The first stage of the spiritual path is the same for everyone. We "hear the Word". That is, through mediums such as books, lectures, or even flesh-and-blood 'mediums', we are struck with the whole notion of the Divine; we are attracted to what is invisible and beyond what we have taken to be reality: the sensory realm, persona play, etc. We hear about telepathy, out-of-body, realms of Light, non-physical entities, parallel universes, miracle-mindedness, and a litany of other things. The first move on the Path is the decision to believe that there is something more.

In the second stage, we actually get involved. We attend workshops, and learn the basics of meditation, mind-body integration, the basic principles of meta-physics('meta' means "that which is beyond"), and come across books with weird, long titles like the Lankavatara Sutra(ooh, cool! With a title like that, it MUST be full of the real thing!), or Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East (Have you ever noticed that no one entitled a book, 'Masters living next door and easily accessible'? No! Its always exotic, secretive, and a long way off! But that is part of how God seduces the ego...) At any rate, we usually find ourselves caught up in study.

I call this the "build-a-library-and-mistake-it-for-real-Knowledge phase". Most notably in this stage, we might actually take up a consistent practice and do the work!(**Practice is essential in the beginning. It is utterly indispensable in the latter and final stages. In fact, for the awakened, all things are translated into the highest form of Practice imaginable....read on!)

But this stage is marked by seeking. We are looking for transcendence, enlightenment, cosmic illumination, or at least a good ol' mystical experience to get us up and out of our predicament as a mortal human being. And such mystical experience is absolutely essential; we must "taste the divine". It is this taste that propels us to want more. Without it, the next stage would be impossible and very unattractive.....

Somewhere along the Path, the honeymoon is over. Most of the New Age workshops start to strike us as trite and boring distractions with mere magical thinking, not unlike the adolescent stage of development. We want something more mature, something of substance. Our soul mate turned out to be psychotic, the "divinely inspired money schemes" fizzled out, our hair line is thinning, and cellulite is encroaching and -dammit all - the Mother Ship still hasn't beamed us up! This is a Great Evolutionary Phase, not a failure at all. Sufficiently seduced, the ensnared ego has invested too much during the first two stages; it values its forms of mystical experience highly, and is not about to give up, or in! But now the Path seems to curve, bending, bending, bending back on itself! The finger pointing us to God, now points squarely at us, and -perhaps for the first time, we are struck with the profound truth: "I" have met the enemy face to face, and that face is.....mine! Welcome to the Third Stage......