Hi Xeno - thanks for your comments. I definitely agree on milestones being just general indicators and not to be taken literally. Thanks for sharing your experiences regarding the stage where one realizes the futility of the various techniques, I had similar experiences as well. I like this quote as well - "Finding out that the nearer and farther shores were an illusion is a new beginning. Still gotta live and do stuff."
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > > With regards to William Parkinson, Ravi Yogi, and Lawson > > > I do not think it has ever been determined that the sign posts or > benchmarks that meditative traditions have are clearly experienced by > everyone, or that there might be partial crossovers that are out of the > sequence. Some people clearly never seem to experience them, others do. > <snip>> > This other, later witnessing was not like that at all, it never felt > defined, it was not like a concrete experience where I could say this or > that about it. It was a bummer. I lost interest in spiritual > descriptions and stopped reading about them. I switched to reading > novels. I had very negative thoughts about 'my path' of progress for a > long time - decades. Eventually everything seemed to get more relaxed > and I just started to live life without thinking about spiritual > progress. > <snip> > One day I went outside for some air and suddenly without warning, the > farther shore and the nearer shore, as Lawson put it, were one and the > same, and it had always been that way, no boat required as there was no > river to traverse. There is no way to describe what this it like. Then > things became completely ordinary. > <snip> > > Finding out that the nearer and farther shores were an illusion is a new > beginning. Still gotta live and do stuff. >
