So Much Spirituality In A Short Span Of Time Got Me Exhausted. How Do You Find Balance?

[Dan Arnautu]

So, for the past weeks I got a real perverse curiosity about spiritual topics and felt a deep need for understanding and wrapping my head around all the mind bending concepts that come with spirituality.

So, what I did was I looked into different teachers, personalities in this field, looked into a lot of books, researched on different mystical traditions, experiences, concepts and so forth. What happened was that I got a little bit more understanding, but even 10x the confusion. It's like I don't know anything and I am overwhelmed by everything at the same time.

So many paradoxes and s%#t.

Now my normal mind transcended to metaphysical monkey mind, haha. The weird thing is that I feel drawn to all of this, even though all I get for now is spiritual beatup and slaps across the back of my neck. 

For me it's hard going on through my day without getting sucked into a spiritual video and 3 hours later still being caught up in leads from that video, researching. It's what I did everyday, all day for like the past 2 weeks and it's never ending.

I think I'm really losing touch with reality at this point. How do you stay on top of your habits, schedule and so forth with all of this information? Even when I say it's enough and that I should just chill and watch a movie or a show for 30 minutes, the monkey mind shoots right up - ”No, that's low consciousness stuff. Don't do that.” It's mental masturbation non stop. I don't know what is ok or not ok for me to do in leisure time and things of the sorts.

How do you guys balance your spiritual life with your day to day life? If I keep learning at this rate, my mind will be occupied with metaphysical monkey chatter all day, like it has been for the past week. Even when I'm going grocery shopping or going to the gym, it takes a while before I can stop inquiring neurotically and focus on the task at hand. One day I even forgot I had to go to the gym because of all the metaphysical chatter in my head.

How slow of a pace should I have when learning about this stuff? I am currently in college and only have classes like 2 days per week. Still, I think I am going too fast even with all the free time.

Thanks in advance. Sorry if it doesn't seem like a real problem to you. Maybe I'm just not seeing the situation in a proper way. Some objective advice will definitely help.

Edited May 13, 2017 by Dan Arnautu

[Shin]

Good, now drop all these beliefs, and stop seeking knowledge.

With all the free time you have, meditate 1 hour early the morning, and 1 hour before dinner.

If you want to get serious at this, stop looking outside, go within and just watch every thoughts, sensations, emotions everytime you are conscious enough to do it, which with practice, will be every second of every hours.

Ask yourself what you are, REALLY, and don't buy into what your mind says, because every answers that it will give you, can't be it. The mind doesn't know the answer, it is impossible for it to grasp it.

In time something will break, and every spiritual concepts will (truly) make sense to you.

 

Just follow the link in my quote below, 1 lesson every 3 days, revisit the old one the days in between.

It's easy, more than you can think, the only reason people can spend decades seeking is because they are totally lost, well you can't if you follow Bentinho course.

Edited May 13, 2017 by Shin

[Ayla]

This sounds like an addiction to me... which can be a kind of a thirst for... something.

I see some traps in your rant.

Here's one: low consciousness? Lower than what? What is your reference point? If you are interested in philosophy, study it until it consumes you. If you are interested in true spirituality, take one phrase from a video and see it play out in your life until you are done. Or undone. Depends on where you want to look at stuff. 

Here is another: how can you live two lives? one that is day-to-day and one that is spiritual? 

The answer is INSIDE !!! 

[Dan Arnautu]

@Shin You got me wrong. I'm not pursuing enlightenment right now. I do have a meditation habit, but I've got way more basic things to handle before I can even fathom enlightenment work. I just wanted to understand it better and it maybe put me off-center for a bit. I'm not procrastinating on it either, don't get that mixed up.

[aurum]

@Dan Arnautu

Seeking knowledge is amazingly powerful and necessary. So for you, what I would ask is are you applying all this research?

Are you doing meditation? Self-inquiry? Astral projection? Contemplation? Examining your egoic stricuture?

The paradoxes will always remain paradoxes if you don't apply the theory. It's a huge potential trap.

There also may be times when you don't balance the rest of your life and spirituality. I know for me it was hugely important to have these surges where I did nothing but study and do consciousness work. No friends, no entertainment, nothing.

What I've found in these cases is that your deep intuition is always right. It knows the next piece that you need to move forward. Trust becomes crucial.

If your intuition is telling you to drop everything and do spirituality, do that.

If your intuition is telling you that you've gotten off balance and need some normalcy, do that.

[Dan Arnautu]

15 minutes ago, Ayla said:

Here's one: low consciousness? Lower than what? What is your reference point? If you are interested in philosophy, study it until it consumes you. If you are interested in true spirituality, take one phrase from a video and see it play out in your life until you are done. Or undone. Depends on where you want to look at stuff. 

@Ayla Lower than reading a self-help book, working out, watching something educational, exercising etc. Also, I am a philosophy undergraduate, so it already kind of consumes me, haha.

19 minutes ago, Ayla said:

Here is another: how can you live two lives? one that is day-to-day and one that is spiritual? 

That was just mispelling on my part. Hard to express yourself on such nuanced topics without getting misunderstood.

I meant how much time do you dedicate researching + doing spiritual work versus things like working on your career, exercising, reading about more basic self-help and implementing on those?

[Dan Arnautu]

@aurum

4 minutes ago, aurum said:

@Dan Arnautu

Seeking knowledge is amazingly powerful and necessary. So for you, what I would ask is are you applying all this research?

Aside from meditation and daily mindfulness, nope. I'm not ready for deep enlightenment work. I did not look that much into techniques for achieving enlightenment. I just wanted to build some kind of conceptual understanding of all of this, develop my big picture thinking more. As I said previously, I need to get more basic things handled in my life before I go on with this work. Becoming a Zen Devil won't serve me well either.

9 minutes ago, aurum said:

 

The paradoxes will always remain paradoxes if you don't apply the theory. It's a huge potential trap.

I got a hang of that now.

11 minutes ago, aurum said:

What I've found in these cases is that your deep intuition is always right. It knows the next piece that you need to move forward. Trust becomes crucial.

If your intuition is telling you to drop everything and do spirituality, do that.

If your intuition is telling you that you've gotten off balance and need some normalcy, do that.

My intuition is telling me the second thing, but I don't know what normalcy is anymore, haha. Is it going out with friends? Playing video games? Going to concerts more as music is my ultimate career path? I don't know anymore. What do you think?

[aurum]

2 hours ago, Dan Arnautu said:

Aside from meditation and daily mindfulness, nope. I'm not ready for deep enlightenment work. I did not look that much into techniques for achieving enlightenment. I just wanted to build some kind of conceptual understanding of all of this, develop my big picture thinking more. As I said previously, I need to get more basic things handled in my life before I go on with this work. Becoming a Zen Devil won't serve me well either.

This is a fair and reasonable argument, but because I'm looking to help you if possible, I'd ask you how long have you been gathering information and not applying it? A month? A year?

It took me almost no conceptual knowledge to start a meditation practice. You don't need theory to understand paying attention to the breath.

So just do some introspection for your own sake on this. Could you be rationalizing not taking action here? If so, why?

Decide for yourself.

2 hours ago, Dan Arnautu said:

My intuition is telling me the second thing, but I don't know what normalcy is anymore, haha. Is it going out with friends? Playing video games? Going to concerts more as music is my ultimate career path? I don't know anymore. What do you think?

For me, normalcy was socializing in a healthy way, exercising, taking care of my diet and working on my life purpose. Again, it's really up to you to decide what "normal" is.

[SOUL]

As interesting and enticing all the information out there is to explore it is helpful to recognize it is the ego that can get preoccupied with all the ideas, concepts, methods, techniques and explanations of spirituality as a means of justifying itself.

There is no real deep enlightenment work, it's uncomplicated, the depth and complication can come in trying to get the mind to get out of the way of enlightenment, which is simple in nature.

When we are mindful of the present moment that is all enlightenment is, no ideas and concepts, no methods or techniques, it's simply being present in the moment.

Obviously the mind will wander or it will constantly being trying to quantify and identify the experience so it can "remember" it.for reference.

This is what distracts us from being present and interrupts the enlightenment experience so will interfere with the momentum, for a lack of a better word. in our consciousness.

This is why people have amazingly powerful enlightenment experiences on psychedelics because it chemically inhibits the mind from disrupting the experience in our consciousness.

The key to bringing this to every day life is to cultivate our mind to inhibit it's own natural tendencies to interrupt the enlightenment experience by identifying and labeling everything.

All the information we will be exposed to in spiritual circles is actually more fodder for distraction, keep it simple, just do the simple task of staying present and all the understanding gained from it will be spontaneous revelations that is relevant to your own path.

Reading the stories of everybody's experience doesn't replace our own and much of the information we may learn from those other's stories is virtually useless.

Get back to living your life with what you got going on and if you want to expand your spiritual presence just stick to being present in the moment, there's not much more to enlightenment than that anyway.

It's kind of disappointing for the information seeking mind to remove it's fixation from the process but no amount of philosophical understanding will culminate in an enlightenment experience, it's the simple exercise of being present.

Those "amplified" experiences of enlightenment we can have and see from well known speakers will happen in us when we bring every aspect of our consciousness in unity of being present

I'm speaking to you from experience, not theory learned from other people's stories.

Peace.

[WelcometoReality]

@Dan Arnautu Ask yourself this. How far does this knowledge take you spiritually? Is this knowledge that is gained really progressing you forward?

[Shin]

9 hours ago, Dan Arnautu said:

@Shin You got me wrong. I'm not pursuing enlightenment right now. I do have a meditation habit, but I've got way more basic things to handle before I can even fathom enlightenment work. I just wanted to understand it better and it maybe put me off-center for a bit. I'm not procrastinating on it either, don't get that mixed up.

That's a misconception that will follow you all your life if you don't try to see its stupidity right now.

There is never a time where you're not ready, that's only the mind believing its own bullshit.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Shin

[Dan Arnautu]

@ShinThank you for answering. I do see your point. As I said, I do still meditate and practice mindfulness. I just don't do it 24/7.

4 hours ago, Shin said:

There is never a time where you're not ready, that's only the mind believing its own bullshit.

I would disagree. Everyone is at a different stage in their life.

Some people don't have money to pay their mortgage. Some people live paycheck to paycheck. Some people are starting businesses and working 70-90 hours a week on that. Some people have problems with their families. Some are in poor health and need urgent care.

Let's not forget SE is the most advanced stage of development work and the most emotionally laborious.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Dan Arnautu

[Shin]

No, it isn't.

In fact, the more problems you have in your life, the better it is for realizing who you are.

This is just excuses coming from your mind, nothing else.

[Dan Arnautu]

@Shin Fair enough. Let's agree to disagree. I personally would not tell a hobo or someone living in a dangerous place (gangs and things like that) to do enlightenment work. Transcending the ego through intense suffering is one way to go about it, but I would not recommend it (the way Eckhart Tolle got enlightened).

[Prabhaker]

1 hour ago, Dan Arnautu said:

Some people don't have money to pay their mortgage. Some people live paycheck to paycheck. Some people are starting businesses and working 70-90 hours a week on that. Some people have problems with their families. Some are in poor health and need urgent care.

I consider religion to be the last luxury. Only when a society becomes affluent does religion become meaningful. And now, for the first time, a greater part of the world is not poor. America in particular is the first society in human history to reach such affluence. To be religious, or to be interested in the ultimate questions of life, one needs to have really fulfilled all the lower wants and needs. So to me, a poor society cannot be religious. India was religious only when it was at a peak of affluence. For example, in Buddha's time India was just like America is today. In those days India was the richest land. The religion that we have in India today is just a leftover from those days.

There is a basic difference between a poor man's religion and a rich man's religion. If a poor man becomes interested in religion it will be just as a substitute. Even if he prays to God he will be praying for economic goods; the basic problem of man will not yet have arisen for him. So Marx is right in a way when he says that religion is the opium of the people. He is exactly right about poor people: they cannot get the basic needs of life fulfilled, so they substitute prayer and meditation and Yoga and religion. But for a rich man there is a basic change of dimension. Now he is not asking for economic goods, he is asking for the meaning of life.

Excerpts from ~ The great challange by Osho

[Prabhaker]

1 hour ago, Dan Arnautu said:

Some people don't have money to pay their mortgage. Some people live paycheck to paycheck. Some people are starting businesses and working 70-90 hours a week on that. Some people have problems with their families. Some are in poor health and need urgent care.

You ask: Are you not a rich man's guru?

I am—because only a rich man can come to me. But when I say 'a rich man' I mean one who is very poor inside. When I say 'a rich man' I mean one who is rich in intelligence; I mean one who has got everything that the world can give to him, and has found that it is futile.
Yes, only a rich person can become religious. I am not saying that a poor person cannot become religious, but it is very rare, exceptional. A poor person goes on hoping. A poor person has not known what riches are. He is not yet frustrated with it. How can he go beyond riches if he is not frustrated with them? A poor man also sometimes comes to me, but then he comes for something which I cannot supply. He asks for success. His son is not getting employed; he asks, "Bless him, Bhagwan." His wife is ill, or he is losing money in his business. These are symptoms of a poor man, one who is asking about things of this world.

When a rich person comes to me, he has money, he has employment, he has a house, he has health—he has everything that one can have. And suddenly he has come to a realisation that nothing is fulfilling. Then the search for God starts.
Yes, sometimes a poor man can also be religious, but for that very great intelligence is needed. A rich man, if he is not religious, is stupid. A poor man, if he is religious, is tremendously intelligent. if a poor man is not religious, he has to be forgiven. If a rich man is not religious, his sin is unpardonable.

I am a rich man's guru. Absolutely it is so….

If it were not for your money, you would not have been here. You are here because you are frustrated with your money. You are here because you are frustrated with your success. You are here because you are frustrated with your life. A beggar cannot come because he is not yet frustrated.
Religion is luxury—the last, ultimate luxury I call it, because it is the highest When a man is dying of hunger, what use is a Van Gogh painting? or a Buddha's sermon? or beautiful Upanishads, or music?—meaningless. He needs bread.

When a man is happy with his body, has enough to eat, has a good house to live in, he starts becoming interested in music, poetry, literature, painting, art. Now a new hunger arises. The bodily needs are fulfilled, now psychological needs arise. There is a hierarchy in needs: the first is the body; it is the base, it is the ground-floor of your being. Without the ground-floor, the first storey cannot exist.

When your bodily needs are fulfilled, psychological needs arise. When your psychological needs are also fulfilled, then your spiritual needs arise. When a person has listened to all the music that is available in the world, and has seen all the beauty, and has found that it is all dream; has listened to all the great poets, and has found that it is just a way to forget yourself, just a way to intoxicate yourself, but it does not lead you anywhere; has seen all the paintings and the great art—amusing, entertaining, but then what…? Then hands remain empty, more empty than they ever were before. Then music and poetry are not enough. Then the desire to meditate, the desire to pray, a hunger for God, a hunger for truth arises. A great passion takes possession of you and you are in search of truth, because you now know: unless you know what the secret most truth of this existence is, nothing can satisfy. All else you have tried and it has failed.

Religion is the ultimate luxury. Either you have to be very rich to come to this luxury, or you have to be tremendously intelligent. But in both the cases you are rich—rich with money or rich with intelligence. I have never seen a person who is really poor—poor in intelligence, poor in riches—ever become religious.

Kabir becomes religious. He was not a millionaire, but he was tremendously intelligent. Buddha became religious because he was tremendously rich. Krishna and Ram and Mahavir became religious because they were tremendously rich. Dadu, Raidas, Farid, they became religious because they were tremendously intelligent. But a certain sort of richness is needed.

Yes, you are right: I am the rich man's guru.

Excerpts from ~The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol. 3 by Osho

[Dan Arnautu]

7 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

When a man is dying of hunger, what use is a Van Gogh painting? or a Buddha's sermon? or beautiful Upanishads, or music?—meaningless. He needs bread.

Excerpts from ~The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol. 3 by Osho

@Prabhaker Osho put it even better than me. This is what I was trying to get at.

Wonderful excerpts. Thank you for the input!

[Prabhaker]

20 minutes ago, Dan Arnautu said:

Transcending the ego through intense suffering is one way to go about it, but I would not recommend it (the way Eckhart Tolle got enlightened).

Journey of a poor man is extremely difficult and long, but if have infinite patience, if you don't escape your sufferings, if you don't deceive yourself, you will move from misery towards enlightenment. Many poor people die miserably but trust me , on this path you can't die miserably even if you are crucified.

[Dan Arnautu]

Leo's new video answered all of my questions! I feel like it was shot specifically for me, haha! Thank you all for the input! 

Namaste!