“Spiritual growth” has nothing to do with the knowledge, and everything to do with wisdom.  Communication, compassion, understanding, emotional intelligence, honesty, and transparency lie at the heart of spiritual development.  Believing in aliens, channeling, channels, crystal healing, chakras, or the afterlife will certainly expand your mind and influence the way you look at life, but I think we can all agree that this information is useless unless it impacts our behaviour and changes the state of our heart and mind.

Keeping in mind that spiritual growth has nothing to do with what we believe and everything to do with the state of our consciousness and heart, it helps us look at our partners from a more grounded perspective.  Let’s go over 4 ways to deal with growing spiritually while your partner.

1) Keep love as the foundation

The best thing to do is allow your spiritual maturity to translate it into wisdom, understanding, and positive energy within the relationship.  Keep love and acceptance as the source of your interactions with them, as opposed to judgment, expectation or resentment for not being for not being the way you want them to be.

Not everyone is going to believe what you believe, and not everyone cares to experience the same things you want to experience.  Understanding this and releasing yourself from expectation will prevent yourself a lot of tension within the relationship.

Your relationship should remain as you guys loving and appreciating each other as souls, as opposed to you trying to force them to change by imposing your philosophies on to them.

2) Don’t look down on them

You may think that you are too advanced or mature for your partner, but if you really love them, encourage them and accept them as a soul, and remember that there was a time where you didn’t have the wisdom and insight that you do now.

Your spiritual growth should humble you and keep you grounded.  If you find yourself putting them on a lower “level” then you, ask yourself this:

Is it more spiritually evolved to negatively judge someone you love based on their level of wisdom or insight? Or to accept them and love them as they are?

3) Introduce them to new things

[shareaholic app=”share_buttons” id=”5111567″]Bring them out to a hot yoga class.  Teach them how to meditate in a forest with you.  Listen to “The Power of Now” audio book by Eckhart Tolle in the car together.  Watched a spiritually themed movie or documentary together.  Discuss some of the things you have been learning and ask their opinion on it.

Every human soul longs to feel alive, and if you have the knowledge and wisdom to know how to improve the life of your partner, you have a moral responsibility to introduce them to things that will benefit with them.  Nobody wants to be cranky, close-minded, or bored with life.  Maybe deep down, they are intrigued with your recent growth but are just too ashamed or embarrassed to ask for direction.

If you keep love as the foundation and don’t look down on them, you will be amazed at how receptive they are to the new spiritually themed ideas and experiences you want to share with them. How can you be frustrated that they aren’t growing spiritually with you if you aren’t making an effort to facilitate that growth? It’s like being mad at a seed for not growing when you refuse to water it.

4) Know when to let go

All this being said, keep enough discernment to know when it is best for both you and your partner to go separate ways in life.  For 3 years, I was in a relationship with a girl that was not only neutral in regards to my spiritual growth, she seemed totally resistant to it.

My personal awakening happened during the second half in our relationship, and it started to reach a point where there was such a difference in world views and perspectives that we become incompatible for each other.

If you are really honest with yourself, it will become known to you when you are supposed to let go of the relationship and move on.  For me, it came when I realized that I only remained with that person out of attachment, instead of being with them because of the love and joy they were currently adding to my life.

Recap

Keep love as the foundation, don’t look down on them, and introduce them to new things to help them grow and expand as a person with you.

Don’t be discouraged if your partner is not very interested in spirituality.  Spiritual growth is not always about things like meditation, New Thought, and New Age ideologies.  Sometimes, it’s more about learning to connect with a person at the deepest level possible where things like beliefs and interests no longer matter.