Can you become realized through a progressive meditation? And if you can, is there a practice of progressive meditation that works with certainty for all people to bring them to enlightenment? Or are all forms of progressive meditation more or less hit or miss?
Wondering if you're using the right technique?
There is no practice that will work with certainty for all people because people are different. Circumstances are different. There will always be arguments for why this or that practice is better and everyone will have their recommendations. However, something you can be pretty much certain of is
persistence is key.
So long as your practice has a long tradition of people saying, "I say chaps/chapesses, I just had the most surprising realisation." it probably worth persisting with it.
My take is that meditation is pretty much consistently the same practice. What progresses is the capacity for meditative absorption and what you can do with it. From Zen there are the traditional Five Ranks of Tozen or alternatively the Ten Bulls. Not traditional but often referred to is a progressive pattern is scattered mind, simple mind, one mind, no mind. From the Pali cannon there are the 4 rupajhana, blissful stages in deep concentration that progressively simplify leading to the 4 rrupajhana, formless/emptiness stages in deep concentration. The various fire and water methods of Taoist meditation all involve progressive stages in meditative absorption often with the addition of exercises for mental and physical transformation too.
I've found this way of looking at it helpful: There is a vertical scale and a horizontal scale. The vertical scale is the basic capacity for meditative absorption. Someone who practices sitting meditation alone and away from the world for most of the day each day is likely expand that scale fairly quickly. The horizontal scale is the capacity to integrate insights from meditative absorption into relationships with others, the world and the workings of your own psyche. Someone who can't expand the vertical scale because they only have a certain amount of time in their day to dedicate to sitting meditation due to other commitments & responsibilities will likely expand horizontally instead. You can't really lose so long as you persist.
In one of his books Jack Kornfield describes coming back to society from years in meditative retreat only to find to his dismay the neuroses that had driven him to seek sanctuary in meditation came back too. He had made lots of progress vertically but none horizontally. Despite the initial impression that nothing had changed he found he was able to use the capacity for meditative absorption to help overcome his neuroses and establish a life for himself. Lots of horizontal progress there.
I should say that at some point an extended meditative retreat is a very good idea. It really gets the ball rolling.
