Practical Signs: Rising Spiritual Life and Growing Maturity

I started my career in quality measurement. One of the fundamental maxims of the field is to set SMART goals that help you and your team know which direction your plans, projects, and programs are really going. 

From MOBE, LLC ("Put your goals within reach")

Advancing spiritually isn't so cut and dry. People of good will experience periods of both consolation and desolation, closeness to God and separation, ecstasy and trials. The three-fold path that St. John of the Cross pioneered includes a repeating cycle with purgative, illuminative, and unitive phases.

The work of the Holy Spirit rising in your life is often accompanied by the following practical, discernable signs (adapted from Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds by Victor M. Parachin):

• Looking and asking for guidance concerning spiritual growth.
• Finding an appropriate church community
• Reading inspirational or challenging Christian books
• Learning from gifted spiritual teachers, including a regular confessor, spiritual director, trusted friend, and saints who model heroic virtue in ways that speak to your life and unique personal mission 
• Experiencing the "condition of peace and joy" and bringing it to the troubled, distressed, and hurting (i.e., spiritual and corporal works of mercy)
• Living and acting more from interior convictions than to gain the approval of others. (This will be easier for "Questioner" personality types than "Obligers" in Gretchen Rubin's 4 Tendencies framework). See below. 

The "4 Tendencies" Personality Types
Created by Gretchen Rubin

• Forgiving others more easily when they hurt you -- a spouse, a parent, a friend, a co-worker
• Self-discipline in matters small and large
• Waking up many days feeling grateful--even very, very grateful--for no reason other than the opportunity to enjoy another day. 

Sunrise for the Restless Child