The Seeking vs Integrating approach to spirituality

[Carl-Richard]

This is meant mostly for young seekers who are juggling early life with self-transcendence.

 

Quote

The thing is that the mystic in the woods eventually realizes that he could use his insights to contribute to the world rather than simply keeping it all for himself. Now, such a task becomes hard if you lack a good worldly foundation.

 

It's no surprise that the most awakened people you see in the world are some of the most well-integrated and resourceful people out there. While it's not uncommon for mystics to enter a deep introspective phase of their life, it's not an unproblematic endeavour. In the past, being a mystic was synonymous homelessness, and fortunately for them, there were structures in place that made it possible to survive (Indian culture is very accommodating to mystics). However, in the modern world of Western individualism, it's not a wise decision to leave your life behind, certainly not before it has even started.

I recommend re-defining the concept of spirituality from the idea of seeking the highest to integrating the whole. What makes us human is our desire to expand endlessly, and the ultimate expression of this is the desire for truth. You can imagine the desire of truth to be an expansion towards the highest altitude of consciousness. However, the impulse of expansion does not only extend towards higher altitudes but also towards wider breadths and deeper depths. It's not just an movement upwards, but rather it's an expansion in all directions.

So in other words, to be truly spiritual is to maximize all expansion in all aspects, not just the higher ones. In fact, when the lower aspects are denied their right to expand, they will impede your ability to go higher. For example, if you deny your sexual energy, this will create a disruption in your emotional system and impede your spiritual energy. There are a myriad of "lower energies" within you that need to be processed and expressed before you can fully move on to the next level (e.g. the desire for safety, belonging and esteem), and working on the wordly things will help you in that direction.

So it's not just that it's impractical from a survival perspective to not develop the lower aspects of yourself, but it will also cause problems for your truth-seeking. I can use an example from my personal life to illustrate this point: I've personally had a little "wood mystic" phase in my early teens (dropped LSD a couple of times, started smoking weed heavily to expand on those insights). What initially began as an intense seeking for truth turned into a denial of personal responsibilities and avoiding the hardships of life (stopped caring much about school, friends and family), and the stress from having to deal with all those bad decisions made me very neurotic and depressed.

I later realized that the dysfunctional part of my behavior stemmed from some emotional issues, namely having had very strict parents that didn't let me fully express my emotional impulses, and that me immersing myself completely in truth-seeking and avoiding responsibilities was me trying to fill that hole from my youth. Something as basic as the need to express one's impulses (to consume, to indulge, to "want", to self-assert), which I expressed through intense truth-seeking, was ultimately creating more problems for me and holding me back.

What I was avoiding, and what I'm focusing on now, is to integrate my personality, harvest my potential, become a resourceful person and then go directly for truth without being a liability to others. I'm not saying that what happened to me will happen to you, but there are many things that can go wrong if you take the seeking approach over the integrating approach. Every part of your life impacts every other part in some way, and if you fail to address one part, it will have a detrimental impact on the whole. This is essentially a lesson in holistic thinking: of not getting too caught up in one aspect of life, but to be able to see the bigger picture.

[Human Mint]

I very resonate with that. The core of self-actualization.

[Jakuchu]

On 14.10.2021 at 4:36 AM, Carl-Richard said:

stopped caring much about school 

wise af

[Jakuchu]

On 14.10.2021 at 4:36 AM, Carl-Richard said:

However, in the modern world of Western individualism, it's not a wise decision to leave your life behind, certainly not before it has even started

What we generally call life is a joke, we have mistaken activities and possessions as life. You are your life, so you are not leaving anything behind. I would consider myself this "leaver-type", so I might be biased. If I had the means do so I would go on an island and live in a cabin for years until all existential questions are answered. But, I guess you can do that in a city with not so conscious family members around aswell, it's just less ideal 

 

 

[tuckerwphotography]

Well said!

As Wilber puts it: Wake Up. Grow Up. Clean Up. Show Up.

[VeganAwake]

There's nothing to find for the seeker so there's nothing to integrate either.

The experience of loss is an illusion.

❤

[Carl-Richard]

@Human Mint @tuckerwphotography @VeganAwake ?

18 hours ago, Jakuchu said:

What we generally call life is a joke, we have mistaken activities and possessions as life. You are your life, so you are not leaving anything behind. I would consider myself this "leaver-type", so I might be biased. If I had the means do so I would go on an island and live in a cabin for years until all existential questions are answered. But, I guess you can do that in a city with not so conscious family members around aswell, it's just less ideal 

It's perfectly fine to "leave" once you have established a firm foundation. The problem is that especially many young people overestimate their level of development and make short-sighted decisions which directly impede spiritual work and threaten basic survival.