1 year of spiritual work summed up. merry christmas.

[Cathal]

The TLDR is how I define seeing 'spiritual' growth, or the reduction in my own experience of suffering from insight practice is essentially how it is I react to unpleasant and pleasant things that are arising and passing away, that's about it, but to the degree you intellectually understand that as to directly experience that is the discerning factor, that this moment, now, this passing, fleeting, moment to moment, ever-changing now, is the only reality there is, that anything we say that does not conform with now is constructed in the discerning mind and is a delusion for ourselves to ultimate reality, this is it baby. Please spend time reading/reflecting on what I say about Sila and Sangha if it isn't already on your mind. Enjoy your cakes. 

First of all I wanted to say thank you to everyone on this forum and of course @Leo Gura for creating a space for like-minded people to share this trip with, what i've come to realize is that you are all amazing honestly, one of the rather difficult things especially in the west is to just simply talk about spirituality and about the truth and we experience our own journey are and this forum was a great outlet for that and many other reasons, at one point I decided the best thing for me personally was to join a commune (Buddhist community) for a few months for several reasons, I nearly ended up ordaining but backed out during my last few weeks, and I ended up in 2 different ones for around 3 months at a time + travelling quite a bit alone and so on, I also ended up in a holistic center, went on a few 10 days retreats and eventually wanting to see my family for a while which funnily enough has been one of the most difficult things to confront, so here I am with some time to reflect and hopefully inspire you or some shit.

Just to outline there's a lot terminology i'm using that is pali/sanskrit because that's what i'm familiar with.

Anyways, I'm going to talk a little about that and try to emphasis certain things here to be of benefit to your journey, the thing about this forum is there is quite a lot of proliferation of the psychological content of the mind (and I know how satisfying that is, how fun it is but it generally it's just a hindrance) and the more I practiced an actual spiritual path and listened to Dhamma the more I realized that what I know I know and what I do not know I know I do not know, that the Dhamma is a kind of onion, there are layers and layers or 'awakenings upon awakenings' to the Truth, even though ultimately there is just Truth, there is also a knowing one is approaching things as they are, eg. there are several stages the Buddha outlined as one goes through from a stream enterer to an arahant. I have utterly transformed my experience of reality, you may even look back at my profile and see how much I was really suffering, I mean I was really fucked up emotionally and wasn't able to handle the patterns of my mind, I had attempted suicide, was a drug addict etc etc etc - most of you can relate to a degree, two things we westerners have in common; we are all suffering the material lust of society and being grasped into a spiritually starved society. Our salvation is only found within our own understanding.

The four noble truths are not that difficult to get a grasp intellectually and naturally we like to make things super complex for ourselves and to search for 'the higher teaching's and so on' but what i've realized is that the highest teaching's are contained within the four noble truths of reality, that things aren't complicated - to understand a leaf on a tree is to comprehend every leaf in every forest in the existence - the Buddha infact taught just one thing; Dukkha Nirodha (end suffering), he also taught us not to proliferate too much on what reality is or other realms and so on and to focus on dukkha nirodha alone, I hope this is reflected on many times for you reading this, it is dukha nirodha which the Buddha taught, especially for myself who has tripped out 100+ times - I love to really experience the incomprehensible reality we are within and to expound on the crazy possibilities and thought-constructs we can create, figures like T.Mckena are huge inspiritation to me but in my own experience all I seem to see in the grand scheme of things, the long haul, the cream of the crop is ending your own suffering, to eliminate all dissatisfaction from your life and to attain to Nirvana/enlightenment, that we are all capable of penetrating these insights into reality and freeing ourselves, becoming truly happy and no longer dependant on the senses or objects of the mind - despite our unworthy self-concept of ourselves...

The most and I mean the most important thing is to absolutely accept yourself as you are moment to moment, put a stop to becoming something better/more/acceptable - that all you are is a product of conditioning and most of the time getting established in sati is understanding that all of the shit arising in your mind, just is and us westerners have quite a mind to tango with. Things just are, they are just unfolding at the pace they are unfolding, does that make sense? Just let go of thinking. Like really, just let go and be here, that is it, this is it lol. There really is no doer here, that is the core issue to actually being able to let go. There is this constant dance between doing and letting go, that one moment we are in some unwholesome object in the mind and suddenly we remembered. This is what we understand as Mindfulness, but also it is something to practice and there's really never not a time not to do it.

The greatest insight i've had is understanding Sila - and that includes getting involved and finding the Sangha. (your spiritual companions/family upon the journey), this is absolutely fucking key. This is where your progress will ramp exponentially as opposed to being by yourself. Here is a picture to represent just how important it is to have a foundation of sila, even if you were to incessantly meditate endlessly, you will get fucked by your Sila. Notice your mind ruminates and causes suffering because it is rooted in 3 things, greed, hatred or delusion - the actions we've taken from our ignorance to this causes this noise in our heads that blocks our ability to enter and abide in jhana in our day to day lives and enter into seclusion.

What i've come to understand about meditation is, it's not something you do or switch on and off, until it becomes your every breath you still haven't really gotten what it is. It's not that you have to be aware 24/7, because that's a misunderstanding of Sati, but it's through Right effort that we can literally meditate every moment of our life, through gladenning the mind and relaxing into the jhana we can rewire the negative self judgmental and projective critic, take this to heart and learn what gladenning the mind means.

Anyways, I spent 3 months in a forest thai monastery and it completey transformed every perspective and cut deeply into my own delusional perception of reality, see personality development is incredibly incredibly important, and I don't mean that in any egoic sense whatsoever but rather the ability to individuate into your own unique character and get out of the shell of conditioning - conditionings keeps us very competitive, lieng to each other, ourselves, manipulating people around us, endlessly judging and projecting onto each other, we are more or less trapped in an echo-chamber that reinforces these habits and we all do actually possess a ton of potential - and when you go to a good quality wat/monastery that has the noble Dhamma, you get to see this screamed in your face, you will not infact be able to see this from contemplating it nor reading this writing, you have to go and see people who have been practicing Sila for decades to see how absolutely stable, consistent, selfless and unconditionally giving they are to those around them, they influence and touch your heart in ways that has to be seen for yourself - they mirror to your own spiritual potential and you will delight in it, they also mirror to you have defiled you are, your mind is deluded as fuck and you are sucked in that lense of the suffering of selfish actions, it conditions you for you, you just ride the wave. 

Anyways besides I tried quite a few things, I went out to cities alone and tried pickup, I flew back to my family after 5 years, I talked to several teachers online, I went through 8 months of therapy and joined 4 different therapy groups, breathwork, psychedelics, journaling, inner child, shadow work, charity work, whatever. Like, whatever lol, the whole shibang. I was so intense this year man, I really wanted to transform because I knew my potential and what I came to conclude is what I just wrote about, that many of us are missing this Sangha and Sila practice, this is where we are rooted in ignorance for most people, is found within our Shadow, how our unconscious projects, none of us will meditate that out of us, do you understand? - it has to be confronted and let go of, you let go by not reacting and nurturing yourself, practiced every single moment you see these patterns in you, you have to be willing to go through really difficult emotions and give up your habits of avoiding it and try your best to do the right thing, it's all contained within the 4 noble truths and the 4rth noble truth is the 8th fold noble path the Buddha laid out to end suffering. Anyways, these are just my fucking insights, what I found to be the most valuable and basically to adopt some Jesus into your life - generosity, good will, develop your loving kindness, develop your compassion, your empathic joy and your equanimity to pleasant and unpleasant states my friends, please consider how important it is for you to get into the Sangha, do whatever it takes to find those equal or higher to you and make them your company, reach out, put that effort in, be vulnerable to change, it is so important, sympathetic vibrations can carry you miles along the river alone, your environment is conditioning you whether you like it or not, you should pay extreme attention to making it as good as you can for yourself, because you love yourself.

Merry Christmas

Edited December 25, 2022 by Cathal

[Giulio Bevilacqua]

Very cool and interesting to read. 

Would like to know what was your journey with psychedelics and how it worked for you ? 

[Cathal]

@Giulio Bevilacqua psychedelics have been great for me, life-changing and getting a glimpse at my spiritual potential, i've done lsd/dmt/mushrooms/2cb, ket, and a few other lesser known things like lsa. but ultimately seeing the limitations with them made me stop using them, i absolutely honour them with all my heart