METHODS OF SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

by Lawrence Wilson, MD

Ó April 2011, The Center For Development

The idea of enhancing human functioning, particularly brain functioning, has been known since antiquity. Today the world is such that the main block to enhanced brain function is nutritional imbalances and toxic metal excess. Toxic chemicals and radiation also play a role in some cases.

Definition of development. Mental or spiritual development, as it is meant on this website only, is quite specific and precise. It refers to a process in which the brain develops to a greater degree and certain centers in the brain, specifically, become more active. More precisely, some of the glial cells in the brain shrink or atrophy and the space is occupied by more neurons, which enhances brain activity.

The pineal gland becomes more active as well. In other parts of the body, development of this type causes greater activity of the immune response organs and tissues. Other changes occur as well throughout the body.

This website encourages everyone to follow a nutritional balancing program for mental and spiritual development. I encourage this particular method of development due to its safety, ease, effectiveness at relatively low cost, and for other reasons such as its reliability.

AN OVERVIEW OF THE MOST COMMON METHODS OF DEVELOPMENT

Many methods have been used to develop the subtle human abilities and the brain throughout history. They range from simple study and prayer to severe routines, rituals, yoga, and other more exotic methods.

Below is a partial list of common developmental methods, along with a few comments on each of them. I have placed nutritional balancing science last because it actually incorporates the best aspects of many of the methods listed before it.

Prayer. This is a very ancient and time-tested method. It is inexpensive, simple to do at home, safe in most cases, and it stresses a person in certain ways that are helpful. It is not used too much in nutritional balancing science, but can be extremely helpful if used with a proper diet, healthful lifestyle and the other critical parts of a nutritional balancing program. Be sure to avoid all vegetarian-leaning diets, as these are harmful.

Fasting. This is also an ancient method. It is inexpensive, but it is not safe at all today. The bodies are too depleted and toxic for it to work well today.

I worked for several years at a fasting spa, and was not impressed with the results. It was far more effective in the past when the bodies were better nourished and less toxic. Please avoid all fasts of longer than a few days, at the most. This applies to juice fasts, water fasts and others.

Yoga methods. This includes physical methods such as hatha yoga, breathing exercises, meditations, chants, mantras, mudras or hand positions, and more. This traditional method was used for thousands of years in the Orient, often in monasteries but also for the general public. Please avoid most yoga, however. I say this with a heavy heart and much sadness, as I have attended many yoga classes and enjoyed them thoroughly. The only classes I can recommend would be an ultra-gentle beginners class where the emphasis is on relaxation and gentle postures only. Here are some problems with yoga as it is done today:

1. Safety. Modern Western bodies are not as flexible or healthy as many Oriental bodies and MOST people are injured in yoga classes. Definitely refrain from all yoga unless the teacher walks around the class continuously to check each posture or asana for correctness.
2. Unqualified teachers. Finding a really good teacher is very difficult. Schools are turning out yoga teachers by the thousands who have little real understanding of the traditional methods, which are hardly taught at all. Going to India is no guarantee that one is learning the real science, which is just too complex for most people.
3. It is not needed and not as effective as it was hundreds or thousands of years ago. This does not mean it cannot be helpful, but it is not needed and takes up one’s time. Certain aspects such as proper breathing, relaxation and light stretching are excellent, however.
4. Vegetarian diets. Many yoga books and teachers suggest vegetarian diets that we find are extremely harmful today.

5. Moving energy upward. Most yoga does not move energy downward only. By moving energy in other directions, it harms the body and opens it to the entrance of entities and other negative beings. Specifically, the third chakra is spun backwards. For more, read Yoga, Its Benefits and Problems, on this website. At some point, this website will have instructions for doing yoga safely.

Relationships with others. This is another ancient method. It is difficult today because excellent teachers, coaches, mentors, or even marriage partners are hard to find. One must be very careful and discerning. Otherwise one wastes years in fruitless pursuits or worse, is taken off track by well-meaning but low-level teachers or malicious imposters who often put on a good show. Relationship methods for development can be divided into A) relationships with partners, usually sexual partners in a marriage situation, or B) relationships with teachers or mentors.

A. Marriage relationships. Relationships with marriage partners is a good path that can work well provided both people are devoted to each other and to their own development and spiritual growth. This path is about connecting at deeper and deeper levels of the body, mind and soul. As this occurs, one’s issues come up and must be worked out together. This can move one forward with development very quickly.

Marriage partnerships can help development greatly, but only if real love is present. Real love is not catering to another, nor is it necessarily sexual or ego-building in any way. It is simple caring, respect and patience with another. This should be the focus of all interpersonal relationships, but since this is not taught much, it is not practiced nearly enough.

B. The teacher-to-student method of development. The teacher-student relationship is a very complex and interesting one. In times past, it was the most common path, along with some of the others above. It involves mentoring, fathering, mothering, teaching, friendship, modeling, scolding, disciplining, tricking, and psychological aspects such as identification, projection, and others all mixed together at various times. It is a wonderful teaching method that takes skill and patience on the part of both the student and, particularly, the mentor or teacher.
Mentoring is not used as much in modern society, for various reasons, but could be used more if people were trained in its use. It is offered today, however, in some convents, monasteries and some classroom situations.

Warning. Avoid anyone that believes that sex should be part of the teacher-student relationship. This is commonly used by imposters to control young women, and even to control some young men.

Relationship as a path of mental development is an enormous subject, and one that needs to be explored in much more depth.

Mystery schools and secret societies. A secret society is a group of men or women that meet regularly, in some manner and study, learn, and may perform rituals. It is secret or done quietly for fear that if it were widely known it would be misused.

Secret societies and mystery schools such as the Freemasons, the Knights Templar and many others served to assist many people develop themselves in the days when the rulers or the church or other forces in society did not want the people to become literate, educated and powerful themselves. Mystery schools are less needed today, and indeed are not needed at all.

Secret societies involve mentoring and teaching powerful techniques for healing and mental improvement. Nutritional balancing science incorporates a lot of formerly secret knowledge that is still not widely taught, including what to eat and drink, how much to rest, how to handle stress, how to meditate effectively, and much more.

Food and dietary methods. These are ancient and quite effective today. Nutritional balancing is one such method that I find extremely safe, effective and easy in most cases.

Open water. This is a very simple tool for development that works well, but is not well known. For more on this, read the article on this website entitled Open Water, What It Is. This method is only safe when used as directed in this article. It appears to be somewhat harmful for others, or it may just not work as well.

Homeopathy and energetic medicine techniques. These methods are popular, but in my experience are not as effective as in the past, and often end up being harmful. For this reason, they are not recommended for development at this time, althouth they are widely used by naturopaths and other physicians.

Light and color. This is an ancient and effective method, but only in a limited way. The use of the reddish heat lamp in a sauna or even just shined on the body is an excellent example of the use of light and color. Other methods that I have seen may be therapeutic, but are much less effective for development at this time.

Unfortunately, sun bathing and sunning the eyes can be dangerous today, so be careful with this ancient method. Some sun early in the morning or late in the afternoon are best. There was a time on earth when the sun was more healthful than it is today, and it is not because of holes in the ozone layer. Artificial light and color can also be used, but it, too, appears to be limited in its effects.

Meditation/retreating from the world. This is a method that was used by Jesus of Nazareth and many other biblical figures. It can be done at home, and it is offered in monasteries and other traditional Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious settings.

This path, however, has some important problems today:

A. While it can be excellent, most meditations just don’t work well today. One can waste years of one’s life in meditation retreats and monasteries.

B. Some or most meditations today are actually dangerous. They move energy upwards or in chaotic patterns. This is not helpful and can cause serious illness.

C. Most people are too unbalanced to do it alone for the amounts of time needed to get real results

D. For women, especially, and some men, too, it may not be safe enough to just disappear and sit for hours all alone with eyes closed.

For these reasons, nutritional balancing only recommends one type of meditation procedure, that taught by Roy Masters, with slight modifications. It is very safe, effective and simple enough to learn at home. Sadly, I cannot recommend any other meditations such as zen, vipassana, Buddhist, Christian meditations or prayers, Transcendental Meditation, or the hundreds of others available. For more on this large and amazing subject, read Meditation on this website.

Organized religions. This is the most common path to development in the present-day world. One is given a set of rules to follow, books to read, places to be, rituals or services to perform often, and perhaps other tasks. The idea is that if one follows the rules exactly, the result will be achieved.
Religions include social organizations that people like, and they form a matrix or context for human growth, social interaction, marriage, sex, child-raising and other essential activities that works well for many people. Religions are also sanctioned by the state, in most cases, and this is a great financial advantage.
Sadly, modern religions are not working as well for spiritual development as they did formerly. I believe this is simply because they do not focus enough on nutrition, health and healing on the physical level. Praying and attending church, for example, is simply not adequate. One must also eat properly, rest enough, and follow a healthful lifestyle.

Divine or other intervention or encounters. This means that one is hit by a flash of light, passes through a serious illness or accident with a near-death experience, has a UFO contact, perhaps, or sees an angel or hears Jesus in a kind of vision or trance state, perhaps. One’s life is changed and new directions are given and followed.
This can be an excellent method to speed up development of a human being, in fact, and one used throughout history and described numerous times in the bible. However, one must be careful and ask for plenty of confirmation, and one must always use one’s reason and intellect to judge the guides or teachers who make the recommendations. I suggest always asking if the guidance is “of the light of Christ”. If you get a no answer or don’t get any answer, do not listen to the advice.

Born as an advanced soul. This is not really a method of development. Instead, it seems to be a way to promote development that is mysterious. For example, Jesus and Moses may have been selected and trained before their lives on earth so that they would develop faster.
More and more children are “indigos”, “star children” and others. These are rather advanced souls whose veils are thin. This means that they know a lot and they remember a lot after they are born on earth, which is not generally the case with most children. These children are often “special” in various ways. Even if they have Attention Deficit Disorder, are autistic or have other disabilities, they are often gifted and they often develop spiritually on their own. Their handicaps such as ADD or autism actually move them forward even faster. This is a rather mysterious method because it cannot be understood logically, but it is the case in some people.

All healing methods to some degree. Healing often involves some development, especially if it involves counseling, nutrition, lifestyle changes, bodywork, etc. Even encounters with the drug medical profession can move a person forward in the direction of development. A brush with death, for example, can be healing for some people. Unfortunately, taking medical drugs often slows the process, but not in all cases.

Work and family life. This is sometimes called the path of the householder, as compared to the path of the monastic and ascetic life.
It is an older method of development in which one strives to become the best possible husband, wife, provider, worker, parent, and partner all at once. This is a path chosen by the vast majority of Westerners. It is effective to a degree, at least, in almost all cases.

Hardship. This is another common path to development. Hardships cause many people to delve more deeply into themselves and find resources they never knew they had. Hardships impose a discipline like few other paths.

Examples of hardships include an illness, disability, dementia, a birth defect, a disfigurement, delayed development, extreme poverty, sexual abuse, a violent childhood, emotional abuse, political oppression, imprisonment, starvation, wars, torture, sexual degradation, or something else that causes pain.

This is an unpleasant method of development, and no one would consciously choose such a path. However, it can be effective if the type of stress it places on a person causes him or her to reflect and dig deeply to develop the mind in creative and useful ways. Some healers and even religious teachers consciously stress their students with difficult assignments. Some of this would be considered dangerous and illegal today, if discovered, but it is done, at times.
As one can imagine, this is a dangerous method of development and only works if the person survives physically and is not too scarred emotionally as well.

Entity possession. Oddly, this is another method of development. Entities are discarnate souls, or souls without bodies because the bodies have died or for some other reason. They attach themselves to living people and cause illness, hardship, stress, and many afflictions. If done correctly, possession by an entity can cause a person to develop for the same reason that hardship causes development – as the person strives to overcome the hardship caused, in this case, by entity possession.

Individualism. This is an interesting path of development that is well-suited for the 21st century. It is the path of freedom, essentially. It works well by allowing a person to live life as they wish, making many important decisions such as one’s health care, one’s job, one’s marriage partner, one’s religion and so on. It is the path of living your own life selfishly, but without harming others. It is a wonderful method, in fact, because it develops the mind and the emotions to a high degree in order to be successful at it.
It might be called the path of the entrepreneur or the capitalist. By capitalist I do not mean a corporate executive. I mean the idea of saving your money, garnering your resources, and investing them as you se fit for maximum return or benefit for yourself and for your family. This path involves developing the intellect, cunning, judgment, and rational thinking. These abilities are extremely helpful to stay on any developmental path, in fact.

Vegetarianism, raw foods and other dietary paths. Various types of dietary restrictions and regimens have been used for millennia to help people develop. They work because they demand discipline, they eliminate toxic foods and gluttony, if done right, and they can help purify the body and mind.
Nutritional balancing science makes use of some dietary restrictions. These include eliminating most all fruit and fruit juices, all sugars, all pig products, all wheat except for wheat grass juice in small amounts, and all food chemicals and additives, as much as possible.

The problem today with food regimens is that most either slow or stop development because they are harmful to the body. These include vegetarianism in all cases, raw foods, and even kosher is not good enough because it does not demand that people eat mainly cooked vegetables and eliminate wheat and chemicals from the diet.

Vegetarian diets are missing many nutrients, including a very absorbable form of zinc, carnitine, sulfur-containing amino acids, alpha lipoic acid, and many more. Raw food diets slowly or even quickly demineralize the body because they do not allow the body to absorb enough minerals from the food. Many minerals are locked inside the fiber of the vegetable, which human beings cannot digest well. Even drinking carrot and other vegetable juices cannot make up for this problem in most cases.

Raw food and vegetarian regimens are not only nutritionally deficient, but they also are very yin, which is harmful today. Other harmful dietary restrictions are fasting, as explained above, diets with very low levels of fats or oils, and high-carb or high-protein diets. These are very dangerous. Others I do not recommend are diets made of protein smoothies, regimens that involve many nutritional supplements, and perhaps other unusual diets.

“New age” techniques. This is a catch-all phrase that might include the use of some affirmations, some prayers, some energy medicine techniques such as using pendulums and kinesiology, and at times other unusual methods such as essential oils, some homeopathy, and other methods.
This method does not work well at all, in my experience, and I suggest that people avoid it. It can be very tempting, but I am not impressed with the results. It is too unstructured, for the most part, and not often well thought out.

Drugs, either recreational or experimental. The use of drugs to open the mind is as ancient as humanity. Alcohol is the most common of these, followed by marijuana due to its low cost. Finally, some groups use hallucinogenic mushrooms or synthetics like LSD, ecstasy or others. This method has been used by some South American shamans, for example. However, for Westerners without a lot of training, this method is extremely dangerous and should be strictly avoided.
There are very few teachers who can handle the use the drugs for developmental purposes, so this method of development is fraught with problems. The substances are also toxic, even in small doses, and this may retard longer-term efforts toward spiritual development as well.

Nutritional balancing science. This is the method that is the focus of this website. It is quite safe, it works reliably and quickly if one follows the simple instructions, and it is not harmful, which cannot be said of most of the other methods. For this reason, it can be taught widely at this time without danger.
It includes many of the better methods mentioned elsewhere in this list such as a diet, a healing lifestyle, deep breathing, sunshine, good posture, reading and study, proper supplements, meditation of a special kind, sauna therapy, coffee enemas and perhaps other methods such as the use of open water, ozone machines to enhance oxygenation and perhaps others.
In this sense, nutritional balancing is not strictly a science. It is really an array of procedures and techniques that seem to work well together to produce a certain result. Hair analysis interpretation is a science and an art, but nutritional balancing, as presented on this website, is really more than this. It is a method of spiritual development first, based on Western and some ancient Eastern scientific principles and logic. Some of its features may not make sense, but it is effective and we have found it very safe, which is our primary concern. As with any living method, it is evolving and this website will be updated as changes occur.

BALANCED DEVELOPMENT

The goal of balanced development is a steady, even development of the mind and the body. This is a challenge because most people’s lives are not balanced. As a result, most people develop in an unbalanced way. Balance must take into account the following, at the very least:

1. Physical activity. Too much or too little are not generally helpful. For example, light walking is excellent. Running is too stressful for most people. Exercises such as yoga, tai chi and various others are possible, but often people get hurt because they are not able to control the amount and intensity of the exercise well enough.

2. Physical and emotional health. This is a definite requirement and is a weak area for most people. This is why it is the focus of nutritional balancing science at this time.

3. Mental activity. This needs more emphasis in most people. This means that most people have only limited mental development. This requires writing, among the best exercises. Writing forces the mind to concentrate and encourages logical thinking. Writing can also be done for money, which is helpful for some people. It can also be a very satisfying way of using the mind. Any activity of the mind will do, but writing is one of the best. Women often have more difficulty concentrating, as this is not one of women’s main activities. They are more open to multi-tasking, as it is called, and this is not the same as focused mental activity. So men have an easier time with mental focus in most cases, though not all.

4. Emotional development. Emotional development means taking control of the emotional nature of all human beings. It is made more difficult by the fact of copper toxicity, widespread zinc deficiency in almost everyone, and many other biochemical imbalances that upset the emotions in almost everyone. In addition, in women the menstrual cycle is upsetting emotionally, as is the feeling of fear that many women experience due to financial lack, not being treated well, in some cases, and worry over children, husbands and others. These are all just reasons why women fare worse in this area and it slows many of them down.

5. Spiritual focus. This means letting go of earthly and material needs, concerns and worries and focusing more deeply on spirit, ethereal or timeless qualities and what may be called the invisible or spirit world. This is absolutely essential for spiritual development. Some people are superficial and cannot give up their material wants and needs. This slows them down significantly at times.

6. Spiritual upliftment. This is similar to, but not the same as #4 above. Spiritual upliftment means that one gains one’s inspiration from spiritual texts, teachers or other material related to spiritual, rather than material existence. Spiritual in this context can be religious, but need not be. It can even be drawing inspiration from nature, for example. However, it cannot just be environmentalism, for example, but a deep awe and respect that uplifts the person spiritually. Methods and material that just appeals to the ego self in a subtle way, however, or makes one angry, for example, are not helpful.

For example, a beautiful temple might be a spiritual upliftment, but a small, humble temple is even better because it does not appeal to the ego self. A wonderful story might work, but not if it just carries one off in one’s imagination. A book that teaches a difficult lesson would be best, in fact, such as the story of Job in the bible. This is because it does not appeal to the lower self very much.

Home | Hair Analysis | Saunas | Books | Articles | Detox Protocols

Courses | About Dr. Wilson | Contact Us | The Free Basic Program