Signposts of the Spiritual Journey

Book excerpt: Winner of the Janey Loves 2022 Platinum Award Popular meditation leader and poet John Siddique draws on more than 40 years of practice to offer this uniquely helpful road map to the spiritual journey, highlighting the changes that show us we’re making progress and the obstacles that will certainly come up. This book is a guide to the spiritual path that clearly reveals the signposts of success on the journey, as well as the blockages and traps that hold us back from a life of presence, meaning and enlightenment. By laying out the signs and blockages clearly and honestly and with a lot of love and humour, the book offers a wonderful resource for growth. Whatever level of freedom the reader feels drawn to – basic human freedom, or the great goal of the spiritual life of enlightenment – this roadmap will guide readers to tread the path of their ordinary life and receive the benefit in the here and now. From Signpost 1, The Arising of Questions to, finally, Signpost 16, Giving Everything to Love, the book explores all the indications of progress those who embark on a spiritual journey will encounter, offering reassurance as well as highlighting blocks such as the painbody, object consciousness, spiritual bypassing, the cult of individualism and dualistic thinking, and hard-to-spot cultural, religious and spiritual influences. In addition to sharing encouraging real-life stories, the books also offers a huge range of tools and practices, from using writing and drawing to explore our own teachability to self-reflections designed to expand awareness and let go of ego, to instructions for effective, safe, meditative practices little known in the West.