Sometimes, in traveling a path, we discover a short-cut, and we reach our destination in less time-and with less effort than we thought, when we began the journey, would be required of us. On the path to self-awareness, however, there are no short-cuts. Personal growth awareness of the person we are in every present moment-is an ongoing lifetime process. The end of one learning cycle is always the beginning of the next.

Growth on any level, for any life form, is a continual process. Our soul's growth accumulates from lifetime to lifetime within each level of consciousness, and moves with us from one level to the next. It is never a case of "all or nothing," with our infinite future being permanently defined by the choices we make within a given timespan on a given level of learning; because soul experience for the purpose of growth is the only real objective in life, God poses no limitations - no time limits, no space limits-on our infinite, predestined accomplishment of that objective. Each soul learns-through experience-in it's own time and on it's own terms, as does every human being.

When-for our soul growth objectives-we come into a physical existence as a human being, we come in fully capable, on every level, of fulfilling the growth objectives we've planned to accomplish through our life experiences. Each of us has-in each lifetime-one primary lesson we hope to learn. The secondary lessons that we build into our life plan are lessons that support-and point to the primary lesson. Based on our life plan, everything in our lives is geared to exposing us to the people, the events, and the circumstances that will encourage us to learn-through our own experience - what we came here to learn.

Sometimes, we choose to look at our lives objectively and see the people, events and circumstances as the learning experiences they were intended to be. Sometimes, we choose to look at life from a more human, more emotional perspective. It often happens that a person goes through an entire lifetime, complete with all of it's experiences, good and bad, without ever realizing, on a conscious level, that there is a higher purpose to those experiences and/or a higher aspect to themselves.

In their spiritual blindness, they have missed the opportunities presented as life lessons and are completely unaware, because they fail to see the importance of their interactions with others, of the effect or lack of effect that they've had upon the people who chose, with ultimate faith on a soul level that the interconnected spiritual objectives would be accomplished in that lifetime according to plan-to learn and grow together by agreeing, long before the physical lifetime began, to be a part of each other's life plan.

"Ignorance of the law" does not redeem someone who breaks it and ignorance on a conscious level of the karmic Law of Repercussion does not redeem us from the karmic debt that we incur when we wander through life spiritually blinded. Whatever karmic debts we incur in our state of unawareness we must build into future life plans, when we will try, try again to awaken the conscious mind to the soul's plan for growth.

Assessing our conscious awareness of our spiritual objectives at any point in our life journey is a vital ingredient in self-awareness, for it is only we recognize, accept and work with the soul as the essence of our current lifetime self that we can begin to see, for ourselves, the order of the universe as it is reflected in our lives and the learning experiences that constitute living.

It would be nice if all of us, as souls, could come up with a perfect, infallible life plan. Our life lessons would be accomplished quickly and easily, and we'd never "miss the point" of any relationship or any situation. We'd know why we were here, and like all good students, we'd do our homework, learn what we needed to learn, pass each test of life with flying colors, and graduate to the next level of spiritual learning. Life would be simple. Life would be good.

But...life doesn't work that way, and either do life plans. The greatest challenge, at this juncture on our personal path to growth, is coming to recognize and respect the plan at play in our lives, a plan that, in the perfection of it's inception, perfectly accommodates our soul growth objectives.

Without conscious recognition of "the big picture" the soul's objective of spiritual growth being accommodated by the learning experiences being offered in the present lifetime-we see our lives as a maze of emotional, physical and mental experiences that seem to have no purpose at all, other than to make us feel that we are victims of circumstance surviving the whims of a cold and uncaring Fate.

Lois Grant-Holland is a Life Path Focus Counselor offering Life Path Focus Sessions, Karmic Astrology Charts, Channeled Guidance, Intuitive Readings and Classes and Workshops to spiritual seekers on all positive paths, and is the site facilitator at The A.N.S.W.E.R. - (The Seeker's Resource Guide to Alternative, New Thought, Spiritual Growth, Wellness and Enlightenment Resources.) You can visit her website at http://www.loisgrantholland.com