To attain a higher level of consciousness, should one get into personality development, spirituality, both or none? Which and why?

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Whatever draws you more. Level of consciousness is a fancy term for “how much love and attention and focus you can bring to bear.” It quite literally doesn’t matter the tiniest whit what that is. So if you have a choice, pick something which resonates deeply with your personality and way of seeing the world.

For me that was spirituality. At one point in my twenties I came across a book of collected transcripts given by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, known in America as Osho. The descriptions inflamed my mind and set me on a still-ongoing quest to understand fundamental existence. For a long time, I rolled every last bit of time and energy I could get my dirty little fingers on, on my spiritual quest. Once I understood enlightenment, I set my sights on Christianity and in working out how the two spiritual frames interact and where each get it wrong and each get it right.

If you’re stuck in a situation where you can’t do something you choose and love to do, then your task is almost easier. Look deeply into your situation and figure out ways to apply your uniqueness to it. The ‘level’ is precisely the quality of the attention you can bring to bear on a situation. There are always opportunities to develop the quality of your attention.

I have a friend who has ADD. The quality of his attention wanders widely. No matter. I showed him various types of deep focus activities, the one we do most frequently is playing Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, a party game that you can take seriously as a fighting game. At first he couldn’t get into the game without turning items on, and those ruin the gameplay, making it too casual. His belief was that his attention wanders too much in order to have fun playing without easy access to super-powerful flow-breaking attacks.

I had to win the fight to keep items turned off before he started to get it. The roster of the game is deep, enabling super-diverse playstyles. But he couldn’t pay attention enough to find a character he liked, saying they all sucked. No matter. We just kept playing, and his competitiveness and the consistency with which I was beating him soon got him focusing very deeply on the game. Now we’re slowly paring the stage list down to just the tournament-legal ones, and really getting into the nuts and bolts of character interaction. He’s now maining Cloud, and he even starts winning when I get drunk enough. =D

This kind of deep flow activity is precisely the sort of thing that raises a person’s level of consciousness. It won’t make you enlightened, that’s meaningless without spiritual edification and experience, but there’s nothing in life that can’t be improved with better focus and attention.