Resistance to what is is deeply ingrained. For many it’s not even seen.

Isn’t that the truth…sometimes I think this resistance has become an action that needs no stimulus for them. Like a strange kind of ‘natural’ activity.

What will he do first? See what the foods like

He would not, for whatever reason, explore the reality of his situation. All he was interested in was finding what he thought was better. I could not support him in that endeavor.

Besides, what would I say to him?

As far as your question on what to do:

Start with what you have, and not with what you think is better.

The hope is to eliminate any movement away from what you are. I cannot tell you HOW to do this, but you will find out through the doing.

It might be interesting for you to use your ‘desert island’ self. I mentioned this to Eric a few posts ago:

Imagine you crash landed on a deserted island. You have enough food to live fully and healthily. You decide to spend your time coming to this ‘end.’ What will you do?

There is only Eric on the island, and he cannot depend on anyone to help in his spiritual search. What will he do first?

If you only have you to work with, what would you do?

Some suggest the key is the further refinement of the nervous system so it can support the experience. Thus, more meditation, etc. But it’s a lot to do with timing. When it best suits the whole.

I also found that the life experiences between that and when it ’stuck’ contributed greatly to what followed, but in completely unobvious ways. We tend to think of life and spiritual practice as separate things but all of life is part of that process.

One can know how but the trick is that that requires an overview. In other words, to see the process we have to be able to step back from it. As we are in the process, we can’t. Thus we see the process in retrospect. But then, there is a further process we are not seeing. And even if we do have a good idea of it, it is still a surprise. Surprise is actually a good sign it’s real (laughs)

Yes, the danger is being caught by concepts we cannot understand until it is our experience. If we can hold them loosely, as ideas, they can be useful. But this is not the tendency of the mind. It wants to make concepts it can turn into beliefs to program itself.

Knowing you don’t have answers is considered by many to be the right place to be. Then you can be with what is.

Undescribable? Not really, but how can one communicate what has not been experienced? There’s the role of the teacher. When they can speak from silence, they can communicate what words fail to. Words are used but what is communicated is being. If the student can listen from silence.

Advice? Do what you love, what makes you happy. Follow your bliss. If a spiritual practice is part of that, it will probably make your journey easier. My own practice faltered for a short bit but the fundamentals have lasted throughout. Although that wasn’t always clear. Broadly, I’ve noticed those with a spiritual practice tend to move ahead more smoothly. We may move fast or slow, but how smooth a path do we take?

Some suggest the differences in apparent process are due to what we bring into this life – karmas and degree of spiritual development. This is true on it’s own level, but more deeply, I’ve found that it’s about Self wishing to experience itself fully and thus experience all possible variations. Thus we have every possible path.

Even more deeply, there is no time so everything has already happened. We are simply experiencing the details of it so the perception of Self of itself becomes more refined.

This points to how truth is relative to state of consciousness. States change, and thus truth changes. While you can go deeply into the mechanics of it and find the truth of it, you will find that truth will fall away to an even deeper one. (laughs)

It’s also worth noting that as there is no me, everything that happens is about we, about the whole. If you look at it from that context, things can make a little more sense.

Anyway. Both your points of view are very interesting. You’ll are trying to describe the process of the Undescrible . Does the path to Oneness , need to be described . It just happens. I doubt anyone knows ‘how’. Aren’t we trying to quantify the path, which isn’t possible ?
I most certainly don’t have any answers but curiousity is a good thing. As long as one doens’t get caught up in definations no?

But both of you’ll, Takuin and Davidya.You” ll share your experiences with us. What would you advise the novice. If you had to say , ‘do this?’ what would you’ll say. Just curious

Uzma