How Evolved Am I?

How Evolved Am I?

One thing I encountered in delving into spirituality is how often hierarchies appear. For example: Christianity's saints or sinners; or a hierarchy of Ascended Masters and the rest of us. This prompts the question of where I fit into the grading system. We get sucked into wondering 'How evolved am I?' However, this tendency is often used as a means of social control and power. Consider these two quotes (from Love and Power by Hara Estroff Marano in Psychology Today, posted 1 January 2014, accessed 13 March 2014):-

"He who wields excess power in a relationship wins the battle—but loses the war, says Terry Real, who aims to nudge the world into thinking about relationships ecologically. “You’re not above the system. You’re in it. If you throw out pollution over there, it winds up in your lungs over here. Relationally, if one partner wins and the other loses, both lose—because the loser always makes the winner pay.”"

"But there’s only one path to intimacy. It runs straight through shared power in relationships."

• The inequality arises from socio-cultural and other environmental pressures. Not from some people being better than others, or starting the journey earlier!
• Time is a very real linear law in this world. But in the Spiritual World, time is not real, rather being more of a web of interconnectivity.

• A man does not have to be an angel in order to be a saint. (Albert Schweitzer)
• Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgements. (Zefram Cochrane quote in Star Trek: First Contact movie 1h12m58s)
• Each being is sacred - meaning that each has inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being. (Starhawk)
• Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass. (Michel de Montaigne)
• Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. (Albert Einstein)
• I don’t want to be better than anybody, I just want to be better than I was yesterday. (Dr Wayne Dyer)
• It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. (Confucius)
• It’s great to be great, but it’s greater to be human. (Will Rogers, philosopher/comedian, half-Cherokee, in 'Cherokee American Indian Nation', p.18 of Native American Wisdom, an anthology selected by Alan Jacobs, Watkins Publishing 2008)
• I've come to believe that most of the masters and gurus are actually the patriarchy's most brilliant way of keeping these always-revolutionary truths of divine identity and equality under wraps. (Andrew Harvey, 'Teachers & Seekers' interview, 'Yoga Journal' USA magazine, Issue 123, August 1995, p.59)
• No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. (William Blake)  
• Proud people imagine they are great, and always see themselves rising above others. But in reality, they themselves are not growing, a tumour is developing inside of them. To inflate themselves is not the same as growing. A person's true growth causes rays, sparks, and vibrations beneficial to everyone to spring forth from them, and only humility fosters this growth. One of life’s great secrets thus lies in this so rarely understood and appreciated virtue: humility – the awareness that there exists a superior world and the will to be in harmony with the entities that inhabit it: the angels, archangels, and so on, up to God. This is why it can be said that humility is a form of intelligence. By casting their gaze upwards, a humble person discovers the infinity of heaven and feels drawn to it, absorbed by it. By simply changing the direction of their gaze, they enter into immensity. (O.M. Aïvanhov)
• The irony being only by losing one’s self importance do we become an inspirational presence that is a healing one. (Judy Fraser, 15 April 2010 email accompanying Oracle Newsletter ‘The Monthly Oracle’ April 2010)
• The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self. (Whitney Young)
• Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be. Become one yourself! (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus)
• We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released. (Jean Houston)
• What you feel in the presence of a true spiritual friend is equality, the real equality of soul. That is the priceless gift of somebody who is in that state of humility. It is like a rose opening and sending its fragrance. (Andrew Harvey, 'Teachers & Seekers' interview, 'Yoga Journal' USA magazine, Issue 123, August 1995, p.60)
• Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people. (Nido Qubein)
• Your greatness is measured by your gifts, not your possessions. (Yogi Tea teabag message)
• In the theme of eternity, all is paid and all people will be equal. (Lilla Bek, personal interview for Bruce, 2 October 1995)
• In the end, the greatest joy probably is that one can be many things. And one can enjoy them for their eternal use. And, therefore, forget about evolving, and just concentrate on being... Other people's sense of beingness may be different to yours. They may feel that unless they are in charge of huge groups, then, that satisfies their beingness, maybe. Others want to sit in a cave because that satisfies their beingness. We are not in charge of other people's beingness. We are in charge of our own beingness... So, just be free of what others do, what they think they are, what they say they are - and people who have it don't need to talk about it very much. (Lilla Bek, personal interview for Bruce, 11 May 1997)

• Building collective feminist leadership – unlearning the “me, me, me” (The Community Feminists Magazine, 2020).