Progression vs. Being Tested

“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” ~ Winston Churchill

 Recently, my dear friend Stephanie Mazzella and I decided to start a mini-book club with just the two of us and our book choice is Working With The Law by Raymond Holliwell.  I am loving this book because he takes each natural law of the universe and discusses it at length with an ease and simplicity that makes it all too impossible not to get it.

During the chapter “Law of Supply” we went of on a tangent about the progression of man.  Stephanie asked me if anywhere in our church’s doctrine are we actually told we’re placed here to be tested and I can honestly say, that no, that’s not what we were taught.  We’ve been taught that we are here, on this earth, to progress.  What we realized is that man tends to take on the belief that we are put on this earth solely to be tested.  A sort of survival course to get through to be deemed worthy at the end of it.  However, I feel as though the  term “being tested” gives off a negative vibe.

I am beginning to suspect that “being tested” is a man made edict.  Raymond Holliwell writes “Man will ever be poor as long as he demands of life a meager living and sees in it a struggle, toil, hardship and limitation”.  If we continue to see life as a test, a struggle, a survival test to get through, that is all it will ever be for us.

Progression on the other hand, is a more positive state of mind.  It suggests life is lived in incremental steps leading upward and onward.  Growth is synonymous with progression.  Therefore, we are here on this earth to grow towards a higher form of, not only consciousness, but of knowledge and spirituality.

When I think of “test”, I think of passing or failing.  However, when thinking about “progression”, I think of growing and evolving.  Which do you choose to think about?