Real spiritual growth vs belief and delusion?

[blazed]

I was watching the below video and it kind of reflected my opinion on most spiritual people.

Just because you believe something, have faith in something, practice something, or think it is improving you doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

It can all just be self belief and self delusion.

Notice how how the Ki master who got an ass beating from the MMA fighter and was completely in shock that his techniques didn't work.

In fact most of the Ki and energy instructors were in shock in this video.

How do you define real spiritual growth? how do you know it's not only advancing a belief? a delusion that you can't see anymore?

For me for example: there is a state of nothingess, no mind no sensory field, death, and sleeping, and then there is the state of something, the sensory perceptions, the experience, reality as it is, life and waking up. Everything else seems like fancy BS talk that is trying to clever but ironically adds to more confusion and more thinking.

 

 

Edited March 16, 2018 by blazed

[Aimblack]

Easy you are advancing spiritually if you have objective changes in your daily life that you can attribute to your practice. 2 Years ago it would have been impossible to consider me somebody who is capable of showing empathy and emotions in general, I was prone to anxiety and depression and had a massive lack of concentration and confidence.

Now either all of those things just happened to disappear on their own, or I just made myself believe that the practice changed me( in which case where is the difference between "real change" and "imagined change" ?) or something is genuinely changing. What is the more reasonable thing to assume.

Edited March 16, 2018 by Aimblack

[robdl]

Is an insight starting to occur that the "I" at the center of all thoughts and perceptions --- previously taken for granted as real, permanent, continuous --- may actually be a phantom?  Could be a sign of growth, but the insight must come from direct experience and not from belief or intellectual knowledge.

Edited March 16, 2018 by robdl