Spiritual Progress

Some people say we enroll into Earth school to learn many lessons, but Earth school doesn’t give us any certificates — how do we know where we are? How do we measure our Spiritual Progress? Would we want to do that anyway?

The spiritual path can feel so dark at times, as if we are tunnelling into places where the sun never shines. Sometimes the more we learn, the more we seem not to know. Everyone’s so busy rising up and moving on. At times, all we see is our imperfection and what else needs to be done. Fortunately, the Fortunate Incident of Imbalanced Chakras happened, which eventually led me to realise my Spiritual Progress — something I now use to remind myself to relax. I’m not falling behind. I’m perfect wherever I am.

Let me tell you all about the Fortunate Incident of Imbalanced Chakras:

A lovely friend did a channelling session for me, and her spirit guide said my chakras were all imbalanced. Yes, all of them. And that happened 11 years after I first said ‘hello’ to my chakras.

‘Alright then,’ I thought to myself after the session, ‘I’m going to breathe through the chakras or something, and I will focus on one chakra a day.’ I was rather excited and I looked forward to my morning meditation the next day.

The problem with excitement and meditation is that they don’t go well together. I breathed through my main seven chakras one by one, using a breathing pattern that brought me easily into a meditative state. I then focused on my root chakra, and as I breathed through it in my natural rhythm, I asked my root chakra how it was and what I could do to bring it to balance. I received the answers easily because by then I was in the zone.

What else to do? I wanted to give my root chakra some extra love. I asked the Spirits for suggestions. They told me to use Master Golden Ray, which is part of Sekhem, an energy system that sprang from Ancient Egypt. I always considered Master Golden Ray to be a sidekick and never thought of using it for anything beyond what the manual suggested. Ooh! It was time to experiment with it!

I called on the Master Golden Ray to bring my root chakra towards harmony while I continued to place my focus there. The golden ray didn’t just go to my root chakra though – my heart, my mind and many parts of my body were connected to it. Soon, I found myself bathing in the golden ray, which really was golden.

When I felt the golden ray had done its job, I asked the Spirits what else could I play with. They suggested that I breathe in Pure Earth Energy through my root chakra. Oh! Of course! That’s a common practice, isn’t it? As I was doing that, I experienced a connection with the earth I never had before. I wondered if it was because I was breathing in Pure Earth Energy instead of just Earth Energy like I had done before? Or perhaps the Spirits turned up my psychic senses so that I could feel precisely what the energy was doing for me?

The next 6 days I continued this morning practice with the other six chakras. Each time, the Spirits told me which energy to breathe in with the chakra of the day: Creative Energy of the Cosmos for the sacral chakra, Energy of the Central Sun for the solar plexus chakra, Source Energy for the heart chakra, Energy of the Universe for the throat chakra, Energy of the Unknown for the third eye chakra and Energy from the Divine for the crown chakra. Every practice was a delightful trip. Many questions arose, such as the difference between the Cosmos and the Universe, or between the Divine and Source. The Spirits answered me patiently.

On the eighth morning, I wondered what it would be like to breathe in all those special energies at the same time, so that was what I did. It wasn’t easy at the beginning as I had to remember which chakra to go with which energy. Once I got used to it, I wasn’t there anymore. All those energies seemed to transport me to another realm — a realm so soothing and amazing that it lifted me into euphoria.

Later that day, I started putting together 8 guided meditation videos so that others can have experiences with their chakras as amazing as mine during those 8 days.

So why am I telling you this — aside from trying to lure you to the meditation series I created?

Before I realised it, those eight mornings had become more than a practice. They revealed something profound about how I now meet myself — something that had become so natural that I might have missed it if I hadn’t paused to look back. You see, I had so much joy experimenting with my chakras that I didn’t notice something unexpected until much later — I felt no negativity at all towards the Fortunate Incident of Imbalanced Chakras.

About 11 years ago, when I was signing up for my first healing course, my teacher asked if I knew what chakras were. I told her I had heard of them but I didn’t know what they were. I went to the library and borrowed books about chakras and attempted to connect with my chakras with no luck. And now, not only did I know what chakras are, I could connect with them and receive messages from them. I could also receive the Spirits’ guidance vividly and the doubts that I used to have seldom make an appearance these days.

Okay, but that’s just learning and accumulating knowledge and experience, and developing psychic senses. Not really Spiritual Progress, is it? But there’s more –

The major surprise was this: not only did I not feel awful about my chakras being imbalanced, nor did I feel shame that my friend heard all about it. Instead, I felt excited for a new project.

When I started practising Sekhem for my personal development and later as a Sekhem facilitator, I took myself mightily seriously. Whenever I took fun chakra-health tests, I got very upset when the results showed that I had an imbalance in any of my chakras. I would deny it to myself. I mean, how could someone like me, who can facilitate healing and who performs self-healing regularly could have anything imbalanced? I remember quite vividly how I even felt ashamed of myself when I did another fun test with some friends. I thought I should have been all light and fairy. I was but a pile of concrete — heavy and stuck.

I felt a great weight lifted off me as I reminisced about those times. I had expected so much from myself and felt so frustrated when I couldn’t meet those expectations. I tried so hard to hide my imperfection from my friends and peers, who had always loved and accepted me the way I was.

To be at ease with my imperfection, for me, is a true sign of Spiritual Progress.

How do you measure your Spiritual Progress? What made you realise how far you’ve come along?

And now, here it is — da da da daah — The Chakra Meditation Series!

Stephanie Shek’s life goal since childhood has been simple: to be happy. She forgot about it for a while, during the years she believed she had to be serious in order to progress spiritually. One day she thought, ‘Enough of that! It’s about dedication, not constipation!’ and she laughed herself back into alignment.

Well… it didn’t happen quite so dramatically. But if she has to write about herself in the third person, she might as well have some fun with it.

Stephanie now supports others on their spiritual evolution. You can find her at thelovingenergy.com.

If you enjoy Stephanie’s musings, she also creates a bunch of YouTube Shorts that may very well delight you.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheLovingEnergy/shorts