Spirituality & Neglect

[Tim R]

I'm sure many of you can relate to this problem.

Misusing/misinterpreting spirituality to "neglect" life and responsibility.

 

I sometimes find myself rationalizing all kinds of unhealthy and irresponsible behaviors with truths found in spirituality. 

Especially my (sense of) responsibility tends suffer from that and what happens is that I project the theoretical truths onto life in order to justify my behavior.

There's a nice little story I really like which perfectly illustrates this;

 

The student and his teacher sit together in the ashram and the student asks him: "Isn't it true that everything is Brahman, including me?" to which the teacher replies "Yes, everything is Brahman and you are also Brahman."

So the student walks away. On his way he encounters a Mahout, riding on his elephant. The Mahout says "hey, you!! This isn't a very nice elephant, you better get out of the way!"

But the student ignored the Mahout and thought to himself "Oh, nothing will happen to me. I know that I am Brahman and everything else is Brahman too, so this elephant is also Brahman and therefore surely won't harm me." 

So the elephant swung his trunk and hit the student, yeeting him into the brambles. The student stood up and went back to the ashram where he furiously accused his teacher: "you lied to me! You said I was Brahman and everything else too, but the elephant hit me!!" The teacher replied "you fool! You forgot that the Mahout warning you from the elephant was Brahman too!!"

 

So yeah, I think you get the point.

I'm fooling myself into believing that what I'm doing is alright because of some truth that I understand in theory. How do I stop this? I sometimes realize that I'm thinking way too much about the teachings and then neglect all kinds of things because of that. Should I maybe drop spirituality for a while and get a grip on my life? Probably not such a bad idea, right? haha oh boy.

[Conscious life]

@Tim R this is me too. I drunk in Sprituality and justify my truth and my way. that is trying to hide life biggest insecurity. earth is the temple of God. you will never have the apportunity of living and enjoying life. let's put theory our ego, illusion aside and be blissful In life. don't stop Sprituality, that is also another trap. do it every day for it own sake as eating for eating sake is done. 

[martins name]

It's called spiritual bypassing

[At awe]

@Tim R Very good timing , I’ve been wrestling with this idea for some time now??

[Preety_India]

There is another version of this. 

It's called spiritual bypassing trap. 

 

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Tim R said:

I'm fooling myself into believing that what I'm doing is alright because of some truth that I understand in theory. How do I stop this? I sometimes realize that I'm thinking way too much about the teachings and then neglect all kinds of things because of that. Should I maybe drop spirituality for a while and get a grip on my life? Probably not such a bad idea, right? haha oh boy.

Actually get enlightened and realize how you're not different from anybody else. Dropping spirituality isn't the solution. Infact, it will make it worse. This problem is not endemic to spirituality. It's a self-bias dynamic that will express itself through any avenue it can. Of course spirituality gets corrupted by ego (that is 99% of the content on this forum). No need to get discouraged. The only way is up.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Carl-Richard

[Preety_India]

27 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Of course spirituality gets corrupted by ego (that is 99% of the content on this forum).

@ eats carrot... Munching. 

 

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, Preety_India said:

@ eats carrot... Munching. 

It's not endemic to this forum either 

[Preety_India]

Just now, Carl-Richard said:

It's not endemic to this forum either 

So basically you're tryna say that we're back to square one. Ok got it.

So we started with ego and we ended in ego. Doesn't look like a big loss to me. Looks like a nice strange loop to me. 

Still munching. 

[Tim R]

38 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Actually get enlightened and realize how you're not different from anybody else. Dropping spirituality isn't the solution. Infact, it will make it worse. This problem is not endemic to spirituality. It's a self-bias dynamic that will express itself through any avenue it can. Of course spirituality gets corrupted by ego (that is 99% of the content on this forum). No need to get discouraged. The only way is up.

@Carl-Richard Thanks brother <3

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Preety_India said:

So basically you're tryna say that we're back to square one. Ok got it.

So we started with ego and we ended in ego. Doesn't look like a big loss to me. Looks like a nice strange loop to me. 

Still munching. 

Wut? 

[Abdelghafar]

I agree with @Carl-Richard, what you're experiencing right now is cognitive dissonance, which is totally normal for a human being to have when they try to become relatively & aggresively conscious. Don't let the self-bias take over entirely, but don't push yourself too hard to be conscious that you reach a boiling point to drop the dissonance totally and become unconscious of your actions and other people's actions. Instead, acknowledge the fact that sometimes you gotta take a break from neutrality and become consonant with your egoic identity because that's what it takes to survive, but also plug back to critical thinking and awareness. This takes a lot of energy and practice, which is why a lot of people give into the ego completely and don't contemplate too much about what they're doing and what's going on around them on an existential level because they think it's very efficient not to do that, nevertheless that's a fallacy.

Because eitherway, problems will always presist. So for you, It's a matter of what you want to choose accordingly. If you try to balance between bias and consciousness, it could be energy draining and it could sometimes be imperfect, and if you become extreme in either, it can also present problems. What's happening to you right now is that you're choosing your struggles and asking yourself, Do I want to be conscious? Do I want to be biased? Do I want to mix between the two? Do I want it to happen naturally (wishy washy)? And so on and so forth.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Abdelghafar
Grammar

[UNZARI]

I was like this for a long time, but do you really want yourself to be this person who thinks they’re above life? Who hides away from any real issues?

Problems will come at you nearly everyday, i would say the real spiritual thing to do would be to face them head on. Embrace life’s problems and overcome them even if you fail. Otherwise you’re living in a fantasy not living life to the fullest 

[Nahm]

@Tim R

If spirituality is not infusing your life with passion & inspiration, reevaluate what spirituality is. Be willing to through out old paradigms. 

Just seeing the notification, you probably already knew what I’m about to say here next.  When a better more efficient way is found, I’ll be saying that. 

“This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you find yourself laughing at what you thought was your grief!”.  Rumi

 

You’re not in a physical reality of separate things, you’re dreaming this experience, right now.  This is not a guy somewhere else. This is your dream, telling you this is your dream. Make a dreamboard.

Fill it straight from feeling, from the very source of the dream, with what you actually want to do, be, have and experience in your life. Fill it in a dreamy fantastical no holds barred don’t care what anyone else thinks this is my life (dream) manor. Dream big, and also be actual, as in express what you actually want. 

Reality becomes what you wrote, what you focus on. The ‘change’ is you’re now focused on what you want to co-create. Then you see it happening, in the same ‘old reality’ of ‘physical separate things’. (??)  The magic of reality begins to be revealed & directly experienced. (??)  Synchronicity, and some amazing feelings & experiences ensue. 

This might bring up new emotions. It might bring up unresolved old emotions. This is not a problem, this is the desired effect. A problem might be “I don’t know how to address emotions that come up”. You won’t experience that ‘problem’, because you can use the emotional scale. It works. It’s a direct experience tool, and like anything, the more you practice the more you extract from the tool, the more it ‘clicks’. 

Everything you’ve learned in regard to spirituality is not wastes time, it’s just more conceptual at present. It will all come back around, come to bat so to speak, and be realized in direct experience.