For this first week, focus on the human mind as a “house of spiritual awareness.” When you experience an emotion, take a moment to notice on which level of your “house” the emotion resides.
• If you discover that your emotion resides in the lower levels of your “house,” see if your awareness, by itself, shines enough light on that “beast in your basement” to lessen its impact on your spiritual well-being.
• When you experience a negative emotion, reflect on parts of your life that you experience in a higher, more joyful place. See if your thoughts of more joyful experience bring peace to replace the negative focus of your thoughts.
• Journal about your experience with this task.
• For groups: Come to your next group meeting prepared to share the impact of any new awareness you have experienced.

Learning Objectives
• Understand the concept of the spiritual dimension of life.
• Become familiar with the “house of spiritual awareness” as a model of the mind.
• Understand that uncritical self-awareness and loving self-observation are essential to your spiritual growth

Frank’s Thoughts about Task 1
In our first task, we examine how we can raise ourselves to the higher levels of life experience. We begin with awareness. Once we become aware that we exist as spiritual beings on several levels, we can learn how to move from the mind’s lower levels to its higher levels, where joy and peace reside.
     Emanuel Swedenborg has offered a model of the mind that looks like a house with several floors or stories. The floors are connected by stairways that allow us to move from one level to the next. These stairways represent our access to higher levels of spiritual joy in our life. They represent the vertical dimension through which we com­mune with our Higher Power.
     At the lowest level of our house of spiritual awareness is our base­ment. The negative emotions reside here and can quickly take con­trol of our lives. Here we find self-pity, jealously, anger, hatred, and all other negative emotions that rapidly drag us down into a negative state of mind.
In the higher levels of the house we find joy, hope, peace of mind, and patience. These are the emotions that our Higher Power wishes us to experience.
     This book is about raising ourselves above the basement emo­tions to experience the joy of living on the level of peace and love.
     How can we use this model to raise our own life experience to a higher level? First we have to know where we are coming from. We must notice when we are having an emotional reaction to a life experience, and this takes awareness.
     Awareness is the cornerstone of spiritual growth.
     Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be vaccinated against the negatives that invade our lives? If we could become immune to nega­tive emotions, life would be fairly simple. But, alas, there is no such immunity. We must learn how to deal within ourselves with life’s offerings.
     That is what we like about our Spiritual Growth Program. Spiri­tual growth is all about how you deal with your own life’s offerings, on your own terms.
     Does this sound selfish? We believe it is not so selfish when, by learning to keep negative emotions from interfering with your own joy, you also unlock the joy you can bring to those around you. We believe this is what our Higher Power intended for us as our mission and purpose in life.
     In this program, simply waking up and becoming aware of your spiritual self is the most important first step in improving your spiri­tual life. When you are spiritually asleep and don’t recognize the negative emotions that control some of your actions, you bec