How direct experience is the most important aspect to self development

[Vynce]

Leo already discussed this topic in his video of how increasing the frequency of experience will ultimately lead to all the good stuff in life. That should sounds intuitively right.

But in this post I want to point out one aspect, which seems to be the most important in that regard. That is, that the "territory" of experience always crushes the "map" of thought to dust. And that the lack of "crushing the maps" through direct experience will waste you so much precious time in thinking your ways trough the mental constructs, which you believe are reality. 

One good example comes to mind when we think of online dating (male POV here). The guy sees all these fancy pictures of ideal women and immediately constructs cozy mental stories, how Natasha, Riley or Emma would fit into his life. Even worse, this mental construction gets reinforced through occasional matches and text contact. Then, after days and weeks of times waste a date might get organized. At this time the mind is on steroids constructing stories how the date will go and how good the upcoming relationship will be, and what kind of pigeons there will be for the wedding. 

But as it turns out, these dates usually suck and are also a complete waste of time. Weeks of mental work for a little bit of direct experience. This was a major trap for me.

The same counts for business, traveling, relationships and most importantly spirituality. Thats because spirituality is 100% useless, if you just perform it mentally.

The structure of "map versus territory" is always the same. Direct experience trumps thinking in maps in a ratio of 1 to 1000. 

Edited January 19, 2022 by Vynce

[Kksd74628]

@Vynce

The thing here is to enjoy present moment whatever it is. See it like that if you enjoy watching good looking paintings then there will be time when you have painting in front of you that you don't like and that causes suffering in your present moment that you yourself made just by not accepting present moment as it was.

If you do spirituality with picture that you will gain material goods for you, I see that you are doing it with wrong mentality.

Point that you are missing is that seeking material goods will never make you as happy as BEING, because when your happiness comes from anything that is not present 24/7 you will suffer when present moment lacks of it.

Spirituality as it's purest form is end of tomorrow and yesterday and start of NOW.