spirituality

The Tenth Picture

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A lot of spiritual experiences give you a high. This isn’t a bad thing at all, but too often the sign gets mistaken for the destination

I’m not only talking the high from drugs some people take for spiritual or faux-spiritual reasons. It’s obvious that appropriately used substances, employed by informed people under proper tutelage, can lead to deep spiritual insights. It’s also obvious you can have such deep experiences from breathing, visualization, energy work, etc. These are deep, strange, powerful and also can get you high as hell for that moment.

And that high is not necessarily a bad thing. That is a sign that you’ve gotten something going on. You feel that high of your body relaxing in Quigong, the self-yet-not moment of cyclical breathing, or the psychedelic top-of-your-head-blows off of a drug or visualization trip. Something happened, and you have a powerful experience and often see and feel life differently.

However, I think a lot of people see the high as the goal. They want the sign of enlightenment, of achievement, of spiritual fulfillment – and to them that’s the rush of the therapeutic relaxation or some stunning vision. They want to own it by owning an experience.

I think this is why we see so many people falling under the spells of gurus, grifters, endless substance experiments, and shifting trends. They’re chasing the high or looking for a new one so they can once again “hold” that sense of spiritual enlightenment. But it’s just a senstion.

Spiritual highs are just roadsigns you’re onto something (and, in some cases, just on something even if it’s your own neurotransmitters). Something in your head and personality just shifted, got blown apart, or made connections. But the question is what you do next.

Plenty of seekers’ next step should be to ask if they just deluded themselves. But for many they had some authentic insight and that’s a chance to grow, not just find a new way to get high again.

What did you learn? How can you apply it? Does it help you understand yourself, others, and your teachers better. Where does the spiritual experience send you next? I mean even if you go to conventional therapy, good job, you learned something.

Spiritual experience should help you grow, not become a junkie.

I’m reminded of the famous Ten Ox-Herding pictures of Zen. They’re a lovely metaphor for meditation and spiritual practice based around seeking and taming a recalcitrant bovine. Eventually the trainer – the seeker – returns to society after many insights, helping others. He doesn’t leave the world or stay in his seeking, but returns a better person.

If your spiritual highs don’t help you become better, if they don’t someday lead you back to the bustling marketplace and busy town, then pause and take stock of yourself.

-Xenofact

The Map Is The Mirage

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Earlier I commented on how my own meditative work was slowed when I focused less on doing it and more on reaching milestones.  When I focused on milestones, I got frustrated or risked taking shortcuts.  When you have a map, you can forget the importance of the journey – and no matter what you still have to make the journey.

This was part of a realization of why many esoteric documents may resort to obscurity and symbolism.  Too much of a map, and you end up inviting frustration and confusion.  However, I want to share another realization from my “contemplation of maps” – that detailed “mystical maps” also invite self delusion.

One of my interests is keeping an eye on spiritual grifters (indeed, it comprises a surprising part of my podcast listening).  As I follow the grifters I also wonder about the followers.  These followers will report spiritual experiences, alien incarnations, but heir descriptions were filled with jargon, repeated conspiracy theories, and so on.  They seem quite sincere, but their experiences often seemed to be, well, a little too imagined.

I’m sure we’ve all had times in meditation or magic where we realized “I am deluding myself,” of course.  Remember when you had expectations and later realized you’d made some of it up?  When you map out experiences you can make yourself believe you’re experiencing them.

I think some people taken in by spiritual grifters imagine these experiences as the grifter gives them a map.  Do this meditation to awaken your starseed self, be it Blue Avian or Pleadean!  Do these meditations and you’ll experience Angel communication!  Tell people their needs are met by “doing x to get y,” throw in some social pressure, and people will imagine all sorts of things.

Plus the grifters get to sell books, amulets, talks, get internet exposure, and so on.  If it goes stale, just make up some new grift and do it all over again.  Some people selling spiritual ephemera go through multiple entire belief systems.

Thus we can see another reason for use of symbolism or a little obscurity in mystical documents.  Not providing too much of a map lowers the chance people will delude themselves.  I imagine finding the right balance is a challenge, and makes me appreciate the many monks, magicians, and philosophers who found it.

As a closing note, as stated earlier, I believe mystic practices are fundamentally liberating and should be shared far and wide.  I’m just realizing it’s good to require some work, skepticism, and analysis of those you’re trying to reach.

– Xenofact