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The essence of spiritual growth is the rejection of childish selfishness and self-conceit, the awareness of one's purpose in obtaining, developing and spreading knowledge and one's own kind.
The essence of spiritual growth is to unlock your spiritual potential by recognizing yourself as a spiritual entity, not a material body. Material consciousness is the “I = body” consciousness; spiritual consciousness is the “I = soul” consciousness. Depending on who you think you are, your interests, priorities, and goals change. By acting as the body, you gain temporary sense gratification that ends and leads to suffering, thereby condemning yourself to constant frustration and dissatisfaction. When you act as a soul, you learn to draw everlasting happiness, bliss, and contentment from yourself and your eternal source, God, and you naturally gradually lose interest in the gross, transitory, and unstable joys of material life.
Before answering this question, it would not be bad to understand what such concepts as contemplation, concentration, and meditation mean.
Contemplation is directed thinking. But this is not thinking when we just think, in which there is no movement of consciousness. Just thinking doesn't lead anywhere. Therefore, our thinking is not really contemplative, it is associative. Thoughts just jump on their own, replacing each other without any direction from you. One thought by association sets in motion another, and that in turn sets in motion the next, and so on.
For example, you see something and your mind starts thinking about it. And then it uses a lot of associations, linking them to what it saw. As a result, the thought jumps to something else. This is how thinking happens. A person lives in constant associations, because it is difficult for him to even think, especially since nature resists this. The brain, which in associations spends about five percent of the energy of the entire body, on thinking that requires focusing on the object of observation, requires up to twenty-five percent of it. Because contemplative thinking occurs not by association, but by direction.
When you think about a particular problem, for example, you discard all associations, focusing only on it. The mind then obeys you. The work of a researcher is contemplative, any creativity is contemplative. When you think about something specific, the whole world is put out of brackets, only what your consciousness is moving with remains. Many things from side routes will attract your attention, but your contemplation does not allow your mind to move anywhere to the side. When you control the mind, it is contemplation.
Concentration is the act of keeping your attention focused on a single point. This is not thinking or contemplating. It is the presence of consciousness at one point where the mind is not allowed to move at all. In ordinary thinking, the mind moves randomly, so thoughts arise randomly in it. In contemplation, the mind is guided by you. With concentration, the mind is not allowed to move, all energy, all movement stops, they are directed to one point. And in meditation, the mind itself is not allowed. Meditation is a state of no-mind.
Meditation means the absence of the mind, with which concentration disappears. In meditation, the mind is silent, it is not allowed to exist! Therefore, meditation cannot be understood with the mind. Ordinary thinking is an ordinary state of mind, and meditation is the only opportunity for you to transcend the mind, that is, to transcend yourself (the person in you). Ordinary associative thinking is the lowest for you, and meditation, the state of no-mind, is the highest, the pinnacle of consciousness manifested through you.
But how can any mental process help to achieve something that is not mind? If you constantly reduce your associative thinking process, then step by step, slowly, you can come to the point that the mind will stop. You simply stop using it, and the mind stops functioning. This is how no-mind states are achieved. The mind can only help you commit suicide inside your body so that you can finally become alive.
When the process of thinking becomes more and more intense, you move from the mind to an even bigger mind. When the process of thinking becomes less intense, decreases, slows down, you help yourself to move to no-mind. It's up to you. And the mind can help in this if you direct it, because, in fact, the mind is what you are doing with your consciousness directly at the moment. If you do not pay attention to yourself, that is, leave your consciousness to the mind without doing anything with it, it will be completely absorbed by the mind.
So, on the path of spiritual growth, you gradually move from ordinary associative thinking first to contemplative thinking,and then to concentration, from which, in fact, you jump into meditation. You cannot meditate on it of your own free will. Such meditation is simply a therapy, a trivial relaxation, for example, through musical relaxation of the body-mind.
Spiritual growth is a gradual process of gaining understanding, with the goal of expanding consciousness. On the spiritual path, the mind grows by using contemplation, in which the key step is meditation, as His grace. In contemplation, it takes time for meditation as instant enlightenment to happen. That is, the transformation of you from darkness to Light, in which the answer arises not gradually, but instantly, that you have always been enlightened and that you have nowhere to go, you are not even a path, but a Light on the Path.
The essence of spiritual growth is the evolution or improvement of one's Consciousness. Spiritual growth allows a person to clear his Mind of negative thoughts, emotions, and false ideas. Spiritual growth increases positive energy, which means it increases human health. Spiritual growth promotes harmony among people, with Nature and with God.
Spiritual growth forms a Free Human Creator who develops his Soul and Mind. Spiritual growth provides insight into the true meaning of life.