This blog was first published on aetherius.org.

A horse suddenly came galloping quickly down the road. It seemed as though the man on it had somewhere important to go. Another man who was standing alongside the road shouted:

“Where are you going?”

To which the man on the horse replied:

“I don’t know! Ask the horse!”

Have you ever had a habit like this?

In their negative aspect, habits can involve mindless repetition, to the extent that our lives can become ruled by them even when we don’t want them to be, much like the man on the horse.

But in their positive aspect, habits can profoundly change our lives for the better. By cultivating the right habits we can advance along the path to spiritual success much more quickly.

Destiny is a bundle of habits

Swami Sivananda once said:

“You are the architect of your own fate. You are the master of your own destiny. You can do and undo things.

“You sow an action and reap a tendency. You sow a tendency and reap a habit. You sow a habit and reap your character. You sow your character and reap your destiny. Therefore, destiny is your own creation. You can undo it if you like – destiny is a bundle of habits.”

We all have good and bad habits, let’s be honest.

A single occurrence of most actions in our daily lives has very little impact on our lives as a whole. But through repetition, the effect of even small things can add up to create a big impact over time.

For example, eating badly for a meal here and there probably won’t make much difference. But if you eat badly so often that it becomes your daily routine, then over time your physical health will most likely suffer.

The same applies to exercise, getting enough sleep and many, many other things. We all try to strike a balance with these things and this can sometimes be very difficult. But it is well worth the effort, because all of these things that make up our daily lives ultimately, through repetition, help create our destiny.

So for the spiritual seeker, it’s essential that the habits we cultivate are going to help us on our spiritual journey.

Before we address the three habits of the spiritually successful – how do we define ‘spiritual success’?

What is spiritual success?

There’s a wonderful book that outlines some very important spiritual successes that all people on Earth can aspire to. It’s called The Nine Freedoms and it contains a series of teachings given by a Cosmic Master known as Mars Sector 6.

These were delivered to humanity through the mediumship of the Spiritual Master Dr George King in 1961. Dr King would induce a positive trance state within himself and Mars Sector 6 would speak through him using Dr King’s vocal chords. These messages were recorded, transcribed, and are available as CDs, audio downloads, a hardcopy book or ebook.

A textbook for spiritual success

The Nine Freedoms are nine steps, or stages for want of a better term, that we all must progress through on our spiritual journey. And we’re talking about our spiritual journey in the very big-picture sense here – across many lifetimes. But the lessons they contain are also vital to our spiritual success right here and now.

The Nine Freedoms provide textbook examples of spiritual success on Earth in the form of:

• Enlightenment – freedom from ignorance and the dawning of true wisdom.
• Cosmic Consciousness – from here we begin a great journey through cosmic truth.
• Ascension – complete control over the power of kundalini is achieved, leading to the graduation from the classroom of Earth.

They also offer us definitions of spiritual success in the Solar System:

• Interplanetary Existence – once we’ve achieved all we can in the classroom of Earth, we go on to learn in higher classrooms, that is to say other planets in the Solar System – not on this physical level, but at a higher frequency of vibration.
• Saturnian Existence – after many lifetimes on other planets we finally reach the most advanced planet in the Solar System, Saturn.
• Solar Existence – a state beyond our comprehension, where we literally become the very radiations of the Sun itself.

These last three are pretty difficult to appreciate. All we can do is wonder about them in awe.

But to bring it back to our daily lives in the here and now – how do we achieve these lofty goals? What are the habits that can lead to these? To find these we only need to look at the first three of the Freedoms: Bravery, Love and Service.

These could be described as the three habits of the spiritually successful because they are the essential foundation for any spiritual journey.

Habit 1: be brave

The Cosmic Master who gave The Nine Freedoms, Mars Sector 6, makes it clear right from the outset how important bravery is in our lives. He begins by saying:

Bravery is essential in all things…

In order to really search for truth and progress on our spiritual journey, we have to be brave. And bravery comes in all shapes and sizes.

Bravery can mean standing up for yourself or for others. It can mean being really brutally honest with yourself about your life.

Bravery can be in small, everyday things. In fact, being brave in small everyday things may be the best place to start. It’s unlikely that we can be brave in really big, important things, without first cultivating bravery as a habit in the smaller areas of our lives. So much so that it becomes our state of mind.

Bravery is essential in all things, but how can we be brave in all things without first being brave in some things? And then some more things. And then even more things. And so on. We have to start somewhere and grow.

Bravery is about overcoming fear. Fear can also be a habit and a very negative one. Mars Sector 6 says:

It is just as easy to have a state of mind unclouded by fear as it is to allow it to be warped by this intrusion.

So if it’s just as easy to be brave as it is to be fearful, then why aren’t we brave more often? We can blame it on the conditioning of society, but we can also take some responsibility here for allowing ourselves to carry on with the bad habit of being fearful.

Habit 2: manifest love

Mars Sector 6 again:

Manifest this great, true, impersonal power in your every thought and action during your waking state, then it will still be manifested by you during your projected state which you call sleep.

Quite simply, we need to manifest love in our every thought and action. That’s quite a statement. How many thoughts and actions have you had already today by the time you read this? Even if you read this at 9 o’clock in the morning, you must still have already had plenty of thoughts and actions. And in how many of those did you manifest love? It’s an interesting thing to consider.

So if the goal is to manifest love in our every thought and action, then we must begin by first manifesting it in some thoughts and some actions. And then some more thoughts and some more actions, and so on.

Gradually, over time we will make this behaviour so ingrained in our lives that it will become a part of us, an attribute and a state of mind. In fact, Mars Sector 6 advises us to make it not just a state of mind, but “a state of whole being”. How can we do this unless we first make it a habit?

The second aspect of this quote is that we are responsible for our karma, generated by our thoughts and actions, for 24 hours per day. We’re not fully conscious the whole time obviously, but during our sleep state we project from our physical bodies, and therefore we are generating karma for ourselves even when we are asleep.

So how can we control how we behave in the sleep state? Well, Mars Sector 6 shows us the power of making manifesting love a habit. Because if we make this such a habit during our waking state, then it will carry over into our sleep state.

In fact, it seems reasonable to assume that any of our habits from our waking state will carry over into the sleep state. So the same could also be said for bravery. If we manifest this in our waking state, we will be more likely to manifest it during our sleep state.

And it could also be said for the third habit.

Habit 3: give service

Here we encounter the best habit of all – unselfishness. Mars Sector 6 says:

Freedom from selfishness is – service.

Through the habit of selfishness, we imprison ourselves. But we can break this bad habit, and free ourselves from this prison, by creating and nurturing within ourselves the positive habit of service.

Service is such a critical part of our spiritual journey that, in fact, it is the number one key to spiritual evolution. Mars Sector 6:

Service is a culmination of experiences which denote the server as being on the ladder of evolution, firmly on this ladder.

The three habits are all important and they are very interrelated. But of the three of them, service is the real jewel.

If we look at the lives of the great Masters who have walked among us – Cosmic Masters from other planets – such as the Master Jesus, the Lord Buddha, Sri Krishna and many others, we can see these three attributes strongly demonstrated, especially service.

Indeed their very presence on Earth is a wonderful act of service. And in more recent history, to study the life of the Master Dr George King is to be given a masterclass in all of them.

Destiny is a bundle of habits

If we want our destiny to be one of spiritual success then we need to manifest bravery, love and service. And no matter how much we’re manifesting them in our daily lives now, we can strive to increase this. In fact, striving to manifest them more and more is what will allow us to progress spiritually – it’s what life on Earth is really all about.

A close study of The Nine Freedoms is one of the best ways to cultivate an understanding of them, and also to stimulate the motivation to want to manifest them more and more. This study will serve us well because these attributes are not just vital to spiritual success on Earth, they are also vital to spiritual success throughout the rest of our journey beyond Earth.

Be brave more often.

Manifest love in more thoughts and actions.

Give more service.

These are the three habits of the spiritually successful.

Manifest them and shape your destiny!