that we can trust to be wonderful and wise.
The second pillar of growth is the willingness to believe that all negativity is human-created. That's a difficult one for some people because some people believe in negative energies and spirits. I don't believe there are negative energies beyond human thoughts, feelings, and actions. Those can be very negative.
TMA: Well, that's a universe you can live in, but that's a choice.
RS: Right, right. And I believe all of the energies of life that created forces, that created and sustained life -- I believe there's only one force, and it's positive and creative and loving and harmonious, and we may call it God or call it the life force . . . but it's so important, I believe, to know that negativity is human-created -- if we created it, that means we can un-create it. We can heal it.
Then the third pillar of growth, and this is one that many people are becoming aware of in this point in time, and it's so important: learning to perceive that we're connected to all living beings in a very deep way, to all human beings and to all souls beyond the physical. Most people are beginning to at least consider that and many people believe it. But I think it's a key to living a successful, loving life.
TMA: But gee, then you gotta be nice to everybody.
RS: You have certain people that you wouldn't perhaps want to spend time with. And you may decide, and you have the freedom to say, I prefer not to have a relationship with that person. But it helps to say, At least I know I'm connected to that inner goodness in them even though I don't want to be connected --
TMA: -- to the human part.
RS: To the personality, which may be violent or extremely negative. I would prefer to avoid them. So this is a difficult area. Eventually, when we work through our own fears, we can feel we are connected to that inner goodness in each person.
Then the fourth pillar of growth is the willingness to know that we are constantly receiving spiritual energies from the source of life. Many people feel, Well, when I meditate and I'm a good person, my soul and God and the creative force of life is loving me and then I'm taking in all these wonderful energies . . . but when I'm a bad person or I'm failing here or doing this or that, then somehow I'm cut off. I believe the truth is, we are constantly being given these energies inside our personalities, and we're usually not consciously aware of them. Those, I think, are four important things to work with.
TMA: The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike?
RS: Exactly. And we're constantly being loved, but most of the time we don't notice it because our consciousness is so focused on the limited human perspective.
Ron Scolastico, Ph.D., is a Spiritual Psychologist who has shared knowledge from the inner source of universal wisdom in four books, hundreds of audio tapes, and more than 15,000 individual counseling sessions throughout the world. His books include Healing the Heart, Healing the Body, published by Hay House, and Doorway to the Soul, published by Scribner. For information about his work, call 1-800-359-3771.