What does Spiritual Persistence say to us in specific terms?

It says that we are not isolated individuals floating disconnected in spiritual space. We are, ourselves, connections and collections of spiritual understandings. Each one of us represents a collection of spiritual fulfillment.

It says that we are not living a single life. Spirits in search of fulfillment live many lives. We pass through this level of physical existence many times so we can experience what we need to learn until we are able to remember it.

It says that we are not living a life of solitary fulfillment. Our goal is connection, not personal perfection. We seek fulfillment so we can connect. Our lives are not about salvation, but rather about integration.

It says that every person on our spiritual level of existence is potentially one of the elements we need to form the next level of spiritual grouping. All the divisions we make between people obscure the fundamental motion toward spiritual connection which will make such physical divisions meaningless.

It says that we are spiritual groups, groups made up of individual spiritual components, groups of even less complex spiritual realities. Like physical matter which is made up of subatomic particles which make up atoms, which make up elements, which make up compounds, spiritually we are in the flow of reality from less complex to more complex.

Where we are in the path from the simplest spiritual being to the most complex spiritual being, we cannot know. We do know that we have come from somewhere, and we have yet somewhere to go.

How do we move on? What would spiritual "progress" look like?

We progress by being able to combine with other spiritual beings at the same level of spiritual development to make a new group more advanced than any of us can be individually.

How would we do that?

We would have to become ready to be part of such a group, or entity. We would need to understand, trust, and be fulfilled before our present spiritual reality would be able to fit in elsewhere.

Life is the process by which our present spiritual reality comes to understand, trust, and be fulfilled . As we live, we have opportunities through experience to learn, and that which we both learn and remember becomes a permanent part of who we are spiritually.

Many people learn a lot, but it is the same thing over and over again. The key is to both learn and remember.

This usually does not happen in a single lifetime. In any given lifetime we only get a piece of what we must learn in order to understand, trust, and be fulfilled.

So, our present spiritual grouping--our current entity--flows in and out of physical life a number of times. Each time we are milled and molded, filed and filled, formed and informed by that which is learned and remembered. We live again and again until we have a clear, full sense of who and what we are spiritually. When our purpose at this spiritual level is understood; when we learn to trust; and when we are fulfilled, we can form another group and become part of a more complex entity with integrity and wholeness.

This is not a process of perfection, but rather a process of growth and development. It is measured not against some distant, abstract spiritual standard, but rather in our capacity to learn from life and discover who we are.

Our goal is not to become a "saint", but rather to become as thoroughly as possible the spiritual being which is our potential.

What if we were to connect before we had reached our level of fulfillment?

The new group would not be whole. The new entity would have us as an element that was not complete, fulfilled. It would be an unstable combination. It would not be able to reach its own potential or find its own fulfillment.

Spiritual development requires that the more complex spiritual realities grow from wholeness.

When that is realized, there is a persistence of the spirit as well as an enhancement of the spirit. All that has been understood, trusted, and fulfilled in less complex terms is now included in the new grouping; nothing is lost.

This is spiritual persistence: the on-going development of ever-more complex spiritual groups, or entities, which include that which has been learned and remembered by its constituent parts.

We are part of that great spiritual development. It did not begin with us, it will not end with us. What we are and are becoming will not be lost in the process. All that we learn and remember will add to the spiritual wisdom of the more complex realities yet to come.

Spiritual Persistence invites us to think about life as a process of growing in spiritual wholeness, toward further connection, so that all we have learned and remembered can find continuity and persistence.

Not everyone at this spiritual level is at the same point in their journey. Each physical person represents a spiritual group, an entity alive in this world.

Some are newly combined. This is their first time at this spiritual level. Even though they don't know it, there is much for them to learn and remember.

Some have experienced much, and are slowly beginning to remember the lessons by which they will become whole themselves. They have come to realize that what one needs to learn and remember is not the same for everyone. Just as a hydrogen atom would not find much development in learning about being an oxygen atom, so too do we need to find our own path.

Some have learned and remembered much, and they seem very spiritually fulfilled. They are moving toward connection, toward combining into a new, more-complex spiritual grouping. They give us glimpses of what is ahead and what is possible.

But, some are the unstable groupings of less complex spiritual matter that was not ready to connect. They will not be capable of learning or remembering anything, for all their energy is used in just keeping the group together. Such a grouping will not hold, and will revert back to its less complex separate components.

Some groups are so unstable, so composed of elements of unfulfilled less complex spiritual matter, that not only do they use all of their energy to hold themselves together, they must seek and exploit the energy of others in order to stay together. When we think of "evil" people, we are probably thinking of such unstable, energy-draining spiritual combinations. They will last through a dangerous lifetime, but then return to the separate elements of their less complex state.

Since all that has been learned and remembered spiritually is retained by the individual and all of its combinations, we need not look backward for meaning or insight. That which needs to be retained is already in place. When it has become a part of us for real, we will not need to continue to look for it; it will be a resource to move ahead.

Our role is to take what has become us and look to the future to see how we can continue to learn and remember, how we can detect ways to connect to the larger meanings that surround us.

And what will come at last?

All spirits flow in ever-more complex groups toward spiritual connection. Understanding, trust, and fulfillment connect us to the ultimate reality that includes all that is. Somewhere, as far ahead as our spiritual origins are behind, what we call "us" today will be a connected constituent part of the transcending spiritual reality. Our development over time and space and spiritual level is the development of the connections that will bring us into that ultimate connection.