Conversion could be said to be changing over to another way of looking at things, or another belief system. But there is a broader definition that involves how you look at life, how the individual approaches life. One can use that broader definition to better understand life and spiritual growth. 

We each are as a cell in the mind of god. We are part of the whole, with all the characteristics of God, but limited. Instead of being all knowing, all loving, all understanding, we know, love and understand within the limits of our personal "piece" of God.  How can we use this information to create an understanding of how to grow spiritually? 

There could be said to be a personal scale of wholeness. At one end is full love, full understanding, full attention, our basic state. At the other end of the scale is conversion. One wishes the other person to convert to one's own viewpoint. In between on the scale can be help. One is not quite up to loving the other person but can help them. Another step might be duty. One loves and helps through duty. So: Love-Help-Duty-Conversion. As one moves along the scale from love to conversion what is happening? One's attention is moving from being on the other person to being on oneself.  This has happened to each of us because the amount of our direct attention has lessened as we left pieces of it around this universe. Attention and love and understanding function together for us. Because that is who we are.

We are love therefore at basic our attention IS love. If you have ever loved a child you know how little attention is on yourself. The need for another to see our viewpoint, the need for others to pay attention ot us, is conversion. As we move from conversion toward love we grow in understanding and direct attention. So if we improve our direct attention, love and understanding will follow. This seems rather dry but in practice is far from it.

One might say the need to have another pay attention to you is ego. Letting go of ego is quite effective in spiritual growth because it recovers our true self.
How do we do this? Yoga, meditation, counseling, whatever floats your personal boat. It is really all a journey back to you, as a first step. For the second step see www.themodeloftheuniverse.com

Fear is the emotion that something bad is about to happen.

It is not native to us and does not have to exist. That it does has a specific reason.

As we have moved through this universe our viewpoints have constricted. By viewpoint I mean the way we see this place. We are ourselves, as pieces of God. But we look into the universe as through a lens, a binoculars, or a microscope. This viewpoint has taken a view of physically smaller and smaller areas over time. From galaxies to solar systems to planets, clear on down to lifeforms. At some point one decides to take a viewpoint through the eyes of a lifeform. Then the critical decision comes that one is a lifeform, and fear really comes into being. Because a lifeform, unlike us, can be injured and die. A lifeform has its own set of responses as well and the more one identifies with them the more one believes in one's own emotions as oneself. Yet none of them really exist except as we create them. An answer is to get some distance from this viewpoint so one does not have to believe one is a body or even a viewpoint. This is actually, factually doable.

It is completely up to the individual to approach things in this way. There is no right or wrong to it. It is much more important to be true to oneself than to take any certain direction. Each of us has our own path and no one is more right than another. You determine it. I can't say this strongly enough.

However if you want to begin getting an overview some basic information that I believe is truth about this place is avaiable at www.themodeloftheuniverse.com

Did you know cats have souls?
They tread at night
Through tall grass fields
Beneath a warm moon
Below wind brushed branches
Where owls sit regally
With burning eyes
The cat's soul lies
Cats cannot die
Like all spirits
They live where they choose
Light and free as breath
And when the time comes
Go like a whisper
From a dear heart
Tenderly, with cherishment
We are so fortunate
for our friends
Who visit us here
In this lonely place
To find sun's light
Shining through the glass
And lie in endearing repose
Reminding us
We too are souls

Let's fly to fields to paint our love
On parchment white as mourning dove
On all the moment day can fill
On song on scent on wish on will

On sweetest sighings lips may share
On periwinkle maidenhair
On gloriousity's delight
On opalescent snow-capped height

On clouds on fire on golden fleece
On comfort's lack on wisdom's cease
Let's fly to fields where inlaid lie
That prismic pearl of you and I

Truth is the element found in the mines
Never unravels and never unwinds
Never betrays or enforces distress
Or barks up a tree on a whimsical guess

Hard as an insight can be to deploy
Liable to misery much as to joy
When searching for love's so reclusive design
Find where one's heart lies, then truth will be thine

Dream of evergreen days
Mist floats amid trees in salty air
Rock and cobble
lie beside pathways
formed from a million years
of washing waves

Troubles of the world passed
All liquid emotion spent
Dream of evergreen days
in trees
above the
gliding and restless sea

The straightest road curves
as earth bends all matter
No care of commitment
for lover or friend

Just spaces and places
at jugular distance
Heart in the throat
while a sad story ends

What is ego anyway, and why would anyone feel the need to conquer it, or get beyond it? Is that even a good idea?

Let's look at what ego actually is. If we believe we are spiritual beings, perfect within the limiits of our ability, then ego is some kind of add-on. It is not who we are at basic.

I would say ego is our collection of ideas, judgments and opinions as seen through our viewpoint. Viewpoint is simply the means we use to see this universe as a spiritual being. Over time we have used this ego as a means of communicating, of having identities to do stuff, to be someone. At some point each of us likely decided to look through the eyes of a life form to play the game. Then at some point decided we ARE the life form. The life form became our viewpoint and our ideas, opinions and judgements became a part of us. We are not our viewpoint or any of our ideas, or "ego", however. But believing it leads to all sorts of trouble, especially since a life form can be hurt and die. It is possible to become so confused one believes that simple disagreement with one's ideas is a threat to one's survival! Most wars begin over differences in ideas and those who are most dedicated to their own ego are most likely to insist on their point of view prevailing. When ego becomes more important than life people will die for it.

So what do we do about it? A first step is to recognize that one is not one's ideas, or thoughts, or feelings. One has them like a bag lunch. If they can be discaded it is no loss, whether they are seemingly positive or negatve. You can create anything you want on a much better scale than ego.
There are more steps possible, if one wishes. But knowing you are not what you are thinking or feeling is a pretty big one.

This might seem to be a pretty stunning statement. But it is the base of all the Eastern advice you are getting about life, ego,spiritual advancement, love, the way, the law of attraction, the entirety of how to move spiritually.
In seeing the way things set up, I can say with certainty that there is no correct path. There is no right way of being. There is only what you want to do.
BUT there is more understanding, if you wish to understand. There is more awareness. There is a more comprehensive viewpoint of yourself to access.
Everyone is on their path. Everyone, at every moment. This is not a responsibility. It is simply the way it is. The trip moves toward who one is.
The exciting part is that we are always at point blank range to understanding. We each ARE always in this moment. The only difference iis knowing it or not. When you hear "be in the moment" you are really hearing, "understand the moment".
You are everything you want to be. You have the perfect right to move in any direction you wish. God is love. This is the honest to God truth, not just something that would be nice to believe. The more right you are, the more you see it. And the more every one else will be right, too.

So what does it mean, you are always right?
It means what it says. You and no one in this universe has ever done a "wrong" thing in the entirety of existence. How can this be? Firstly, I felt this around the time that the spiritual model of this universe popped up for me. (The model apparently comes into view at some point on an individual's spiritual path). Different from much of the other stuff in the model, I did not deduce it. Being right was very real.  However there is good reason for it to be true.
This universe is set up for us to play, to have fun, to experiment. We each are a piece of God operating within, with all characteristics of God. That means we are at base complete love, understanding, and attention. However we are each unit size, not God size.
The three characteristics above, love, understanding, and attention seem to work together. If one's direct attention is lessened so is love and understanding. One can "lose" attention in this universe. Let's say one has an amount of direct attention amounting to 100. One is looking at one thing, then sees another and goes to that other without fully releasing attention from the first thing. One might have still, say,1/100th of ones attention on the first thing. Unless one releases that attention at some point there it stays. This progresses over time, till incrementally one has quite a bit of dispersed attention. Maybe even more than one's direct attention. And since love and understanding are a part of the whole our love and understanding have also lessened. And with less of all three strange things can start to happen. One can not understand to the point one believes one is a body, for example. And that there is right and wrong, with that sense misaligned through having lived in a million societies with different moral standards.
But the truth apparently is we are all God and no one is more right than anyone. AND NEITHER IS ANY GROUP. In other words just because there is two against one the two are not right. Nor a thousand to one or a million to one or a trillion to one. ONE is always right. Why? Well, because that is the way it works in this universe where we each have ONE viewpoint and unit of direct attention. You and anyone can put direct attention on only one thing. Thus one attention to one attention rules because that brings about understanding. Every try to split your attention? Can't be done. You will either have attention on one thing or nothing. Groups do not bring about real understanding. One on one can. Group morals have zero to do with spiritual growth.
A feeling of wrongness is only valuable as a tracking device. One has something to let go of, one way or another. Any such feeling of wrongness is never right. It is not you. You are never wrong. And never have been.  And neither has anyone else.
No one wrong is a very serene place to be!
www.themodeloftheuniverse.com

If we are always right, what does this mean to spiritual growth?
It means that the question of life  moves from a moral question to an engineering question. By this I mean there is no "right" way to operate. There is no "moral" way to build a skyscraper. There is a way to build it, with so much steel and concrete. If you don't build it to the proper engineering standards it may collapse. But in the engineering world this operation is not moral. The only question is, does it work as it is supposed to work?
So too is our engineering question and operation of spiritual growth. If we know the model we have an idea what works and what does not.. You decide what tack you want to take. And there is no wrong way to go.
In the case of the model we know that the creature that is a piece of God has love, understanding, and attention, tied up as a unit. To increase or decrease one is to increase or decrease the other. Therefore to increase all three one simply increases one of them. If you love more, you will understand more. If you understand more, you will have greater attention. If you pay more attention to someone, you will love them more. On and on. The answer becomes not platitudes and heiroglyphs but real understanding of how things work, with a tremendous spiritual lift. And that tends to take one into realms beyond engineering.

But at the base of all is the right of each of us to be right, which means to do what we damn well please.. Your best bet is to understand, yourself and/or the other guy. It makes no difference except you might tackle yourself somewhat first. That makes getting the other guy easier.
Best of fortune!

I wrote this short poem upon reading the first estimate of casualties after the tsunami in Thailand.  

Ten thousand eight hundred on bright holiday
Released in tumultuous thundering spray
Life's only requisite promised at birth
Offered and taken by undeclared earth

On Elysium Bridge, where love is met
in drenching mist in darkness' cone
By candle light on parapet
our steps approach its center stone

As we ascend above that stream
of time demarked by terrene guide
Occasion cries eternity
releasing lock's immortal tide

Blasted, cored, shafted and braced
Trenched by persistence to adamant
Grimed with fear and tears
Worked to death then abandoned

Send again for the pick and spade
Locate, survey, mark and claim
Another lode of heartless stone
Or golden matchless treasure

On sandy shores
where beach bunnies glide
Foaming white streamers
burgeon the tide

Humans go whaling
securing their prize
Salty red scrabblings
of hunger denied

Do you believe there are saints in this modern world? What is your defintition of a saint? Have you ever met one (or more)? Do you aspire to be one?

Notice the wind
Where sunlight glares piercingly
to a blue horizon
Where the moon in amber glory
rises over darkened continents
There streams vibrant
earth-scented air
penetrating worldy mesmer
to whisper
the intimate endearment of rhapsody
Thee are alive

Were this earth
to halt its turn
muddling all unattached creation
into one overwhelmed longitude

I would smile
in madness' rush
discovering again
proximity to thee

Did thee practice thy charter
of catlike disclosure
Seductive, engaging,
Climactic enclosure

Thy beautious softness
Thy feather light hair
Defining felining
But the purr isn't fair!

There is a fire
always bright
that glows within
We love the sight

It sparks and cheers
when other flames
are cold and
don't recall our name

But only one heart
finds it warm
And only one soul
knows its charm

Don't draw a cowl
against the night
Your crimson core
shines splendid light

Let's say a group of people were preparing to build a skyscraper. Just before they began, the project manager made a little speech.

"All right, people, I've just got an emergency call. I have to take my sick cat to Mexico for six months. That means I won't be here to advise you. But I can tell you what I want. I want to go up. Up, up up. We want to build, build, build, up, up up. From the moment you get up in the morning till the time you go to sleep, I want you to think up. I want you to have the idea you are going to build, build build, up, up, up. Don't ever forget. Build build build. Up up up. Up up up up up. That is all".
He departed for Mexico satisfied that enough inspiration had been left with his crew to ensure the project's speedy success.

Six months later he returned to find the building complete, an assemblage of steel and concrete one foot square stretching seventy miles into the sky.

That is a bit of what the Law of Attraction is about, and where it falls short. If positive thoughts were enough to remainder mankind into a golden age they would have done it by now. I'm not knocking the idea. I agree that one does create one's reality. But who is one, and why do all these things go wrong no matter what one seems to think about it?  It is not quite fair to lay it all on the lack of  vertical "positiveness" when the truth must allow for a bit of horizontal structure to understand the entirety.
My opinion. At any rate more information is available at www.themodeloftheuniverse.com
If the Law of Attraction is working for you, this is not intended to drag you away from it. I'm not interested in upsetting anyone's apple cart. But if positive thinking is not delivering what you want there are reasons. In fact there are reasons for this whole thing.

I read portions of Swami Vivekananda's lectures some months ago. One item that struck me was his statement that knowledge was a means to understanding and growth.

I excuse that snickering in the gallery. But it had not occurred to me that better understanding the physical universe that we occupy could have a spiritual outcome. Upon noting his comment I dutifully began some more reading. The Big Bang, by Simon Singh, and The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene, were two of the books. Sure enought, while reading about the Theory of Relativity in Greene's wonderful book,  the 1000 watt light bulb came on. I had never understood that theory previously and never really thought I would. But Greene explains it so well even I could get it. And with that, voila.

My point is that a broader understanding of life is not a bad idea to undertake if one is pursuing a spiritual path. Books can provide a useful portion of this, if one is so inclined. Not just so called spiritually oriented books, but science and literature and even basic texts. We are in a place we are not necessarily familiar with. All understanding has value. And it gets more fun as it goes along.

My daughter's eyes are blue doubloons
Of precious island filagree
Two sparking water crescent suns
That shine as summer on the sea

And in their glow I find a soul
Of gladsome warm sincerity
That full unveil this truthfuil tale
All I could hope would be, is thee

You opened me revealed with word
Then searching love who I must be
That person who had slept inside
Those many years at last is free

I find myself on open shore
Exposing an unmetered soul
I see your spirit, beautiful
Gloriously shining, fuil

Yet behind my peacock show
Of powerful felicity
Your welfare is the door I seek
My love the gleaming golden key

So when I press your comely hand
Please find contained within this reach
That truest truth my heart must know
Your happiness is found complete

Once a month
I would go the gallery
to drink
too many vodkas
swirling about in
the flotsam of those
who are always and
never lonely
always and
never searching
always and
never found

When the gallery closed
I surprised
in my sadness
Not realizing
the importance
of pretending
I was not one of them

Hearts hold no question
In darkness they sway
But know their direction
Toward love brightened day

I am so close to thee
that thy look, touch, smile
becomes seismographic event
slashing the needle
of my instrument
along its recording path
Like fusion atoms embracing
their molecular bond
whose next action must be
most mortal and cacophonic response

Below is one of several poems I wrote when desperately in love with someone a number of years ago. Agony can be quite productive if you set your mind to it.

With golden rope I bind to you
Its thread, spirt fulfilled
Love, completion trust and peace
Twirl in glorious gild

This twining curl is only mine
Yours dallies by your side
Awaiting moment from the sky
Revealing wind and tide

So I sit in the tilting chair
Above a country lane
That leads to your appealing form
Where rests that tawny chain

Yet I entreat you understand
This meet is not demand
But recognition of one truth
My heart is in your hand

Palpitatng fever is become warmth
Osmotic seeping
into deepest soul
then spreading outward
permeating organs
vessels and veins
through epidermis
flooding to the
brim of being
where at that
shimmering auric edge
love and truth unite
in transcendent harmony

...there is "no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective" (Journal, 5/6/54) (From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The above line quotes an entry in the journal of Henry David Thoreau, an American naturalist and philosopher. It has significance in that it agrees with findings by a later naturalist and philosopher, though he is less well known by those titles than others. That later personage is Albert Einstein. In his theories of relativity he came to understand that man does not view this life in terms of what other men see. Each person has his or her own viewpoint and it is completely subjective.

This is a very spiritual point of view. In order to understand oneself one understands first who one is then sees one's place in this ongoing operation called the universe. Those two items constitute spiritual growth. To reach understanding one examines life as it happens. Or, call it experience or understanding or any word that means to you, knowing what is going on as it is happening. This does not mean you know why it is happening. You know that it is happening. Others cannot know your path any more than you can know theirs. Your see your own way through life.

There are two ways to live. One can play the game or one can understand the game while playing. The vast majority on earth at present play the game. There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all because every person has the right to do what he or she damn well pleases.
But to understand the game is to begin to see how the cogs and pulleys and metronomes work to create what one considers reality. It is not always a happy and comforting road, because by nature it is blind. One does not see the next step. One cannot see it or even force one's sight. One can only see what is happening and do what seems best to keep the path clear. And, be willing to understand what one did not understand before it came into view.
The setup for this system is understandable, by looking at the general progression of spirtis in this universe through its history. Your individual path is up to you. The thing to know is there is a path. How you approach it is absolutely and only your choice.
Have fun!