As I have shared with my readers before, I believe that the call to holiness means a call to develop our spiritual life – called to develop the spiritual dimension to our personality. I also believe that this is closely connected to the development of our consciousness. Put in a simpler manner, true spirituality exists when we are deeply conscious of God’s presence in our life and in our world.

The next stage in the development of consciousness is Rational Consciousness. Rational consciousness is the dominant consciousness of the present age and is the level of consciousness attained more or less by the average adult in contemporary society. In order to be successful in our society, a person normally has to develop an ability to reason beyond the concrete or conventional rules and roles. A person has to learn to handle abstract ideas and grasp universal principles.

The rational level of consciousness is now so familiar to almost any well-educated person that there is little reason to describe it. Rational consciousness brings with it the ability to think abstractly, to understand general statement and principles and to think and write in accordance with the rules of logic. One can guess what this means to the development of spirituality! At this stage there is a real desire to rationalize the abstract ideas of religion. It seems that Western spirituality has gotten locked into this level of consciousness and spirituality while Eastern spirituality challenges us to not even attempt to rationalize the facts of our faith BUT to just believe. This seems to go against the grain of modern man who doesn’t want to just believe and be expected to just be led like a sheep. Modern man wants proof and evidence that his religion is not just a set of myths.

The problem is, true holiness and spirituality cannot develop with such a mindset since the things of faith cannot be proven. In fact faith means accepting things without proof. What is your definition of faith?