The 7 Stages of the Modern Spiritual Path: A Step-by-Step Guide

The 7 Stages of the Modern Spiritual Path: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you are looking for a neat, clean, and orderly spiritual journey wrapped in ancient mysticism and soft, comforting platitudes, you are in the wrong place. I’ve never expressed myself in the manner that most spiritual teachers or authors do. I’m 57 now and have been involved in spiritual matters since I was 18. I’m fairly fluent in psychology and philosophy, and my formal background includes neuroscientific mindfulness, but primarily, I speak street. What I’ve learned deep in the blood and bones about spirituality, I didn’t learn in an institution, church or temple. 

Most traditional paths rely on faith, belief, and second-hand knowledge from long-dead teachers. But we're living in the modern age, and the modern path requires a completely different approach. It requires you to step out of your comfort zone, stop relying on belief, and engage in the messy, radical work of self-discovery.

The journey to true awakening is not a flat road. It is an ascent-  filled with twists and turns, crevices and ledges- through a variety of mountains. Seven spiritual mountains to be exact––intelligence, attention, awareness, ego/mind, mindfulness, awakening and enlightenment.

Here is your map to the 7 stages of the modern spiritual path.

Stage 1: The Mountain of Intelligence (Finding Proof and Pain)

Let’s start with a basic universal truth that applies to everyone who sets out upon this journey: You’re spiritually ignorant.

Don’t be offended. We all start here. You are, contrary to your beliefs, knee deep in the dark, muddy swamp waters of spiritual ignorance. Most belief systems don’t stand on anything resembling the solid hard granite of scientific proof, empirical (experiential) evidence, or fact-based conviction.

To climb this first mountain, you must acquire two vital tools:

• The Pain Jewel: This is the existential realization that something is fundamentally missing from your life. It is the inner SOS signal broadcasting the stark existential truth: Help! Something is missing! I am not whole!

• The Proof Jewel: Belief, faith, hope and any forms of wishful thinking are completely useless currencies on this journey. You need experiential proof—whether that comes from an out-of-body experience, breathwork, or a profound shift during a simple mindful hobby like fly fishing. A “proof” jewel provides profound internal experiential evidence rather than external scientific "proof."

Your goal is to acquire both jewels. Without them, the rest of your journey is likely doomed.

Stage 2: The Mountain of Attention (Observing the Ego)

Once you have your proof and you are listening to your pain, you must build the capacity to pay attention. The trek to the top of The Mountain of Attention, initiates the part of your journey (through attention, awareness, ego-mind and mindfulness) containing one vital theme: self-observation.

This stage is about looking ruthlessly at your own cognitive illusions. We have to shine a spotlight on the ego's favorite traps:

• Lying: Lying is an innate part of the illusory, separate, ego-bound, dream-state, personality. It prevents us from paying complete attention to reality.

• Denial: Denial is the juvenile, fear-based solution to dealing with experiences, people, places and things that don’t fit into our fictionalized reality.

• Distraction: We live in a time when an infinite amount of distraction is available to you twenty-four hours a day. Distraction sucks our attention away in wholesale proportions.

By paying attention to your mind, emotions, and body without judgment, you create distance between your true self and your thoughts. You begin to understand, experience and repeatedly prove to yourself that you are not the thoughts in your head, rather you are the observer of thoughts.

Stage 3: The Mountain of Awareness (Noticing the Noticer)

This is where the path gets wonderfully paradoxical. If you are the observer of your thoughts, who is observing the observer?

This stage is about shifting from merely paying attention to objects, to becoming aware of awareness itself. Being aware that you are reading these words and not merely reading them...is to recognize awareness.

The mind will fight this. When you try to find the "noticer," you are using the apparatus of the mind to look for the source of the mind. It’s like a flashlight scanning a dark room, desperately looking for the source of the light. But when the chasing mind gives up—there it is. The snake stops chasing its tail, uncoils, and simply rests in the awareness of its own existence.

Stages 4 through 7: The Final Ascent

As you stabilize your awareness, you prepare for the highest peaks of the journey. The air gets thinner here, and you can no longer carry the heavy baggage of your old identity.

• The Mountain of Ego/Mind: Confronting the deep-seated structures of your conditioned identity and facing the existential fears that arise when the ego begins to dissolve.

• The Mountain of Mindfulness: Integrating this profound, nondual awareness into the mundane moments of everyday life. Chopping wood and carrying water, but from a state of pure presence.

• The Mountain of Awakening: The radical, experiential shift where the illusion of the separate self permanently shatters. You realize the vast mysterious universe is happening inside of you.

• The Mountain of Enlightenment: The summit. The complete, unshakeable stabilization of nondual reality.

Ready to Start the Climb?

I can guarantee absolute safety, support, respect, healing, love and care––for your deepest, truest, innermost Self. Your personality, beliefs, mind and ego on the other hand, will suffer catastrophic damage and destruction.

You don't need to climb all seven mountains today. Your only job, no matter what age or phase of life you’re in, is to take the next step.

If you are tired of relying on blind belief and are ready to do the grounded, practical work of waking up, you don't have to navigate this ascent alone. I highly recommend you begin with a free trial of the Know Thyself course. It provides the exact, neuroscientific framework and modern spiritual tools you need to discover your Proof Jewel, quiet the mind, and take your next crucial step up the mountain.