Q: I feel dissatisfied with the amount of spiritual progress I have been making. How can I speed up my rate of spiritual progress?

A: You need to be able to give sufficient time to spiritual development. The relative rate you work through the impeding karma between successive nodal points is a function of the relative density of the karmic accretions between each nodal point, and the time you have available to do transformational work.

Your time is divided into three major divisions: duty, karma, and sadhana.

Duty comprises the time you spend nurturing your relationships of family, friends, and relatives; the time required for you to prepare for your career through education and to perform the tasks of your job; and the errands of your daily routine.

Karma consists of the time that is taken up through absorption in your desires, curiosity or fascination, or you when you are operating under an internal compulsion or addiction. Sometimes karma will appear as something new in your life, to which you must respond. In other cases, it will arise as physical or psychological issues that demand your attention, time, and effort—requiring problem solving, personal process, medical treatment, or therapy.

Spiritual work (Sadhana) includes your aspiration, or desire for spiritual progress; your inner work, the active transformation you do with your ensouling entity and its vehicles of consciousness, and your spirit; and reception of guidance, when you tap into intuition to gain understanding, to communicate spiritual truths to others, or to glean practical guidance for your life.

A disciple must free up as much time as possible for sadhana through simplifying his or her duties, and working out the issues that make up his or her karma. To complete the work of ascension to Mastery and Liberation, God must be your first priority. Your sadhana must be one-pointed and unbroken, your aspiration unwavering, and you must be steadfast in your efforts to transform your spiritual potentials and commune with the Master.

Your development may not always be easy; at some places on the Path, the karma is denser. The demands of your duty and karma may leave you will little time to devote to your sadhana; yet you need to make time for this and maximize your results in meditation.

As you gain mastery over the basic meditation skills of Integral meditation, you can utilize the shortcuts we have taught you to do more in the time you have. Once you master using intention to unite your attention with the attentional principle, traveling to your cutting edge of spirituality on the beam of Light, and combining your transformational mantra with Nada Yoga during the same meditation session—you can move ahead both on the track of the Soul at least one nodal point and open the track of the spirit to that same level in about twenty minutes.

We teach you these basic meditation skills of using your unique transformational mantra, opening the Path of the spirit through Nada Yoga, and traveling as your attentional principle up to the presence of the Soul in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

If you can give an hour for meditation, increase the time you spend doing your transformational mantra, so you can open three to five nodal points each day. If you are not in a level of the Continuum where you must integrate the contents of the nodal points you open that are essential to carry out your Soul’s purpose, you can extend the number of nodal points that you purify beyond five.

You can make palpable spiritual progress through doing the work. If you cannot reach a touchdown every time you sit down, you can make a gain of forward yardage with each meditation session. When you open up this new level of your mind, take the time to contemplate it and integrate its knowledge, ability, and virtue.

In time you will find that you have completed your work in the Subtle, Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, and your aligned Transcendental Path, and you have reached the Bridge Path—faster than you even realized was even possible. If you are unflagging in your effort, you will make progress and reach the goal at last.

[Those of you who have completed one of our intermediate courses] You have all the tools you need to do this fundamental work. Use them. They will serve you well.