“Authentic spirituality is revolutionary. It does not legitimate the world, it breaks the world; it does not console the world, it shatters it. And it does not render the self content, it renders it undone.” – Ken Wilber
What’s the point of “spirituality”, anyway?
Why do we meditate, contemplate, and dig within ourselves to find out what’s really there?
Why not pack it in, write it off, and get back to living a “normal” life?
That’s a very good question, and it’s worth asking.
So today, I’m going to give you my answer — starting with an analogy:
Imagine you’ve never heard of basketball before, and you find yourself on a court for the first time.
An unfamiliar feeling comes over you.
You look around:
Shiny hardwood squeaks under your feet.
Strange red rings with weird white netting hang high above the floor.
Then there’s that crazy-looking orange ball with all those black lines (what the heck is THAT thing?)
It’s all so… Odd.
And, exciting.
So you begin to ask the question:
What do I do, here?
Are there rules?
What game are we playing, anyway?
Nobody seems to have the answers, so you start doing whatever comes to mind:
Slamming the ball against the hardwood and watching it rocket into the air.
Throwing it as far as you can from one end to the other.
Jumping up to yank on that weird white mesh and see if you can pull it off those red circle ring things.
And when that gets boring, you close your eyes and run wildly around the court until you collapse in exhaustion.
Whew.
That was fun.
Felt a bit pointless, yes, but a good time while it lasted.
Now, what to do next?
Can anyone, anywhere, tell me what in the world I’m supposed to do here?
Alright, back to reality.
That sounded pretty ridiculous, didn’t it?
I mean, obviously you’re supposed to put the ball through the hoop.
But nobody told us the basics, like…
Where am I?
What game are we playing?
And, how do I know if I’ve won (or even if I’m winning)?
…So we ran around aimlessly until we ran out of ideas and got bored.
Sound familiar now?
That’s life without spirituality.
Spirituality is the path of answering the fundamental questions of life, like:
Who, what, where, and why am I?
And, while we’re at it…
What’s the point of it all, anyway?
Until we’ve answered those fundamental questions, our lives aren’t much different from the basketball newbie who doesn’t know what game he’s playing.
Which brings us to the big question:
Do you know what game you’re playing?
It all starts when you ask that question, and instead of looking in books and adopting the ideas of others…
…You look inside, and find the answers within yourself.
And, as a teacher told me many years ago:
The answer is not what you think it is.
What he didn’t tell me is that it’s much, much greater than I’d ever imagined.
So that’s the point of spirituality 🙂
I won’t give you the answers here (that would defeat the entire point), but I hope I’ve given you some clarity.
Let me know if you’d like to go deeper.
– T
P.S. Want a quick teaser of what’s to come?
On the first day of our retreat this year, I laid out an advanced map of the entire spiritual path — including:
– The precise stages of spiritual development every human being progresses through.
– Fundamental practices that speed up progress through each stage.
– How to know what level others are at — and, exactly how to help them progress through that level to the next.
And a heck of a lot more.
I should say, I didn’t create this map.
It’s a little-known model of human development that was created by a team of developmental psychologists over 60 years ago.
(it’s even being used in the middle east to help resolve conflict between countries right now)
When I finally understood it, I felt like gaining x-ray vision into myself:
I always knew exactly what to do to progress to the next level.
I’m not sure I’ve ever come across a more powerful tool for internal development (and, for life in general).
The full retreat session was ~7-8 hours long, and will be included in the recordings when they drop in a few weeks.
So if you’re interested, hit reply to let us know.
End of teaser 🙂
