Mysticism is a Whore: Allow Me to Introduce You

[Sunstone]

Please Note: This thread is in the Mysticism DIR and is thus not open to debate.

If words were characters in a novel, the word “mysticism” would be the whore with the good heart. Like the whore, mysticism has a bad reputation. People, both religious and non-religious, look down on her. Reactions to her range from deep suspicion to shocked disbelief, often followed by rumor-mongering, gossip, and slander.

The full post, which can be found here, is a largely sympathetic -- but non-ideological and non-religious -- look at mysticism. Rather than try to shoehorn mysticism into any ideology or religion, I focus on what little I believe I have learned about it from approximately four decades of having casually studied it in various ways, including through a great many conversations with mystics themselves. It is, however, no more than an introduction to the topic, and from one person's standpoint.

All the same, anyone interested in a largely observational (as opposed to ideological or religious) introduction to mysticism should check out, Mysticism is a Whore: Allow Me to Introduce You.

 

[crossfire]

I do know, however, that there are people who in most or every respect seem to be mystics, except they claim to have never had any such experiences. So it does not seem to me that one must necessarily be a mystic to be like a mystic. But it sure does help: For every normal person I’ve met who is very much like a mystic, I have met several actual mystics.

These ones are the true masters, who have all the connections so finely tuned to the most subtle level that they don't need to fix any broken wires or bring anything back into tune. {Unlike we poor slobs who need to have the jumbo crayon on the huge writing tablet to spell it out to us in order to get our attention--*doh!* } They don't need the jumbo crayons, nor do they need to be hit over the head or stabbed through the heart with the jumbo crayons, nor do they seek to hit others over the head with the jumbo crayons.

We are all in various stages of development--which is a good thing, imo!

 

[sun rise]

Taking the drug question first, it was my experience as well as the experience of others that the drug experience was not a true mystical experience but rather the illusion of being one for a number of people. It was for me a mirage of water and not water itself.

But for the most part I think you've done a great job capturing the breeze in a net.

 

[Sunstone]

Taking the drug question first, it was my experience as well as the experience of others that the drug experience was not a true mystical experience but rather the illusion of being one for a number of people. It was for me a mirage of water and not water itself.

But for the most part I think you've done a great job capturing the breeze in a net.

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement, Sunrise! If drug induced experiences are not true mystical experiences, that would perhaps explain why I've found that in almost all cases, people claiming to have attained to the mystical experience through drugs do not show any remarkable signs of personal transformation. Thanks for sharing your insights on that!

Like you, I am skeptical that drug induced and organic experiences are identical, although I think they may be in several ways similar -- especially chemically similar. There is a reason, however, while I feel it's necessary to at least mention them when talking of organic experiences.

The issue comes down to this: All sorts of people claim to have had the mystical experience. How am I, as an observer, to decide that some of those people have had the experience, while others have not, without in effect "cherry picking the data"?

Put differently, what would be my logical justification for throwing out the accounts of drug induced experiences? In fact, I think it would be methodologically sloppy of me to do so. Consequently, my procedure is to report their claims of having had the experience, but to also mention my observation that they show few or no signs of it having permanently transformed them. In other words, I'm comfortable leaving it up to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about such experiences.

 

[Windwalker]

My brother, half way through your blog I'm pausing. It is wonderfully written, with great insights and I anxiously anticipating reading the rest. Remarkable insights, and there are many points I applaud and look forward to future conversations with you about.

One thing I read a bit ago is sticking with me I wish to raise as a question. You said, "mystical experiences tend to be rare. One is “lucky” to have had one. To have a few is exceptionally lucky. To have had more than a few is almost unheard of." I would disagree with this, and for reason. If you are talking spontaneous experiences, then I hear this. But these seemingly random moments are what Maslow termed "peak experiences".

My own experiences at 18 years of age which utterly transformed my whole life over the course of the subsequent four decades of my life, and to this day remain cornerstone experiences, were in fact these peak experiences brought about by a deep existential crisis in my life. And my years since have in effect been about finding my way "Home" to that vast Opening. But it was some six plus years ago where I heard this said. "Enlightenment happens by accident, but meditation makes you accident-prone".

When I picked up that piece of the puzzle missing all those years in the voices and claims of the religious community boasting proprietorship of all knowledge of the spiritual, as I entered into that doorway to the soul, I returned to where I began, and began at last to bask in that unimaginable Infinite Light. I use the words and the capitalizations I do, in the hope to express the beginning of what that is, and what that was, and what that is in all moments.

My point being that to say more than a couple or few times entering the mystical is unheard of, is only true in regards to these seemingly "arbitrary" or random peak experiences. But they are not true for those who put themselves in the path of that "accident" happening. Rather, for me it is now the daily norm. And the layers of where that goes and takes us, is an unending journey.

 

[sun rise]

...approximately four decades of having casually studied it in various ways, including through a great many conversations with mystics themselves...

I spent time reflecting on what you've written thinking about possible follow-up posts. I wound up wondering what you've found motivating enough to keep at this for ~40 years.

 

[Sunstone]

I spent time reflecting on what you've written thinking about possible follow-up posts. I wound up wondering what you've found motivating enough to keep at this for ~40 years.

In a nutshell, the mystery of it.

 

[Sunstone]

My brother, half way through your blog I'm pausing. It is wonderfully written, with great insights and I anxiously anticipating reading the rest. Remarkable insights, and there are many points I applaud and look forward to future conversations with you about.

One thing I read a bit ago is sticking with me I wish to raise as a question. You said, "mystical experiences tend to be rare. One is “lucky” to have had one. To have a few is exceptionally lucky. To have had more than a few is almost unheard of." I would disagree with this, and for reason. If you are talking spontaneous experiences, then I hear this. But these seemingly random moments are what Maslow termed "peak experiences".

My own experiences at 18 years of age which utterly transformed my whole life over the course of the subsequent four decades of my life, and to this day remain cornerstone experiences, were in fact these peak experiences brought about by a deep existential crisis in my life. And my years since have in effect been about finding my way "Home" to that vast Opening. But it was some six plus years ago where I heard this said. "Enlightenment happens by accident, but meditation makes you accident-prone".

When I picked up that piece of the puzzle missing all those years in the voices and claims of the religious community boasting proprietorship of all knowledge of the spiritual, as I entered into that doorway to the soul, I returned to where I began, and began at last to bask in that unimaginable Infinite Light. I use the words and the capitalizations I do, in the hope to express the beginning of what that is, and what that was, and what that is in all moments.

My point being that to say more than a couple or few times entering the mystical is unheard of, is only true in regards to these seemingly "arbitrary" or random peak experiences. But they are not true for those who put themselves in the path of that "accident" happening. Rather, for me it is now the daily norm. And the layers of where that goes and takes us, is an unending journey.

I'll have to wait a bit before responding to your post, my friend, because I'm quite this morning. But I'll be back as soon as I can. Thank you so much for your kind words!

 

[Windwalker]

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement, Sunrise! If drug induced experiences are not true mystical experiences, that would perhaps explain why I've found that in almost all cases, people claiming to have attained to the mystical experience through drugs do not show any remarkable signs of personal transformation. Thanks for sharing your insights on that!

I want to pick up some thoughts of my own to this question of the drug-assisted mystical experience and your thoughts surrounding that. My own experiences have been unaided that way and were spontaneous openings, that peak experience I mentioned in the other post. From my understanding a drug-assisted experience can be profoundly awakening and life-changing as well, but I think it would have to have some similar underlying condition as the spontaneous peak experience. In other words the 'readiness' of the experiencer.

To just simply take some drug recreationally at a party and have a profound experience, like a DMT experience, might not have the same degree of impact on someone's life as someone who was needing some sort of breakthrough psychologically and spiritually. If someone taking DMT were to do so through some ritual form as part of some spiritual seeking, it could have much more meaningful impact than someone just getting high as part of some thrill-seeking experience.

But then again, even the "seeker" might in fact not actually be ready psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, for their experience despite believing they are. Therefore the experience gets "dropped" because like the proverbial tea cup story, there was nowhere for the master to pour tea into the student's cup because it was already full and so it spilled all over the table, as opposed to being empty and ready to receive the tea being offered. By the same token then, even the "thrill-seeking" kid at the party, may unbeknownst to himself on a conscious level actually be ready to receive, and 'inadvertently' taking the drug opened himself to what he deep down inside was unconsciously seeking. In that case, it would have a lasting effect.

Why it seems that the spontaneous 'natural' peak experience is more lasting and life-changing would probably have more to do with the conditions for it in the first place. It occurs, I believe as a sort of transcendental 'breakthrough' of the subconscious mind to the conscious mind. The conscious mind was in 'tension', on a deep level, just below the surface. The tension was there, but not ready for the fully conscious mind to be able to look consciously at that material down there. Then, something happens where the conscious and subconscious mind knows you are ready to 'hear' that message, and "pow!", a crack forms in the floor and the subconscious mind comes blasting through and presents to the conscious mind that material from the Depths.

How that manifests to the conscious mind can take many forms, from a profound connection to all of life, to visible visions, such as deity forms, to light radiating in everything, and so forth. These forms, especially deity forms are symbolic manifestations of the deepest levels of our consciousness. The forms they take are what the conscious mind supplies from it's symbolic reserves offered to it through their culture's pools and languages. They are not the "actual" Jesus for instance, or the actual Avalokiteshvara with an actual 1000 arms, so there is no way "scientifically" to say those are "real" in the way they are experienced. However, they are real in that they are the same type of experience, manifesting the same sorts of archetypal forms from the person's culture.

What has happened psychologically and spiritually is the person was ready for this breakthrough and they allowed themselves to expose this stuff from down deep in our preverbal subconscious mind (as well as our emergent unconscious- another thing, transcendent potential) which is constantly aware of stuff for us that we in our conscious mind can only take in trickles, or odd impulses as it puts pressures upon us.It's all about bringing those awarenesses at those levels, to the awareness of the conscious thinking mind which is normally just processing the daily crap of life it its symbolic systems of mental objects. Now we are actively, consciously including all this material from the subtle and causal realities of our being into the actively conscious mind. The forms of languages these take for the conscious mind become mandalic, or salvific, highly symbolic forms, etc.

In reality, all of this is what a good meditation practice does for a person, but where it is regulated and taken as what I like to call, 'lessons in the Light', rather than some abrupt eruption where you are shot up out of the volcano's mouth in a blaze of glory! I take some qualified exception with the Zen approach to simply ignore this material, but I'll save my comments to that for another post.

So to the drug-question, again I think it all has to do with the 'readiness' of the conscious mind to bring up what the subconscious mind has for it and be able to actively begin to process it, even if it interprets these things as actual manifestations of actual deities. Even at that 'literal' level, it is still acting symbolically on the person. And so to now believe that "Jesus" is there for me, does have the effect of letting the person reach beyond their mundane 'normal' ideas of reality to the higher Self, through the agency of archetypes. As Jung call these, "symbols of our transformation".

There's other things I'd like to touch on with this, such as how peak experiences are fairly common, but a lot of people are not ready to pay the price to talk about them with others for fear of being judged too outside the culture or group, of fear of being call crazy, etc. There is also the heavy price to be paid that you end up without a lot of support as few have trod the path of the mystic, and so it's easier to just 'forget about it' or tuck it away somewhere and do nothing with it and just go on with being 'normal'.

So again, I think this all really has much more to do with that tension between being and becoming, that is the necessary condition where the peak experience takes root and grows, or is simply set aside as the mind is not ready to do the work in the hope of someone integrating what was exposed to it. It's really the "soil" the seed is sown into, to borrow from that parable of Jesus. The ground has to be prepared, it has to be able to receive, and to me that is a far deeper question than the mystical experience itself.

I could write a whole book on this stuff... oh hey, I am.

 

[sun rise]

In a nutshell, the mystery of it.

That brought a few impulses to my mind. One is an echo of what you've written that I first heard many years ago in a "New Troubadours" recording:

Change can come in the twinkling of an eye,
In the ripple upon a lake.
Change can come in the color of a flower,
In the sparkle of morning dew,
When the Light catches you.
In that tiny moment, you are transformed.

And the radiance of Christ
Shines forth in reply
From within, and has made itself known,
And from the two is born
A new world.

Come, let us join
Our many golden flickering
And create one Light,
Together,
Forever.

 

[sun rise]

Another was a magnetic poster I had on my wall at work for many years as a reminder to myself about my motivation.

You can fly if you want to.

It isn't as hard as it seems.

The old man wrinkled his face to the sky.

You can be that hawk, he said, pointing to a redtail hawk in the summer sun.

But first you must love that hawk as you love life itself.

You must accept all that he lives by as you accept all that you live by.

You must accept his body, spirit and soul as you accept your own.

Only then may you join him in the sky.

You will see all that he sees as he sees it.

You will feel the wind as he feels it.

You will perceive the earth as he perceives it.

The power of his flight will be yours.

You can fly, he said, looking at the hawk, if you really want to.

 

[sun rise]

And to share an experience I once had: A friend in her 80's had decided that she had completed the work of her lifetime and was ready to "drop her physical body". She was deeply asleep or in a coma for the last days and hours of her life. As I sat quietly with her several times during her last days, I started feeling great joy and wrote this in response:

Prologue

Looking homeward.
Longing.
Praying.
Enough.
Enough.
Time to go.

Transition

Whispers of angelic wings.
A veil thinning, thinning.
Joyous divine music.
Light filled room.
Sweet perfume.
Letting go.

Exaltation

Leaping free.
Soaring arias.
A young girl dancing.
Attar of white roses.
A divine being
- arms opened wide.
Melting into sunshine.
Gone.

 

[crossfire]

I want to pick up some thoughts of my own to this question of the drug-assisted mystical experience and your thoughts surrounding that. My own experiences have been unaided that way and were spontaneous openings, that peak experience I mentioned in the other post. From my understanding a drug-assisted experience can be profoundly awakening and life-changing as well, but I think it would have to have some similar underlying condition as the spontaneous peak experience. In other words the 'readiness' of the experiencer.

To just simply take some drug recreationally at a party and have a profound experience, like a DMT experience, might not have the same degree of impact on someone's life as someone who was needing some sort of breakthrough psychologically and spiritually. If someone taking DMT were to do so through some ritual form as part of some spiritual seeking, it could have much more meaningful impact than someone just getting high as part of some thrill-seeking experience.

But then again, even the "seeker" might in fact not actually be ready psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, for their experience despite believing they are. Therefore the experience gets "dropped" because like the proverbial tea cup story, there was nowhere for the master to pour tea into the student's cup because it was already full and so it spilled all over the table, as opposed to being empty and ready to receive the tea being offered. By the same token then, even the "thrill-seeking" kid at the party, may unbeknownst to himself on a conscious level actually be ready to receive, and 'inadvertently' taking the drug opened himself to what he deep down inside was unconsciously seeking. In that case, it would have a lasting effect.

Why it seems that the spontaneous 'natural' peak experience is more lasting and life-changing would probably have more to do with the conditions for it in the first place. It occurs, I believe as a sort of transcendental 'breakthrough' of the subconscious mind to the conscious mind. The conscious mind was in 'tension', on a deep level, just below the surface. The tension was there, but not ready for the fully conscious mind to be able to look consciously at that material down there. Then, something happens where the conscious and subconscious mind knows you are ready to 'hear' that message, and "pow!", a crack forms in the floor and the subconscious mind comes blasting through and presents to the conscious mind that material from the Depths.

How that manifests to the conscious mind can take many forms, from a profound connection to all of life, to visible visions, such as deity forms, to light radiating in everything, and so forth. These forms, especially deity forms are symbolic manifestations of the deepest levels of our consciousness. The forms they take are what the conscious mind supplies from it's symbolic reserves offered to it through their culture's pools and languages. They are not the "actual" Jesus for instance, or the actual Avalokiteshvara with an actual 1000 arms, so there is no way "scientifically" to say those are "real" in the way they are experienced. However, they are real in that they are the same type of experience, manifesting the same sorts of archetypal forms from the person's culture.

What has happened psychologically and spiritually is the person was ready for this breakthrough and they allowed themselves to expose this stuff from down deep in our preverbal subconscious mind (as well as our emergent unconscious- another thing, transcendent potential) which is constantly aware of stuff for us that we in our conscious mind can only take in trickles, or odd impulses as it puts pressures upon us.It's all about bringing those awarenesses at those levels, to the awareness of the conscious thinking mind which is normally just processing the daily crap of life it its symbolic systems of mental objects. Now we are actively, consciously including all this material from the subtle and causal realities of our being into the actively conscious mind. The forms of languages these take for the conscious mind become mandalic, or salvific, highly symbolic forms, etc.

In reality, all of this is what a good meditation practice does for a person, but where it is regulated and taken as what I like to call, 'lessons in the Light', rather than some abrupt eruption where you are shot up out of the volcano's mouth in a blaze of glory! I take some qualified exception with the Zen approach to simply ignore this material, but I'll save my comments to that for another post.

So to the drug-question, again I think it all has to do with the 'readiness' of the conscious mind to bring up what the subconscious mind has for it and be able to actively begin to process it, even if it interprets these things as actual manifestations of actual deities. Even at that 'literal' level, it is still acting symbolically on the person. And so to now believe that "Jesus" is there for me, does have the effect of letting the person reach beyond their mundane 'normal' ideas of reality to the higher Self, through the agency of archetypes. As Jung call these, "symbols of our transformation".

There's other things I'd like to touch on with this, such as how peak experiences are fairly common, but a lot of people are not ready to pay the price to talk about them with others for fear of being judged too outside the culture or group, of fear of being call crazy, etc. There is also the heavy price to be paid that you end up without a lot of support as few have trod the path of the mystic, and so it's easier to just 'forget about it' or tuck it away somewhere and do nothing with it and just go on with being 'normal'.

So again, I think this all really has much more to do with that tension between being and becoming, that is the necessary condition where the peak experience takes root and grows, or is simply set aside as the mind is not ready to do the work in the hope of someone integrating what was exposed to it. It's really the "soil" the seed is sown into, to borrow from that parable of Jesus. The ground has to be prepared, it has to be able to receive, and to me that is a far deeper question than the mystical experience itself.

I could write a whole book on this stuff... oh hey, I am.

The whole thing with "ignoring" makyo is the same reason for avoiding intoxicants--addiction. Makyo is where you attach (Become addicted--Upādāna) to an experience and crave (taṇhā) more like a junkie craving another fix. Indeed, even the joy/rapture/bliss of the Jhana cycle can be likened to an opioid rush, and one can just as easily become addicted to the joy/rapture/bliss of the mystical experience as you can to opioids. You want to get past the rapture (acknowledge and then let it go rather than simply ignore, as it is a sign of the jhana cycle) and reach the stage of equanimity--sitting easy with the observation and knowledge you have gained without freaking out or becoming addicted to it (avoiding makyo.) Having a brush with opioids might be beneficial in making the connection between drug addiction and makyo--as well as gaining insight into how and why our consciousness lands on or "seizes on" (compare the word rapture) what it does seize upon. Like you said, this would depend upon the readiness of the individual.

Once you understand addiction/attachment/clinging/makyo for what it is, you can examine the makyo and gain some insight into your further deeply ingrained addictions, then seek them out and overcome them, furthering your transformation. (Easy to say, difficult to do.)

 

[Windwalker]

The whole thing with "ignoring" makyo is the same reason for avoiding intoxicants--addiction. Makyo is where you attach (Become addicted--Upādāna) to an experience and crave (taṇhā) more like a junkie craving another fix. Indeed, even the joy/rapture/bliss of the Jhana cycle can be likened to an opioid rush, and one can just as easily become addicted to the joy/rapture/bliss of the mystical experience as you can to opioids.

That's for explaining this all further. I've heard a high-level reason before but this goes into further detail. Here's where I will spend some time in talking about where I see this being good advice in one regard, but not so good advice in another.

First the right regard which they touch on is as you say that many can end of seeking the experience as the goal. These are thrill-seeking, some call that wave jumping, surfing the waves from one peak experience to the next. This is they who find the next spiritual gimmick to give them the next spiritual high, and never swim deep beneath the waves into that Ocean they are riding the surface of.

What I would say to this is not that they are technically "addicted" but in reality they are avoiding. It's a type of what Robert Masters termed, "Spiritual Bypassing". Addictions are a symptom of a pathology, and it is the pathology that is the problem, not the addiction itself. Addictions are fixations on something in some area that did not get integrated properly in the higher stages of development of where someone is at. To simply "quit drinking" can in fact not heal that which is the cause of that fixation and so you can become what they call a "dry drunk".

Spiritual Bypassing is like the 'near enemy' in Buddhism. Being 'super spiritual' is the near enemy of spirituality. Unlike the 'far enemy' which is the exact opposite, the obvious foe such as hard-core militant atheism and materialist scientism is the far enemy of religion, the near enemy masquerades itself as the real thing, while the whole time subverting it. It too is the enemy of the spiritual path, but worse by letting the person deceive themselves they are actually on a spiritual path. What they really are doing is avoiding it, and the reason we avoid is pretty simple yet that hard to acknowledge: fear.

So in this sense, telling someone to watch out for that, set it aside when it takes you into spiritual bypassing so you don't fall into avoidance is good advice. Here's where I see making that "ignore that stuff" may in fact be damaging to the aspirant.

As I said before there is a lot of junk down there in our subconscious we in fact do need to deal with to be made whole. In order to truly progress spiritually which requires integration, you have to heal and make whole first what is not. It doesn't just go away when you have spiritual experience. It has to be brought into you, not pushed further away. The centeredness and grounding of spiritual self-knowledge gives you the correct place to deal with that, as well we all need to.

To simply ignore the bad stuff that distracts us is the very thing that messes us up in the first place! Furthermore, it allows us drag a lot of garbage with us in our egos on the dash to "rid" ourselves of it (that is impossible and undesirable to do). Our ego's can in fact "hide out" in the corners safely ignored rather than confronted and 'overcome', and we delude ourselves likewise we are spiritual. This ignoring too can be a form of spiritual bypassing.

There are multiple things that happen in our meditation practices. We first meet that 'denied' self, the parts we don't like, bury and suppress, reject and ignore, disdain and loath and are afraid of. This is a process of learning from the higher mind to reintegrate that which we have disowned, and yet through that disowning damages us psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

To tell someone that should deal with those, and those things DO need to be dealt with in all of us, that they should simply ignore that is to either be in denial about their very real presence in all of us without exception, or they assume you have dealt with all that already.

That assumption that someone should have already dealt with that stuff may be valid for the culture where Zen originating, probably dealing with these psychological and emotional kruft earlier in life and promoted through culture, so that by the time they start their Zen meditation practices they've dealt with that largely. But here in the West??? Oh my, to assume a Westerner has dealt with that and they are ready to ignore their encounters in meditation is a very wrong and bad assumption to make!

The other part of meditation is dealing with your emergent Self. It's the part of you that is 'becoming', the part that is always there, but not yet realized and integrated into our waking an conscious self. This too comes in stages. To engage with a manifestation of this emergent unconscious in the forms of deities and other subtle form manifestations, has the effect of accepting ourselves as that, and becoming that in ourselves. To quote something I read I think perfectly captures the positive aspects of this, when it is in fact NOT a distraction but a learning lesson for us:

"But this is not God as an ontological other, set apart from the cosmos, from humans, and from creation at large. Rather, it is God as an archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness. John Blofeld quotes Edward Conze on the Vajrayana Buddhist viewpoint: " 'It is the emptiness of everything which allows the identification to take place - the emptiness [which means "transcendental openness" or "nonobstruction"] which is in us coming together with the emptiness which is the deity. By visualizing that identification 'we actually do become the deity. The subject is identified with the object of faith. The worship, the worshiper, and the worshiped, those three are not separate' ". At its peak, the soul becomes one, literally one, with the deity-form, with the dhyani-buddha, with (choose whatever term one prefers) God. One dissolves into Deity, as Deity - that Deity which, from the beginning, has been one's own Self or highest Archetype."

~Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye, pg. 85​

Yes, at a certain point you need to move beyond the subtle forms into the causal and nondual, but to say these are inferior and an illusion and should be ignored, itself ignores and bypasses the important truths they hold and teach for us. In my opinion, to not learn everything there is to learn on the way to nonduality, will end up leaving not understanding nonduality in its riches of the subtle realms of our very own being. It too can become a form of spiritual bypassing.

You want to get past the rapture (acknowledge and then let it go rather than simply ignore, as it is a sign of the jhana cycle) and reach the stage of equanimity--sitting easy with the observation and knowledge you have gained without freaking out or becoming addicted to it (avoiding makyo.)

And this is fine, if you acknowledge the lessons it teaches you. You always have to self-check whether what is manifesting is a lesson, versus a distraction. If the lesson that day is to let go and move beyond, then they are they to teach you that lesson! But another day, to not let go and move beyond but rather stay and listen, is the lesson. You have to develop that sort of sensitivity that you remain true to doing the work, whatever that work is for you that day.

Once you understand addiction/attachment/clinging/makyo for what it is, you can examine the makyo and gain some insight into your further deeply ingrained addictions, then seek them out and overcome them, furthering your transformation. (Easy to say, difficult to do.)

These attachments and clingings are all forms of avoidance. They are our projects we construct we look to in order to protect us from our full and complete release into death and our liberation from "moksha" or the world of illusion, or Self-avoidance.

 

[crossfire]

I can see "ignoring" (as in not pursuing) makyo before you have established kensho. Once you have established kensho, you are equipped to accomplish the (Jungian) individuation that the makyo is signalling the need for.

 

[crowfeather]

Mysticism is the Source of knowledge. Without it, Reality is a wild guess made by crazy people.
It leaves things be, and quietly observes, neither for, nor against what it surveys.
Most of all, it leaves no trace of its passing.

Science could learn a thing or two from Mysticism.

 

[Windwalker]

I can see "ignoring" (as in not pursuing) makyo before you have established kensho. Once you have established kensho, you are equipped to accomplish the (Jungian) individuation that the makyo is signalling the need for.

Oddly, I see it the opposite way. You have to build on what came before. Once you have reached the end of illusion, then you see the larger picture. I think bypassing the earlier stages by force leaves you still uncertain of where you are. If you haven't spent time there, then you don't know what is illusion.

 

[Orbit]

Please Note: This thread is in the Mysticism DIR and is thus not open to debate.



The full post, which can be found here, is a largely sympathetic -- but non-ideological and non-religious -- look at mysticism. Rather than try to shoehorn mysticism into any ideology or religion, I focus on what little I believe I have learned about it from approximately four decades of having casually studied it in various ways, including through a great many conversations with mystics themselves. It is, however, no more than an introduction to the topic, and from one person's standpoint.

All the same, anyone interested in a largely observational (as opposed to ideological or religious) introduction to mysticism should check out, Mysticism is a Whore: Allow Me to Introduce You.

A nice read, thanks for that!