Interesting topic.
I had huge bhakti for my chosen ideal, which in my case, was perhaps somewhat similar to Anthem's.
I imagined the following:
-A state of total 'inner freedom': I.e. no longer experiencing any sort of 'negative' internal state - anxiety, fear, unhappiness, anger, in response to external stimuli or otherwise. Therefore residing in a constant state of inner peace, suffused with joy. Therefore having a sort of Eckhart Tolle-ian detachment from it all.
-Complete destruction/integration of the shadow-self, resulting in becoming a being of perfect integrity and moral perfection: Basically I would no longer ever do anything selfish or say even the tiniest thing that might be cause even the slightest disharmony in the world. I’d no longer experience lust, all sexual union would be a kind of perfectly clean, spiritual, harmonious, experience that was fairly androgynous. All other aspects of moral perfection, giving me a kind of completely stainless conscience all the time.
Then I had a sort of ‘awakening’ experience last year, and I entered my ideal to a certain extent, I was in a state of constantly high levels of spiritual bliss, and ‘identification with form’, so to speak, seemed to break down, so all the cares of the individual human being seemed somewhat irrelevant. The Josh person seemed just to be a scripted character, less than a grain of sand in the vast ocean of manifest reality.
The paradox being, the human being was experiencing freedom from being human. Or at least something along those lines.
When the experience passed (it lasted the best part of a year), all desire for the aforementioned spiritual ideals was gone. I don’t really experience any bhakti anymore. I seem to have been re-formatted in a sense: I no longer have any neurosis or emotional instability, depression, mood swings and so on (which I used to get a fair bit). All of that unpleasant stuff has completely gone, since about March last year when the experience first started.
I’m just pretty much a normal, emotionally balanced guy. I actually got way less sensitive, I seem to be a lot tougher than I was before, which is a surprise.
I still quite frequently experience states of inner freedom and joy, but I don’t seek them anymore, as a way of escaping problems. I don’t meditate as often, although I naturally tend to find myself in states of mindful awareness. I no longer have any interest in seeking spiritual ‘highs’. I don’t really have any interest in becoming a morally perfect being anymore.
The final realization that I got was it’s quite possible that everything is just perfect, exactly as it is supposed to be, right now, forever and always, you don’t need to change anything, the world doesn’t require you to go on a grand spiritual mission or intervene and make everything perfect, the nature of duality is that there’s always going to be good and evil, shadow and light, suffering and joy, and sentient beings in the realm of duality are always going to be made up of both… and all of that is just fine. Just enjoy yourself as much as possible, don't take it too seriously, try to help others and be honest and decent if you can, but don’t sweat it too much – their own lives are their own responsibilities, follow your intuition… and you’ll be fine.
And that’s what I’m doing now. Pretty much contented with being a regular person with no particularly elevated spiritual goals.
