How do you test your spiritual progress?

[Gesundheit2]

How do you make sure that you're actually an embodiment of God rather than the devil?

How do you stay true to your insights and know that you are not just mentally masturbating?

Are there specific ways/methods to test one's progress on the path?

[Raptorsin7]

@Gesundheit2 Take a psychedelic.

Also, check your direct experience and ask are you happy and at peace with yourself fully. Suffering is hard to miss haha.

[nistake]

Yup, direct experience is your best 'clue'.

When shit happens, can you stay peaceful and calm? Can you sit in silence comfortably for an hour (or even more)? Do you enjoy just being without needing anything? How are your relationships? How well can you deal with 'not-so-conscious' people? How often do you get lost in monkey-mind?

[Batman]

By the the degrees of freedom I feel in everyday situations, and the capability to speak and act with total honesty.

[allislove]

@Gesundheit2

I find the relationship with the close people to be a litmus test. You can have a good relationship literally with everyone in the direct experience. Doesn't mean you don't express your preferences, it means you value the existence more than what happens thanks to existence: the fact of existence > opinion. Say, I was always spending time in arguing with my mom few years ago, now we're mostly just laughing and enjoying the time together when she's visiting me. And I am still expressing the preferences, but it's done from the realization that it's in fact "me <-> me" relationship.  

[BipolarGrowth]

I mean I gave myself as infinite bliss as a permanent student of Lucifer to attain true samadhi and nirodha samapatti which showed me dukkha is the lost love that is the sensate/cessate basis for all love. I’ve become more effective in practicing the jhanas in extremely phenomenologically useful states to use for fuel for insight/vipassana practice. Fear of a devil that could ever threaten or not threaten a you is avoidance of dukkha by misinterpreting the nondual relationship between dukkha and bliss. Jesus dies for the suffering of people he sees as himself being the same species while being given karma needed to do it. I gave any soul illusion I had over to humanities #1 fear so that I might somehow escape into eternal nonexistence out of pure avoidance of the satisfactory illusion perceived in bliss. Then I was shown subtleties of nonexistence and existence through Theravada’s highest temporary attainment. 

 

The only thing to fear is fear itself is pertinent here. 
 

 

[Gesundheit2]

2 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@Gesundheit2 Take a psychedelic.

Huh?

2 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@Gesundheit2

Suffering

I distinguish between two types of suffering:

• Resting suffering, which is completely self-inflicted, made up, and unnecessary.
• Suffering in relation to the hardships of life, kinda inevitable, at least apparently.

What is the experience of an enlightened master? Do they not experience both types? Or either? Or do they experience both? What's the relationship between spirituality and the lack of suffering?

[Gesundheit2]

2 hours ago, nistake said:

When shit happens, can you stay peaceful and calm?

I guess it varies depending on the kind of shit that's happening. For example, I still feel uncomfortable watching gore videos.

But how is that a test? I mean, the person doing the killing seems calm as he's used to doing it regularly.

A butcher doesn't flinch slaughtering a cow, but a hippy person would probably get angry, even though spirituality is more associated with hippies. The butcher is numb, and the hippy is sensitive. How does spirituality fit in this picture? Notice the shit isn't even happening to the hippy personally, but they still get triggered.

I guess what your saying essentially boils down to detachment. But perhaps an interesting question would be: how to distinguish between true detachment and numbness? And, what's the relationship between spirituality and detachment?

[Raptorsin7]

14 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Huh?

?

[Gesundheit2]

2 hours ago, nistake said:

Can you sit in silence comfortably for an hour (or even more)?

I can do that, but so can a panda. And Leo says animals are not enlightened.

2 hours ago, nistake said:

Do you enjoy just being without needing anything?

I'm not sure. If I starve myself to death, I probably won't enjoy it. I also need air and can't enjoy suffocation.

2 hours ago, nistake said:

How are your relationships? How well can you deal with 'not-so-conscious' people?

Well enough to survive, I guess.

2 hours ago, nistake said:

How often do you get lost in monkey-mind?

I don't know anymore at which point the innocent mind turns to monkey-mind. I don't experience that distinction often. Kinda forgot it.

[BipolarGrowth]

19 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Huh?

I distinguish between two types of suffering:

• Resting suffering, which is completely self-inflicted, made up, and unnecessary.
• Suffering in relation to the hardships of life, kinda inevitable, at least apparently.

What is the experience of an enlightened master? Do they not experience both types? Or either? Or do they experience both? What's the relationship between spirituality and the lack of suffering?

This is a small catalogue of one enlightened master’s ridiculously effective methods. Mix that with psychedelics and if you haven’t ended up in jail, you’re more relatively morally sound than I have been able to maintain. If you can’t vibe with what he says, ask why? Why can these crazy meditative attainments be the basis of your beginning to true practice just as it was his albeit in a more special and personal seeming note that ultimately doesn’t stand the test of investigation? Illusion is the food of insight. Buy everything you can. The illusion is running out soon ? https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-vi-my-spiritual-quest/54-the-middle-paths/slam-shifting-nanas-and-jhanas/
 

[mandyjw]

The assumption behind the attempt to test it is the belief in a separate self who is progressing over time and can have for itself a state of suffering or its opposite. You only know by how you feel and you can only feel now. Spiritual progress is simply the desire to feel better. The love of truth is just as much about the love and feeling than the truth that is thought to be loved.

There's feeling, as in openly aware feeling, actually verb, feeling, and there's "feeling", taking the first thought to be true and believing it, "I am ______."

There's nothing wrong with doing that, nothing wrong with feeling frustrated and acknowledging it for example. But if the circumstances and the one who is frustrated is believed in there will be resistance to the desire to feel better. Frustration is actually not frustration but the pure desire to feel better. The magical, instant, beyond time limitations way to feel better is to actually feel. 

Feeling does not involve time, it is already liberated. The desire to feel better is not just to feel a better more desired state, but to actually feel with more awareness, and the two things which seem to be at odds are actually the same exact thing. 

[BipolarGrowth]

7 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

The assumption behind the attempt to test it is the belief in a separate self who is progressing over time and can have for itself a state of suffering or its opposite. You only know by how you feel and you can only feel now. Spiritual progress is simply the desire to feel better. The love of truth is just as much about the love and feeling than the truth that is thought to be loved.

There's feeling, as in openly aware feeling, actually verb, feeling, and there's "feeling", taking the first thought to be true and believing it, "I am ______."

There's nothing wrong with doing that, nothing wrong with feeling frustrated and acknowledging it for example. But if the circumstances and the one who is frustrated is believed in there will be resistance to the desire to feel better. Frustration is actually not frustration but the pure desire to feel better. The magical, instant, beyond time limitations way to feel better is to actually feel. 

Feeling does not involve time, it is already liberated. The desire to feel better is not just to feel a better more desired state, but to actually feel with more awareness, and the two things which seem to be at odds are actually the same exact thing. 

This was really pleasant to read. Good job and thank you for spreading good dharma ?

[Nahm]

5 hours ago, Gesundheit2 said:

How do you test your spiritual progress?

By literally inspecting what ‘you test your’, or ‘your spiritual progress’ is, unpacking the concept, seeing what is actual there. That points to self inquiry, and collapsing the duality of a you and a your progress (a subject object thought). 

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How do you make sure that you're actually an embodiment of God rather than the devil?

Meant lightly, but, while there is only one ‘source’, only the devil could ask such a sneaky question. 

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How do you stay true to your insights and know that you are not just mentally masturbating?

Letting go of concepts about there being ‘your insights’ & ‘you mentally masturbating’. 

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Are there specific ways/methods to test one's progress on the path?

There is no such test or method. Rather, direct investigation & direct experience until there is very literally no arising question about who, what, why & how you really are, and about literally anything & everything in the entire universe. Might reference the observer ‘problem’ / double slit experiment, and realize the fallacies of ‘the speed of light’, gravity, general & special relativity and black & white holes. (Again though, just a pointing there, only  direct experience, vs learning, understanding, or even realizing will do). The Ox-Herding pics might also be helpful just as another pointing frame of reference. And just as a point of interest, maybe even a joy (not a ‘test of progress’), when you read the Bible and it’s the most face value straight forward borderline comedic writing on earth, because again, the devil is funny like this.  

Unthinkable, incomprehensible, unbelievable, unimaginable, indescribable, unfathomable, un-figure-out-able, incalculable, indiscernible, and absolutely infallible. 

[Kamo]

@Gesundheit2 Yeah the easiest way is to observe the quality of your experience. Are you more peaceful, pleasant, calm, are you less anxious, neurotic, tense. 

[Seraphim]

39 minutes ago, Nahm said:

There is no such test or method.

Ramana Maharshi said "The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single though are the measure to gauge spiritual progress."

Because when the I-thought is gone, there is no more addiction to thinking, one can meditate without thoughts effortlessly.

[Nahm]

@Seraphim

Lovely. What is a “Ramana Maharshi”? 

 

[nistake]

@Gesundheit2 You may have misunderstood me. I wasn't really talking about visualizing imaginary scenarios and watching gruesome stuff deliberately. (This is mostly mental masturbation as you put it). I was talking about your actual direct experience. Your waking state if you will.

Let's think of a scenario which can (and does) happen at any time. You're at work and you make a mistake which costs a lot of money to the company you work for. Your boss is clearly angry with you and he's demanding a solution as soon as possible. Can you remain calm and peaceful in this situation while you're taking action?

Another one: Your family member/coworker makes a rude remark about you. You cleary don't like it. Do you start engaging in imaginary conversations? Do you start thinking about what you should've/shouldn't have said? Or do you just accept the fact that he/she made that remark and move on/take the proper action without making a huge drama out of it?

About your spiritual practises: Do you have a seeker identity? Do you engage in them to change anything? To feel better or to get in an altered state of consciousness maybe?

You know, these seemingly ordinary events where 'your spirituality' shines. Peak states are great and necessary, but you can't be in a peak state 24/7. You have to come down to Earth eventually.

[The0Self]

9 hours ago, Gesundheit2 said:

How do you make sure that you're actually an embodiment of God rather than the devil?

How do you stay true to your insights and know that you are not just mentally masturbating?

Are there specific ways/methods to test one's progress on the path?

Level and frequency of gratitude.

Level and frequency of freedom from suffering.

Level and frequency of responding rather than reacting.

Degree to which sensations are just sensations.

Degree to which it's recognized that you're never responsible for what appears, but always responsible for how you respond to what appears.

Degree to which it's recognized that you have absolute authority over (your) reality as it is.

Edited July 29, 2021 by The0Self

[impulse9]

Easiest thing in the world. Simply ask yourself how happy you are.