New Guy

[TravisYounger]

Dear Yogani Community,

I am an ambitious individual (or at least I’d like to think so), and I am in a stage of my life where I will be making critical long term decisions that will affect who and what I am as well as what I do for society, for the rest of my life.  I am in college and I practice Chemical Engineering, my general goal currently is to find the best way to utilize modern technology and science to bring forth new products and innovation for mankind to benefit from.  I believe the future has immense potential for our civilization and I want to be an integral contribution towards its growth and improvement.  

Short of playing video games and sexual desires, what I find most enjoyable right now is my continual improvement as an individual through higher education and social experiences.  One of the most fascinating things I discover in education is the vast similarities between very different fields of study (with concepts such as entropy, computers, communication, and business), which is one reason why I like to take courses in various subjects like mathematics, chemistry, economics, and management.   The ability to find connections between such fields, I feel, is a fun, creative, and wealth bringing exercise that can best help me find the niches in the marketplace for me to pursue, as well as finding those things that contribute to society.  

With that brief introduction, I hope you can somewhat understand my position in terms of what I see in spiritual practices.   I see two large goals for why I want to exercise spirituality.  

First: I feel creativity is a very subjective art, one that is very hard to quantify, and as such, I am taking a subjective approach towards understanding and improving it.  Having creativity brings me enjoyment in terms of contributing new and innovative ideas for society, as well as showcasing individuality and uniqueness.  

Second: A more selfish goal; I would like to believe that I am more than just my emotions and desires.  I would like to believe that I am not just programmed by nature into doing actions such as pursuing chemical engineering or writing this inquiry.  I would like to think that I am more than that, and that there is more to life than just the laws of nature.  I feel it quite depressing that individuals can spend their whole lives doing things to just attain simple pleasures from sex, luxuries, or drugs (programmed by evolution and nature).  I don’t want to pursue spirituality to “feel good”; I want to pursue spirituality to overcome my feelings, to attain a higher objective.  If consciousness is ultimately defined by feelings, than at least I want my feelings to be more than just my body and spread out to “all there is”.  

This goal is inherently paradoxical, as I want no wants, which no doubt emphasizes the complexity of the subject.  However, I feel much resonance of this goal with yours and others’ writings, which is why I want to pursue spirituality.  

After all this, the reason I am writing to you is to better understand your position on the balance between ambition and spiritual practice.  I have read your “Deep Meditation – Pathway to Personal Freedom” and about half of your large collection “Advanced Yoga Practices” and it disheartens me when I see your focus on pacing and not overdoing meditation.  You mention quite often that “enlightenment” is more of a journey that can take on the order of years and decades.  Also, that if I want to extend my mediation, I should only extend it by 5 or so minutes at a time.  Now, I am convinced you might say this because you don’t want people to interrupt their daily lifestyle with spiritual practices, which can further harm the individual’s motivation to pursue it.  However, in my position, I have very few obligations.  I have a ton of free time.  I am not in a relationship; I do not have a busy/stressful job currently.  I want to spend this time of my life attaining “enlightenment” before I get those things. Time is very important to me.  Also, when reading other material from individuals like Thomas Campbell, Joseph Murphy, and others, it seems that I could practice at such a higher level.  

Ultimately though, my current problem is more of a problem of belief.  I admit, I have not meditated for quite a while, and when I began, I only did so for a few weeks.  You may scoff at how small a fraction of time that is, but you must understand that I ultimately lost motivation because I never experienced anything fantastic, or anything new.  It was more like I was napping the time I meditated.   I didn’t feel invigorated afterwards; I didn’t accomplish anything special afterwards.  I don’t currently feel my life is missing something now that I don’t meditate.  All this leads me to question the legitimacy of practicing for only 20 minutes to an hour.  I’m not saying I think awakenings don’t happen, I just don’t want to wait 20 years to get there.  I would love to just spend my whole weekend meditating to see what I could accomplish spiritually, and I imagine the probability of experiencing something fantastic or new would increase with longer periods of practice.  Then, I would be further motivated to stick to practicing knowing that there is actual legitimacy in it.  

However, the reason why I just don’t is because I trust that you know what you are doing, and (being an engineer) I’d rather follow proper instructions.

Reflecting upon my free time, I’d rather use it towards something productive like education or spirituality rather than play video games or look at girls in bikinis online.  I’ve played video games all my life, and I have gotten to the point where I would rather master the ultimate game of all, life.  So, practicing is more of an opportunity to accomplish my broad goal of improving myself, and perhaps you can imagine my ambition to go all in.

As I collected my thoughts writing this, I re-read the Self-Pacing post, and I feel that I have the opportunity to practice much more in my current situation.

What you and others have to say may not necessarily be what I want to hear, but more so of what I need to hear, which is fine.  However, I realize that there are shortcuts to accomplishing things and I can see only benefit in recognizing and utilizing them.  Sitting around and succumbing to my emotions during my free time, I see, is simply a lost opportunity to improve myself.

Thanks for any input,

Travis

[karl]

Hi Travis,

Welcome to the forum.

Firstly we all feel that way until we begin to realise what we are attempting.

The blockages to self discovery are those that are internal to us. In other words that which is seeking is that which is preventing the discovery. The faster we go, the more the resistance mounts up. It's like tunnelling without putting in any supports, better to go more slowly and ensure that the tunnel is well supported.

AYP is Advanced Yoga Practice. It already is a comparative shortcut. Yoga was always considered a secret and only a few privileged people, under strict supervision, were allowed to practice.

Many of us have pushed the envelope and reaped the overload that goes with it. We learned that it's best to follow the "less is more" philosophy. It doesn't matter if you have lots of free time, or that you don't have pressures. It's good to have the Bhakti, or desire and that will keep things focussed. Take it as a long marathon and not a sprint, pace yourself and things will flow.

As you go, things change, the perception subtly alters. It's not a huge change but it can be very unsettling. It takes time for those changes to settle in.

[mr_anderson]

Hi Travis

Welcome to the forum! Karl's advice seems accurate to me.

You could end up with serious problems over-doing it with a system like AYP. Kundalini (which AYP will help to activate) actually impacts your neurobiology, causing physical changes in your body.

Premature kundalini awakening / kundalini overload can result in migraines, psychosis, and some pretty serious physical problems in the body. In its worst cases, it could even some real damage to your nervous system. Google 'kundalini overload' for some cautionary tales.

Now, these sort of problems are extremely rare, and nothing for you to worry about if you are cautious and follow a carefully paced routine, and a system of high quality guidance like AYP.

Like Karl said, AYP is already a short-cut. But it's also a journey which yields progressive, incremental benefits as you continue with your twice daily practice, with unwavering commitment to consistency and regularity instead of sporadic intense efforts.

These benefits can include:

-Finding yourself ecstatically blissful on an almost daily basis, for no reason at all
-Great increases in your levels of physical and mental energy
-Finding yourself living in an increasingly harmonious way with the world
-Increases in your inner peace and feeling like you are moving through an ocean of silence

None of this stuff will likely come from trying to force yourself to meditate for 48 hours or some kind of intense one off effort. In my experience (I've been there and tried!), that's more likely to just give you a bad headache and put you in a really unpleasant mood.

Give yourself a period of time to try the Deep Meditation and Spinal Breathing practices, in the manner prescribed by AYP teachings, on a twice daily basis. 6 months would be an absolute minimum trial period to really experience full fledged results, but ideally one year.

It can't hurt to also look into some "direct path" teachings like Ramana Maharshi - I recommend purchasing and digesting "seven steps to awakening" (find on amazon) which is probably the best collection of quotes from Maharshi, Nisargdatta Maharaj and various other Non-dual teachers I've encountered. Eckhart Tolle is a good one. These teachers encourage you to awaken immediately, and recognize your true nature NOW. But non-dual teachings such as this, that encourage you to awaken now, to cast off your illusory self and recognize your true nature in a single instant, can be merely frustrating if you haven't had your mind, body and emotional center effectively prepared for awakening by an efficient system of regular practice.

Kenneth Folk is also an excellent teacher who integrates both the direct and progressive path teachings.

Good luck, and keep us posted on your progress.