Tag: Personal Growth

There’s No Fast Track to Awakening

The path only opens when you walk it

In a world overflowing with spiritual labels, quick fixes, and people promising to “unlock” something inside you for the price of a subscription, it’s easy to forget a simple truth: awakening isn’t a shortcut, a status, or a badge you can buy. It’s a lived experience. A slow, uncomfortable, deeply human process that no amount of branding or belief can replace.

We’re all walking the same ground, equal in our confusion and our potential, and the only thing that separates one person’s path from another is the willingness to actually do the work.

This is about that work – and why there’s no fast track to awakening.

Between Shadows and Sun: The Honest Path to Awakening

Turbulent and troubling times – whether in our collective world or in the quiet corners of our personal lives – have a way of pushing us toward a search for meaning.

That search is natural, even necessary. But it can also become a two‑edged sword when desperation takes over and we slip into the mindset of “any port in a storm.”

In those moments, we’re not really seeking truth; we’re seeking relief. And relief, unfortunately, is the easiest thing in the world to sell.

Historically, “finding God” or returning to church was the familiar response to crisis. Today, the landscape is far more crowded. The options available to anyone “searching” have multiplied beyond recognition.

You can find new age speakers, astrologers, tarot readers, channellers, intuitives, mystics, and self‑proclaimed gurus online with the same ease you’d find a recipe for dinner.

The 21st century has thrown the doors wide open to unconventional thinking, and what began with the Mind, Body & Spirit shelves in bookshops around the millennium has now grown into a sprawling industry – an entire marketplace of spiritual identities, disciplines, and promises, each one ready to catch the eye of someone navigating rough waters.

As with anything in today’s world, there is good and bad in all of this. If you can apply critical thinking – real discernment – to the process of watching, listening, and exploring this spiritual smorgasbord, then a few false starts under the banner of “buyer beware” won’t derail you. They may even help.

But the challenge is that spirituality means very different things to different people, and that’s where the waters get muddied fast.

There’s a big difference between what works, what we think works, and what we desperately want to work.

A journey of personal discovery is, in itself, a good place for anyone to be. The path of self‑exploration – though often painful as we confront the realities that shape our personal truth – almost always leads to greater self‑awareness and a healthier understanding of who we are. And knowing who we are is the foundation for understanding who other people are – not in the superficial sense of personality, but in the deeper sense of recognising the processes, wounds, and experiences that make them who they are.

When it comes to having healthy relationships and a grounded view of the world, that’s not a bad place to start.

But like everything that becomes commercialised, spirituality has attracted its fair share of charlatans and false prophets. Social media has made them easy to find. They often have a very attractive bridge to sell – one that promises to make you different, better, more special, more righteous, more deserving. And all you have to do is commit, sign up, subscribe, or step aboard. It’s a seductive offer, especially when you’re hurting. But it’s also a distraction from the real work.

Starseeds, lightworkers, shamans, mystics – these labels may or may not have value in certain contexts. The problem isn’t the words themselves. It’s the way they’re used.

Many of today’s disciples of YouTube spirituality haven’t yet grasped the simple truth that whatever path you take – ancient, modern, religious, esoteric, or entirely your own – it all requires work.

And ironically, the work required isn’t the work many of these speakers are selling.

The work that no genuinely spiritual person can avoid is the ongoing effort to be the best, most human version of yourself in the form you currently occupy.

That means humility. That means responsibility. That means compassion. That means learning to forgive – not as a performance, not as a spiritual badge, but as a lived practice that dissolves ego and equalises your relationship with the world.

There is no easy route to redemption, no shortcut to “not coming back,” no spiritual identity that exempts you from the human experience.

You cannot bypass the messy, uncomfortable, deeply ordinary work of being a person.

You cannot escape the world without first giving back to it – fully, honestly, and without expectation.

Spirituality is not an exit strategy. It’s an invitation to participate more deeply.

Those who join a religion, sign up to a spiritual club, or adopt a label because it makes them feel superior or separate from others are missing the point entirely. They’re wasting time, energy, and often money. Because the cheapest, most direct, most effective way to get your life together and become the best spiritual version of yourself is to look inward and work with everything you already carry.

And here’s the part many people don’t want to hear: everyone is equal in this process. Everyone is the same, whether or not they understand who they really are.

No label changes that. No identity elevates you above anyone else. The only thing that matters – truly matters – is how you live, how you treat others, and how deeply you’re willing to face yourself.

Call yourself whatever you like. But unless you live it, you won’t be it.

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Lessons from the Three Ghosts: Rediscovering the True Spirit of Christmas

So here we are again, racing through December with just a couple of weeks until Christmas – whatever that now means to each of us. For most, regrettably, it has little to do with what these annual rituals are really all about.

It is easy to focus on the commercialisation that now kicks into gear months ahead, where the joy of giving has been replaced by a false, momentary happiness revolving purely around what we receive.

That alone should be enough to make any one of us uncomfortable enough to reflect on the real meaning of Christmas – which, contrary to the assumptions of those who may not identify as Christian, is about care, consideration, and yes, love of the deepest kind. Not for ourselves, but for those who share our lives, and for the rest of mankind.

A Call for Reflection and Leadership

That so many of us miss the value of the symbolism surrounding us throughout December and into the new year, interpreting it only in the easiest ways that make sense, is a sad reflection of how we sleepwalk through life and events of every kind.

It also reminds us that we lack leadership – whether from politicians, national figures, or even the Church of England – that connects with the majority and offers a responsible, captivating view encouraging us to see the value of thinking differently, not just for one month but for the whole year through.

Indeed, in just the past few days, those paying attention will have seen the “race to the bottom” within the public realm continue apace.

Politicians encourage cuts in benefits that people actually need because the lowest‑paid work doesn’t cover life’s essentials, while ridiculing those set up to fail for daring to want a life beyond endless hours of toil.

Others speak of fairness in terms of redistributing wealth that doesn’t exist, taking from those who are just managing to sustain themselves today, while pushing us all quickly toward a day when very few will earn enough to pay their own way.

The tools and hands may look different. But the agendas driving these actors are the same.

Obsessed with taking everything we know and understand in one direction, they press forward without care, whilst we all fool ourselves into going along with the charade, paying lip service to change yet clinging to the false comfort of a system that convinces us life will always remain the same.

The Timelessness in Elements of Life

To be fair, some aspects of human life do remain constant – though not the ones we might first imagine.

What endures is how we react to circumstances, how they shape us, and the power they hold to change our outlook and actions.

The clothes, food, technology, transport, entertainment, and language may evolve, but these are only wrappers we mistake for progress.

When you recognise this, a whole new world of learning opens up.

History, books, and stories – however old or apparently antiquated – can reveal lessons and gateways to understanding we might otherwise dismiss.

The need to be open to Thinking Differently

Few would deny the world faces serious problems today. Yet the common response is to treat them as someone else’s responsibility. And as long as we can point to others to fix what we believe needs changing, we absolve ourselves of involvement.

This “I’m alright, so everything else must be” attitude is neither normal nor truly human in any way.

It illustrates how selfish and self‑oriented we have become and how easily we walk past the struggles of others because they do not touch us directly.

Complacency remains intact until pain enters our own lives – which we can be certain that at some point now, it will.

Dickens’ Timeless Lessons

With this very much in mind, watching Patrick Stewart’s wonderful portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge the other evening, it struck me that Dickens’ true genius was not simply in crafting a magical, uplifting story of redemption. It was in showing that Scrooge’s encounters with the three Ghosts carry power and meaning transferable to our own time – even 180 years later.

Characters like Bob Cratchit, his family, and Scrooge’s nephew Fred remain relevant and symbolic, as do the gentlemen seeking donations and those whose lives revolve around the stock exchange.

Yet it is the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (or Yet to Come) who offer the deepest guidance. Their lessons, though seemingly obvious when spelled out, are profound opportunities for awareness that we may not readily grasp.

The Ghost of Christmas Past: The Journey of Self‑Awareness

Whilst Dickens made this part of the story a reflection of the key life events experienced by Scrooge, the unspoken message is the enduring role the past plays in the present – and yes, in our future too.

The experiences we have, how we reacted to them, and how they changed our behaviour continue to shape how we respond to whatever comes into our lives, in every present moment and the future thereafter.

It is a reminder that without conscious thought, we fail to see each day in life as being a blank sheet where we can treat each experience as being new.

Without recognising the change we are experiencing and have already experienced within ourselves, we are never the same after each encounter we have.

Even the very same situations in life that seem to repeat may play out in very different ways, just because of what has gone before.

The Ghost of Christmas Past invites us to reflect on who we truly are: what made us, and what drives the ways we behave.

Often, without realising it, we may be self‑sabotaging or setting ourselves up for a fall – all because we were never aware that something encountered long ago set us on a different path.

Self‑reflection and self‑awareness are perhaps the most useful, and therefore powerful, tools for life. And this is what the Chapter is really all about.

Knowing who we are and understanding why we are that person with the ‘lens’ that we have, gives us a very different outlook when it comes to relating to others and wherever our life may lead.

It allows us to see that whatever brought someone to the interaction they are having with us and why they are behaving as they are or doing what they do, usually carries far more meaning than what we can simply hear with our ears or see with our eyes.

The Ghost of Christmas Present: Awareness of Others

Armed with the appreciation that everyone and every situation has a backstory, and that very little we experience is ever as simple as it looks, the work of the Ghost of Christmas Present – who visibly ages and diminishes in presence and stature during the brief moments of the interaction – opens a portal and with it a view of all that is really going on for the others who step in and out of Scrooge’s life.

These are people directly affected by his words, actions, and deeds, even though until this point he has had no reason to see them in any other capacity or give them value beyond what he previously believed them to be.

He certainly doesn’t see to this point that he may have responsibility for outcomes or the ability to influence anything that happens within their lives.

“Why didn’t you ask?” is the poignant question the exuberant Ghost poses to Scrooge when the reality beyond his narrow view of the world begins to dawn.

Scrooge is touched by the presence of Tiny Tim and realises that the boy’s circumstances are not conducive to a pathway that will help him not only to thrive, but truly live.

Recognising that there are infinite stories we could ask about in our relationships and interactions with others to give them real meaning and depth, is a significant step towards considering the reach, impact, and consequences of what we say and do – even when those outcomes remain out of view.

Whilst asking such questions may not always be appropriate or even necessary, that awareness equips us with patience, understanding, and the practice of non‑judgement when others’ words or behaviour may feel annoying, but are not actually causing us any harm.

Understanding that what we do has an impact on the lives of everyone who shares our present is itself a powerful lesson for the way the world works today.

As with Scrooge, who was taking and accumulating more than he could ever personally need, he obtained material wealth by depriving others of what they required to meet their needs – simply because he wanted more than he needed, just for himself.

In doing so, he missed out on the human and spiritual nourishment that was always immediately available, ready to be returned through responses and outcomes from the simple acts of doing what was right for all others, all of the time.

Dickens did not leave the non‑material aspects of these lessons to chance. He also demonstrated very clearly what Scrooge was missing by failing to make the best of the relationships available to him with those closest, with Fred, his wife and Friends.

These relationships required only time and effort. Yet paid back a profit that could only be measured as a currency that enriches the heart, expressed through joy.

The Ghost of Christmas Future: Awareness of the Path You Are On

The magic of the three ghostly interactions truly comes into its own when Scrooge is invited to consider “what happens now.”

The story, of course, has the license that reality does not: it places Scrooge directly into those future situations, just as he has already been helped to review the present and the past.

To see how things will unfold if our behaviour, actions, expectations, and values remain unchanged would be a remarkable gift.

Jacob Marley’s chains – worn as the ghost who preceded them all and had tasted the painful fruit of his unacknowledged labours in life – made clear that everything we do, with consequences that are unfair for others, ultimately has consequences that we would not intend for ourselves, but rarely gives warning before it arrives as the outcomes we will meet in our future.

By the time it does, as far as change or the option to change is concerned, it is already far too late.

Bringing the Lessons Home

Returning to Reality: Time to Think more about the Impact of the Life we can choose, rather than the Life we Accept we have?

It is at this point that the magic of Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol inevitably fades, and you may already be asking: “What relevance does this have to me?”

The problem we all share – and not one we experience alone – is that too many of us are living lives that in many ways resemble those of a modern‑day Scrooge.

We fail to recognise it because the time, environment, and circumstances of our lives do not look or feel as though they could possibly be the same.

Irrespective of our role or place in society, our jobs or responsibilities, what we own or what we earn, we have become accustomed to thinking only of ourselves – even though we don’t see it that way.

Rarely, if ever, do we consider the impact of what we do, say, or how we act upon others – not only those we interact with directly, but also those who nonetheless share our lives, even though they are people we may never know, communicate with, or meet.

The world has conditioned us to believe that we can demand whatever we want without real cost or consequences – albeit within a framework that typically relates only to money and wealth, while the freedoms of every other kind that will allow us to be the humans that we are really supposed to be. are quietly and powerfully being shut down.

Like Scrooge before that fateful Christmas Eve, the lives we are living, and the lessons and opportunities we have to do things differently and for the better, have continually been missed or overlooked. Often because the easier path was chosen – or rather taken without conscious choice – never contemplating what pain we were stacking up for ourselves in store.

With the world changing rapidly, and turmoil soon likely to demand of each us a choice about our pathway to the future of the kind the unsolicited and unexpected visits from four ghosts demanded, we would all do well to reflect on the lessons Dickens, Scrooge, and his timeless characters have left us.

They offer us the opportunity to redeem lives that carry real meaning for everyone this Christmastime, well beyond just our own.

Key Takeaways

Before sharing a Christmas message, here are the reflections I hope to share from this work:

  • Christmas is an opportunity to reflect on values beyond commercialism—focusing on care, consideration, and genuine connection.
  • Our society often lacks leadership that inspires us to think differently and act with responsibility throughout the year.
  • The lessons of Dickens’ three Ghosts remain relevant:
    • The Ghost of Christmas Past reminds us to seek self-awareness and understand how our experiences shape our actions.
    • The Ghost of Christmas Present teaches us to be mindful of others, recognising the unseen stories and struggles in every life we touch.
    • The Ghost of Christmas Future urges us to consider the consequences of our choices and the legacy we leave behind.
  • True change begins with personal reflection and a willingness to act with empathy and intention—not just at Christmas, but every day.
  • By embracing these lessons, we can move from self-interest toward a life that enriches both ourselves and those around us.

A Christmas Greeting

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog, and for sharing in the reflections and stories I’ve offered throughout 2025.

No matter where you are, or what traditions you hold, I hope this season brings you moments of peace, connection, and hope.

May these lessons of Christmas reflection – self-awareness, compassion, and thoughtful action – guide you not only now, but in the year ahead.

Whatever Christmas means to you, I wish you joy, kindness, and the chance to experience the best of humanity.

Best wishes to All, Adam

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