Thread: Commonalities in the Spiritual Path

I already thought about my 'path' so far quite a lot in retrospect.
There are so many factors that it is pretty difficult to summarize it for me.
And I've never done it either, so this might be a good exercise.

I think a very significant moment for myself was at a festival, full of art and alternative lifestyles - it was so wonderful - that it got me to start thinking about the things I am doing. It got me somehow more interested in life itself and strenghened my will to live my life as aware as I possibly could.

I started to inform myself about the current situation a lot. About things concerning our society and how it is functioning, about politics, about economy and in general how the world we created works. I started to question everything and realized, that in all these areas I had an entirely different view on things, than anything commonly accepted and executed. Well - I was pretty shocked to notice how bad the situation actually was.

During that time I also read a book from Hermann Hesse and Jean-Paul Sartre, those really impressed me and got me a lot more interested in existentialism, art & literature, as well as philosophy - I started to be more aware of the great minds that have lived and the knowledge that is out there and I felt I wanted to take in as much as I could - I felt my mind literally open up. At that time I started to feel drifting from the society, I didn't want to lead the path, humanity seemed to be heading - and it became very obvious to me, that we were heading down a dead end road. I became very aware of the illusion built by western society, mostly through government and media and didn't want to be part of it anymore. I was thinking a lot about why humans behaved the way they do and what it is about the mind that lets things happen - what it is exactly, that makes us different from animals and also why we place ourselves above all, never questioning it.

I felt, I needed a way to process all the information and noticed that my emotions and personal opinion made them more chaotic and hard to put into context, so I wanted to look for a way to organzie and mentally prepare myself. That's when I got interested in the buddhist equability (don't know the actual word in english) where I comprehend all that is wrong in the world, without letting it emotionially harm me. I started to be without any fixated opinion and just wanted to stay open, for whatever will happen and didn't connect back to society, but to humanity. I also started to focus more on the the things, that were outside of the box and I realized, that the world I create internally would reflect on the outside - I create my own reality and can be whoever I want to be.

I think there were four things that made me realize the connection to a level beyond the feelings I had. I watched a documentation about eastern medicin in south america and parts of asia, then a lecture about the connection about the findings of Wilhelm Reich and the connections to everything in our 'world', a lecture from Christian Rätsch, a leading man in studies of cultures and their use of nature (also entheogens), as well as a lecture on quantum physics by Hans Peter-Dürr. I just had the 'wow' effect, there is actually a lot going on and the conclusions were incredible. Also the speech from Jill Bolte Taylor at the TED conference 'My stroke of insight', about the neurologist, who describes her own experience of a heart attack and the 'transition' touched me. Also a few lectures about astronomy and the latest findings of the hubble-space-telescope pretty much impressed me, as well as the perfect natural order (golden ratio) in microspace as well as macrospace. I got a lot more into all this stuff, many times also from the scientific side, more and more realizing, starting to get into meditation, lucid dreaming, mind alteration and tried to think more as there to be a whole, tried to feel the connections, observing myself and thinking as one. And after a while I got used to it and could switch between these 'states of mind', feeling increasingly fullfilled, as the progress continued. A very enlightening psychedelic, recent experience also helped, to get an additional view on things.

I think personal experience, as well as living a truly fulfilled life are my personal goals. I want to travel, see the world, do some good in organizations (I study communication, fits well), live in different countries and such, as well as finding my spiritual way, see what is behind all this and where it might lead. I realize that I can only rely on myself if I want to find the truth. I am not at all free of manipulation and I still say, I don't know anything, but I would really like to continue and see what will happen. I hope that journey will start in a little more than 2 years, when I've written my final exam. Until then, I will try to continue training my mind, as well as having the best time I can have. I cannot wait for summer, by the way!!

Ooookay, I hope that was interesting to read, or helpful or enjoyable.
Since now I have never written anything of that down in summary so far, since I feel that I am still very much at the beginning and still want to stay in observation mode.

Now I want to read one of your 'spiritual path' stories

my spiritual path has been very simple, actually.

Starting as a roman catholic, I slowly evolved, read and grew to see many different ideas about the afterlife or lack there of. And suddenly, it made sense to me to say "there must be an afterlife of some kind, and that is good enough for me" Ever since then I have not gotten very bogged down in spirituality yet I do still read new ideas that come up.

I would define the spiritual path as the endeavors, obstacles, projects and most importantly, questions you face right now, the ones right in front of you. If you can't afford the rent, if your relationship isn't working out, if you're getting hassled by people, these are things that worry your mind regularly and these are the gateways in the spiritual path that you must cross. So the question is, what makes this the spiritual path? Isn't that just life?

The first step, to me, is to realize the problems you face in your present situation are exactly what you need right now. They contain the lessons you need to learn in order for your personal growth.

And actually, the first step is to deprogram yourself from this cynical, demystified reality that secular and religious people paint up alike. The world is much more than we think, and anyone who thinks we've even come close to figuring it out is cutting themselves off from all the mystic beauty reality has to offer. So I guess one commonality I'm looking for is waking up to realizing you know nothing about the universe. Anything you do know is just a clue to help you get through the day but it doesn't come close to defining reality.

With this deprograming, for me personally, I needed to re-evaluate history. I studied a little bit about societies of antiquity and what their true religious beliefs were. They mostly weren't polytheistic, I mean the people were and if a person saw a statue of one of their Gods they might pay it respect but a Priest would see the statue and contemplate the symbol it represented. Priests met in institutions known as Mysteries for a reason, because they were discussing secrets. They weren't strangers to meditation. I saw Christianity as a very sophist movement, made by people that thought they had complete truth in their hands and thought it was blasphemy to think one could still learn more about life outside the bible. This was merely a mistake our early religions made, but does not imply there was anything wrong with the things they learned before this incident. Gnostic Christians, who kept a more historical version of Jesus, thought the path to salvation was not through worship of Jesus but emulation. He showed us how the divine path is accessible to all, and honestly this was threatening so most of that was replaced by a myth. But yeah, in Gnostic texts Jesus promotes meditation and psychedelic drugs.

So then I read a book about Eastern philosophy, and years before I read a book with teachings from the natives in Australia (what people call aborigines) and a unifed religion began to assemble in my mind. Each had been corrupted, but each began to reveal one path to be taken to happiness.

Anyway that's enough of that, it leads to what I think is another spiritual commonality, which is realizing the world is made up completely of energy, that matter is just energy on a slow vibration. This is something that's quickly become common knowledge, but it goes further than that. Quantum physicists are also beginning to realize that at the most basic levels of existence, there are different rules. Newtonian physics falls apart, and we see a world that meets our expectations. We see that observing life creates life, that it takes on whatever form we want.

Right now scientists would like to say dualism is wrong because everything in life can be explained with practical terminology and some extra type of energy known as "spirit" is unnecessary. They're being dualists by separating our abstract imagination from the rest of the world though. What is our imagination made of? The truth is, we effect the energy around is at greater depth than we thought. We can transfer it, feed off it, and change it. It takes on the traits and characteristic we enable it to. We can choose what is ugly and what is beautiful through the act of focused observation. We can project energy places in order to alter them. We can project energy onto plants, and they grow faster, bigger, and have better nutritional value.

So that brings me to one more point and then I'm done for now. Attention is essentially the means through which energy moves. The more focus and attention you give something, the more it draws. If you focus on someone's bad qualities, on what you don't like about them, then those qualities draw energy and this person might find themselves feeling bad without even knowing why. Likewise, if you appreciate people better and see them as the best version of themself, giving them your complete attention, then they can think better and faster and present their ideas more clearly.

So the snag is that human beings feel disconnected from reality. They don't think energy is real, and if it is real, it's just dead energy following causal reactions. Because of that, they can't use it to uplift themselves, but they do anyway. They steal energy from each other. We're taught these defense mechanisms in early childhood as a means to protect ourselves from the manipulations of our parents. Our parents didn't know any better, either, they were just doing what made them feel strongest. The thing is, we repeat these defense mechanisms our entire lives as a means of keeping and taking energy from each other. You probably know somebody that just craves attention, well honestly we all crave attention, most of us do it unconsciously. We enact something called a control drama. For instance, some people will criticize everything that comes out of your mouth, the word for them is an "interrogator" and they do it because it forces you to pay them more attention in order to avoid being criticized. The reaction to this drama is the "aloof," someone who acts purposely vague or distant to force you to pay them more attention in order to figure out what they mean or who they are. Another is nicknamed "poor me" which is someone that makes you feel guilty. The last is the most common, the "intimidator," which is just someone that does whatever they can to feel dominant over other people.

It's important to see these qualities in yourself and see which dramas you enact in your own life because the only way to stop them is bring them to a conscious level. When someone plays a drama on you, it takes two parts to keep it going so if you call them on what they're doing they'll realize they're being senseless. However, if you call them in an attempt to win the battle or prove your dominance, then you're just continuing it.

I'll leave this post with one last thought. Very often, we encounter meaningful coincidences. We'll ask ourselves a question, and the answer will appear, or we'll think of an old friend and then see them. These moments provide opportunities to move forward, to solve problems and learn lessons. However, you have to be aware of them. Instead of thinking "hmm, that's weird" and moving on, I implore you to think about the greater meaning. Every coincidental conversation is meant to be an exchange of information for each party to gain and give something. You must also keep an eye on your control drama because it'll interrupt the process.

If any book came close to convincing me of spirituality, it was this:

"Modern Man in Search of a Soul" by Carl Jung
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Search-.../dp/0156612062

~

One word answer: drugs.

When I got to high school after being homeschooled my entire life I realized I didn't know anything about the "real" world outside and saw that I related to Buddha more than I did Jesus... and so began.

We all question things. The path is a question, beginning with ignorance and ending with wisdom. Yet there is no end, for wisdom is not something that possesses a quantity, only the desire to spring out and multiply.