Post Your Biggest Challenges With Spirituality Here

[Leo Gura]

9 hours ago, LetTheNewDayBegin said:

What we really need, me and the community in general, is some kind of methodology of how to get rid of ignorance.

@LetTheNewDayBegin Hehe... such a methodology is called life.

Stick with it. Who says you're doing it wrong?

[philosogi]

Biggest barrier: wounded ego. Paradoxically that is also the door.

Edited May 13, 2017 by philosogi

[Geo]

1) Reconciling parenting and enlightenment. I simply cannot 'detach' from my children. And the fear that goes with this.

2) The different paths of spirituality. Astral projection /paranormal/spirit guides or angels/enlightenment

[Ayla]

@Leo Gura

I'd really like to see a video about spiritual bypassing. There's a load of it everywhere. Talk and talk and talk and spiritual teachers and videos and this and that... People thinking they can think their way through/out of their own thinking or the thinking they resonate with... doing all kinds of physical or mental gymnastics to deepen into the shit even further... ugggg!! 

 

[Leo Gura]

@Ayla Not sure what the big deal is. That is the entire path. The mind struggles and through its failures it learns the way. How else could it be?

You can't just jump from addicted, ideological monkey mind to enlightenment in one fell swoop. It's gonna be messy in between. With of course many traps and false starts. My approach is to just keep learning, practicing, and pushing through it a bit each day.

If you want the most direct path, go rent a cabin in the woods and sit there questioning everything for weeks and months until the mind shuts up. But who is prepared to be that hardcore? Maybe 1 in a million. Most people need a more gradual process, or at least to build up to that.

I think the best we can do to help people with enlightenment is explain it clearly, tell them all the traps, given them actionable techniques which they can use every day to become more aware, and finally just inspire them to do it.

[Ayla]

@Leo Gura I have.....

I hear what you are saying. Yes, everyone is where they are supposed to be. But wouldn't it be nice to find a way to clearly show people when they are being trapped into yet another type of addiction? Surely, a more elevated and meaningful type, but still, just a way of escapism from what is there already. 

I see spirituality becoming the next big pharma, a sort of a monster with a nasty case of self-righteous case of mental diarrhea... oops!! 

 

 

[Leo Gura]

33 minutes ago, Ayla said:

I see spirituality becoming the next big pharma, a sort of a monster with a nasty case of self-righteous case of mental diarrhea... oops!! 

When has it ever not been that?

All the direct teachings are out there. People just don't want them.

Nothing more direct than 30mg of 5-meo up the nose. Literally enlightenment in 15 mins, for 30 mins. But who wants it? I find it hard to stomach myself.

[Guest username]

A video on explaining the dichotomy of seeking direct experience and surrendering all experience (I'm not sure if my confusion is just due to a language hang-up) would be mucho appreciated. 

Also, the guided meditations are really helpful for when I'm experiencing a lot of resistance or am lacking focus; they really help lower the "activation energy" of getting into the work, so more of those would be awesome. 

Edited May 14, 2017 by username

[philosogi]

Craving love & attention.

[Nic]

I hear sometimes atheists say "I wish I had faith".

Where is the line between faith and dogma? Can you have one without the other? How does faith and enlightenment relate to each other?

 

My own biggest struggles on this path is stability/regularity/endurance/discipline.

I couldn't follow Lego instructions when I was a child, always getting off tracks... I'm learning the guitar without a teacher, so nobody corrects my mistakes, I hated school and today my unconsciousness always takes out of the mindful path...

At one point I forget that I shouldn't start negotiating with my mind... and I stop my healthy or mindful habit for a while, then I go back into it. 

What I've learned is not to beat myself up for my mistakes, I forgive myself for even believing that I should be somewhere else on the path. But I have a hard time of being strict and following rules even when "I'm my own master". Some part of me likes to "fuck it up".

In other words, it's hard for me to stay on the right diet and change some points of my lifestyle. 

At the moment that I do the "mistakes", being strict with sports, eating habits or mindfulness means consciously & unconsciously for me to make a sacrifice that I deserve to get a reward for the good work that I did until now. At this moment being aware is not an option, I'm just being aware that I'm getting off track and "fuck it, I Am enjoying my life or what?!"

I changed a hell lot in my lifestyle since 10 years of practice so I'm still happy with me.... but... I'm far from perfect.

 

 

[Azrael]

@Leo Gura, I guess the most difficult thing for me on my journey was to emotionally handle the change of my own mental apparatus. Let it be the integration that needed to be done (I see way too less targeted and good material on this) or the stuff you go through when you had your initial enlightening experiences.

I don't see a lot of people talking about that. It can be very strange when your head stops to think and you have to find a way to make it think again when you are in certain situations. It can be strange that your ability to talk may go down a little bit in the beginning because you don't think as much anymore. It can be strange to release all the tensions that are still stuck in your body and mind. There's a lot of post-enlightenment-stuff that is not covered at all.

And I see people making the mistake to think that this doesn't matter because when you are enlightened, how could there be a problem right? Well, there can be way bigger problems then before.

[Purple Jay]

Suffering through empathy is currently my biggest challenge. When something cruel happens to someone who is completely unconscious and has massive resistance in the moment, I tend to suffer on their behalf.

[Amandine]

On 16/05/2017 at 4:18 PM, Purple Jay said:

Suffering through empathy is currently my biggest challenge. When something cruel happens to someone who is completely unconscious and has massive resistance in the moment, I tend to suffer on their behalf.

I am a huge animal-lover, so understanding the existence of cruelty to innocent animals who have no voice will be one of my biggest challenges.

Like many, I feel hate, shock and horror at all the mindless and often gratuitous animal cruelty in this world. 

Looking at the videos on Peta's Facebook, whilst thinking we've all "invented all this in our own minds" or "they are illusory" or "inventions/projections of our ego", I just don't get this right now. 

I feel I could never bring myself to have any love or empathy for the evil perpetrators who commit such heinous acts, nor be able to "identify" (spiritually speaking) with them in any shape or form. 

Like Leo, I would also be able to empathise eventually with a junkie who stole everything out of my car. But how does Leo empathise with a guy kicking a half-dead bleeding terrified horse in the most inhumane way FOR NO APPARENT REASON? I recently saw (by accident) a video clip of that happening in a barn somewhere in Brazil, and there is no justification for his act. Even to say he was depressed, or angry, there must surely be limits to some things we can "excuse". 

I feel I will never be able to understand or properly assimilate the knowledge that God has "chosen" or "willed" all that into existence as part of his universe. Just can't get my head around it.

So, that's where I am at the moment, trying to learn more about non-duality, the relative and absolute, the metaphysical, and concepts like "Love entails Freedom, Freedom entails Evil, so Love entails Evil","there is no good or evil from a higher perspective", etc, trying to make sense of it all.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Amandine

[Jkhv1]

@Amandine as horrible as that sounds, what seems to be a commonly recurring incident with children that have suffered abuse from their parents is animal abuse. Perhaps this could be a way of understanding the person in your example a little more?

The human psyche is a complex enough thing without having the people that brought you into this earth causing you physical, malicious harm on what can be a continual basis at a time in your life that you're absorbing so much information about the world. Perhaps it's this early introduction to violence from people that are supposed to nurture you that cause your 'normal' to be different to another person's 'normal'?

Edited December 17, 2019 by Jkhv1