Spiritual development

A principle aim of monasticism and related religious endeavours is the spiritual development or spiritual perfection of the individual, in the imperfect state perceived as mistakenly identifying himself with an ego which is not in fact his true self. Discovery of the true self can only be accomplished following a process by which various imperfections, impediments and false identifications are overcome. Discipline, control, chastisement, self-mortification and other psychophysical procedures are used, accompanied by meditation and contemplation on some set of spiritual concepts together with other practices such as prayer, incantation, reading religious texts, worship, propitiation, pilgrimage, fasting and various forms of self-abasement or self-inflation.

Buddhism aspires to spiritual perfection in one lifetime, complete fulfilment and maturity expressed as an arhat, worthy to achieve nirvana, with perfect insight into relation between life, suffering, cause and effect.

In the Catholic Church, spiritual perfection is considered in two senses, the first referring to the completeness or wholeness possessed when participating, through grace, in the supernatural life of God; and the second referring to the attainment, through charity, of union with God. Some Christians would look on perfection as the ultimate in holiness and sanctification, claiming that while the two latter may be achieved, perfection may not; but perfection is usually understood as ethical and spiritual completeness resulting from a religious life of faith and discipline. St Paul, in his epistle to the Ephesians, speaks of being "imitators" of God and "walking in love"; and in St John's first epistle God's love is referred to as "being perfected in us". This perfection is generally considered the destruction of sin but not of all human limitations (lack of knowledge, for example). The notion of being perfected in love is central to Methodist belief, but still with the possibility of involuntary transgressions. The Anglican Church looks to Christ's incarnation "without spot of sin" as being able to "make us clean from all sin". Lutheran and Calvinist Churches, on the contrary, look to absolute perfection only achieved after this life, as did St Augustine, who maintained that God retains some sin in the most perfect of lives, this being essential for true humility. Mystical Christianity has much in common with Buddhism on this point, seeking perfection in union with the uncreated essence when there is no longer distinction between the creator and the created.

Over the centuries numerous sects have arisen which claim perfection exclusively for themselves, assuming they are in a state beyond moral law. However, few established religions, particularly in the West, emphasize spiritual development to any great extent. Rather, the emphasis is on moral and ethical development and on worship or spiritual exercises. The experience of the spiritual, or spirituality, has until recently been looked on as a private concern of the individual. Since Vatican II there has been some redressing of the balance towards the spiritual as the experience of the whole of life being shot through with faith.