It can be heartening to consider that, if you think or feel you’ve fallen back into ignorance, or aren’t making any progress spiritually speaking, or that all this non-dual stuff is practically useless, or you aren’t getting it, or are just a horrible person…whatever your dis-courage-ment is – to take the bigger view: when looking back over one’s life.

While it’s true Consciousness itself, as a whole, as the totality doesn’t grow – since it’s not relative to anything – each of us beings, as a unique reflection of the whole in each other – a bead in Indra’s Net as it were – a flower in an open field of Love, do grow. Each at its own pace and in it own way, on its own path, circuitous and winding as it may be (would be boring otherwise). That is to say, that although this is a “Direct Path” and not a progressive one, it appears to happen via time and space to an apparent being among other apparent beings (the avatars in the Game).

And, as a non-duality teacher was heard saying, you can’t pull the asparagus to make it grow (referring to others that one would like to help I believe, but it applies to oneself too: take it easy! Live the Tao).

There are two basic directions people seem to go as they get older (and I have observed this in my own family): one can become more unhappy, closed, despairing, desperate (depressed, anxious angry, frustrated, conflicted, whatever), or, one can become happier, more at peace, less worried, experiencing greater harmony, love, openness… The first way, I assume is because one is identified and attached as a seemingly separate object, a person, a bodymind that is going to disappear absolutely. And the second way, one becomes more and more open (what one already Is), happier, at peace, lets go, stops holding to more and more (fewer residues), not “owning” any thing, thus knowing oneSelf, what life Is, being lived.

So this chart is about the latter path, the upward one.

Some features to note:

The outline is like that of tracing the top of a fractal mountain range, where there are ups and downs, but the overall trend is upward.
Toward the beginning, the peaks and valleys are larger, where one experiences larger moods and dramas – they are more pronounced and longer lasting – but one’s life becomes more stable and even as time (seemingly) goes on, as one’s baseline or default state is on a higher plateau, as the understanding and living of Truth deepens (“establishment” or “colonization”).

No one, as far as I’ve seen, is ever finished or completely 100% free of “the residues of ignorance”: I.e., I’ve met no saints. And, human life is by nature perfectly imperfect. So be it.

(This was a rather crude attempt at a drawing with a pen on paper… I also tried to use chatGPT + Wolfram Alpha plugin to make a nicer one, but have’t quite found the right input so far.

One of the limitations of this chart is that Life isn’t really linear like this, plus time and space are not fundamental. And, perhaps an upward spiral, like a staircase or DNA, as I’ve seen in some of my dreams, would be a better representation. I don’t have a vision how that would look like, yet).