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Three Stages of the Spiritual Life?

Here's my latest theory on the three stages of spiritual life the typical Gnostic-age person must past through (your mileage may vary):

1) First, God is seen only in the miraculous. Only the spirit & supernatural matters, material is banal. We look for dramatic answers to prayer, for thrilling "Godincidences". The occult and the extraordinary fascinate us. God is not in the boring things that we can get for ourselves. Food is something we grow; our parents gave birth to us. We focus on this degree of "separation" of God, in his not seeming to be directly responsible for our creation or food on the table - he had others as intermediates. Nevermind that God makes all things and that no man has ever produced matter from nothing or that even our own brains are merely recycled earth!

2) Second, God is seen in the miraculous and in the good things of this earth. Here a widened gaze takes in all around us and rightly attributes all good things to God --such as health, good food, sex, trees, oceans, mountains. We might look at the galaxy and see this thin slice of life on earth and consider it like a party. Thank God I'm here and not there! Thank God I exist!

3) Third, God is seen in the miraculous, in good things, and in bad things. Suffering is seen as redemptive. This requires trust in Tradition, in the saints and in the Church because Scripture assigns value to persecution for the Kingdom but "normal" suffering is not explicitly mentioned as meritorious. You can see, from this, how the Tradition-less "health and wealth" gospel has taken hold among many Christians. But in the words of St. Therese: "everything is grace". Here is the recognition that God brings good out of evil and that suffering is not wasted and that God is present in a special way. This requires, not surprisingly, the fullest and most fervent faith.

An alternative way of looking at the whole thing is to look at God's drawing us to a deeper and more difficult levels of faith.

1) The first level is simply believing that there is a God. This is easy because it's impossible to believe it all occurred by accident. But God is a watch-maker God.

2) The second level is believing in the Bible, in the very personal Judeau-Christian God. He cares and is actively concerned about our behavior.

3) The third level is believing in the Eucharist, that God is love and that he gave us the Catholic Church as a guide and mother.

--Each level is an increasing gift. The first is the gift of things. The second is that we've received a very specific message from a caring God. The third is that He is here, physically present.