Given the rather diverse background in spirituality that I have, I sometimes get contacted for feedback on my experience with a particular spiritual system. My response to these queries is:
“All – and by that I mean actually just that, namely all – that you perceive and experience is exactly that, which you out of yourself, through your own causal thinking create, and indeed right…now!”
This quote comes from the text “Spiritologie” by Andreas Buttler. It is the best answer I can give you. Two people could enter a spiritual system and one could leave in tears months later screaming they are a destructive cult while the other person might join, and breeze through it and love it for all the years of their life. Why? Because each person co-created their experience.
The last thing I want is responsibility for altering someone’s spiritual inquiry because something I said that drew them into something that they could’ve avoided or kept them away from something that could’ve benefitted them. I’ve been kicked out of systems that other people are still going strong in and getting wins. So why should I weigh in and break someone’s stride?
That being said, I’ve been around enough systems that the words of John C. Lilly from his book “The Deep Self” do echo in my mind: “I definitely do not belong to any church or group.” Lilly said that the gnostic viewpoint was “using the self to find The Self as opposed to a church or group.”
You can get a lot of momentum, a lot of cameraderie and a lot of support when you align yourself with a group. But if they kick you out then all that connection and momentum is snatched out from under you. Hmm…
The final reason that I wish to reserve any comments on spiritual systems is that people seem to read things into what I say that I did not. For instance, I developed an interest in a person called Nikolay Dolgorukiy and someone jumped to the conclusion that I had started sungazing when I had not. His reasoning was:
- You are studying Nikolay Dolgorukiy
- Nikolay Dolgorukiy is into sungazing
- You are into sungazing.
Now, my primary interest in Nikolay Dolgorukiy was his liquidarian diet. But this person took the liberty of saying I said things that I did not say based on his own errant reasoning.
Nothing against Sungazing. I did do that when I had an interest in Shri Hira Ratan Manek. But I did not do it at the time the person drew the false conclusion about me.
So that’s all folks, over and out… – T