Deepak Chopra's Seven Spiritual Paths

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Back in April, Deepak Chopra began a series of posts on his IntentBlog looking at seven different spiritual paths, which might better be understood as seven spiritual levels of development (as pointed out to him by a reader).

Chopra is quick to point out that it might still be better to look at these as paths (from Part 7):

A person may have little idea of what spiritual stage he has reached; it is perilously difficult to judge such things either from the inside or outside. But a path is consciously chosen. Having chosen it, we may become confused along the way, change course, or give up for a time.

Despite this admonition, Chopra uses the language of hierarchy in describing how these various paths evolve.

This series developed as a result of a statement Chopra made asserting that the idea of God will remain relevant to spiritual seekers even as church attendance continues to drop.

For the most part, this seems like a loose variation on Spiral Dynamics. Level 1 is roughly the same as the Purple meme, Level 2 is similar to the Red meme, Level 3 feels a little like the Blue meme, and so on. The correspondence is rough at best, and some of it doesn't feel right to me. However, it's good to see that Chopra is allowing some of his involvement with the Integral Institute to rub off on him.

Here are the links to each of the parts of the article:
Seven Spiritual Laws (Part 1): Seeking Safety, Security, Protection
Seven Spiritual Laws (Part 2): Seeking Law, Order, and Accomplishment
Seven Spiritual Laws (Part 3): Seeking Community, Togetherness, Inner Peace
Seven Spiritual Laws (Part 4): Seeking Wisdom, Intuitive Understanding, Divine Presence
Seven Spiritual Laws (Part 5): Seeking Creativity, Freedom, Uniqueness
Seven Spiritual Laws (Part 6): Seeking Universal Peace, Love, and Healing
Seven Spiritual Laws (Part 7): The End of All Seeking, Unity

If you're interested, have a read. Each article is fairly short.


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