The Shaolin Virtues and the Inner Spiral of Growth

Inner Spiral of Growth

The Inner Spiral of Growth centers on three key Shaolin Virtues that help guide us in making better choices in life, so we can more smoothly navigate the Spiritual Journey. These are the Shaolin Virtues of Focus, Perseverance, and Strive.

The Spiritual Journey is an adventure to understand yourself, others, existence, and the universe. Or, to put it another way, The Spiritual Journey is to understand your place in existence. We are all on this journey, whether we realize it or not. This includes people who do not care about this idea or reject it.

Along this journey we encounter many holes that trap us and delay us. We explored perceptual-belief holes, emotional holes, and subconscious-partner holes.

The Shaolin Virtues guide us along the Spiritual Journey, but they do not dictate the decisions that we make, nor do they limit our decision-making considerations. As the image of a spiral staircase implies, the Shaolin Virtues have to be applied and observed in order to gradually and cyclically nurture your spiritual growth.

For an introduction to the Shaolin Virtues, please click here.

Applying the Virtues of the Inner Spiral of Growth

This section provides clarity on how to apply the virtues for personal growth and the benefits that you will receive. It assumes you have read the virtues in detail. If not, click on the virtues of Focus, Perseverance, and Strive, from the table links below. 

Note that applying the virtues happens automatically, meaning it becomes an intrinsic property of you with time, practice, and experience.

Applying the Shaolin Virtue of Focus

The Shaolin Virtue of Focus teaches us to remember our self-declared purpose in life, and to keep working on this idea by reinforcing, validating, and updating our perceptual layers. 

This gives us clarity of purpose and develops greater awareness of perceptual-belief, emotional, and subconscious-partner holes, so that we are more likely to be able to know when we are in one, and preemptively avoid holes.

By developing your willpower through the Shaolin Virtue of Focus, you will intrinsically benefit from your life choices and experiences. Here are some examples: 

• You will improve your capability to learn
• You will accomplish tasks more efficiently
• You will make better lifestyle choices
• You will develop better relationships
• You will understand your emotions
• You will control your emotions
• You will manage and track personal goals
• You will manage and track your energy

Applying the Shaolin Virtue of Perseverance

The Shaolin Virtue of Perseverance teaches us to keep working hard at clearing the holes before us, so that we can travel or grow faster along our spiritual path. It's far too easy to just give up and accept suffering. 

We must continue to train our perseverance and willpower so that we can tackle larger holes. More willpower will make it easier to climb out of holes that want to keep sucking us in.

By developing your willpower through the Shaolin Virtue of Perseverance, you will intrinsically benefit from your life choices and experiences. Here are some examples: 

• You will overcome laziness
• You will improve your depth of learning in a particular subject
• You will accomplish more
• You will improve the depth of your relationships with family, friends, and loved ones

Applying the Shaolin Virtue of Strive

The Shaolin Virtue of Strive teaches us to continually improve ourselves so that we can be more efficient at identifying, avoiding, overcoming, and resolving problems. The process is slow in the beginning but as you strive you will find your growth accelerating. In the long-run you will it easier and faster to navigate your spiritual path.

By developing your willpower through the Shaolin Virtue of Strive, you will intrinsically benefit from your life choices and experiences. Here are some examples:

• You will have clear goals in life that may change from time-to-time
• Your mind and perceptual layers become flexible
• You will want to seek continuous improvement for mental and physical health
• You will have the motivation to learn more and learn new things
• You will perceive criticisms directed toward yourself differently
• You will no longer look for or care for perfection in yourself
• You will not compare yourself to others in a self-defeating way
• You will find joy in learning from anyone and anything
• You will find every aspect of life interesting

The Inner Spiral of Growth

By developing the habit of continual improvement, life gets easier as you gain more experience and tools. 

The Inner Spiral of Growth means continued development of personal qualities and attributes that society finds desirable. For example, honest, courageous, disciplined, confident, creative/imaginative, assertive, enthusiastic, ethical, excellence, flexible, integrity, modest, orderly, passionate, patient, reliable, temperate, tolerant, and trustworthy. 

These happen automatically as one develops the Shaolin Virtues. The Shaolin Virtues approach improves you from at your very core. It is different than memorizing these qualities and trying to pursue them by forcing them on people or yourself.

Another way of looking at this is that if you do not continue to develop your Shaolin Virtues, you will become ignorant of your existence and forgetful of purpose. Time will pass too quickly and you will wonder what you have done with your life.

Shàolín Chándào perspective: The Inner Spiral of Growth is about willpower and reducing your suffering. By applying it in a spiral or cyclical fashion, you will reach greater heights along your Spiritual Journey.