kieranperez

Tbh I doubt there would be much difference when it comes to who facilitates. If you’re interested in working with Cheng Hsin you could always just do other enlightenment intensives as that’s basically the format they do if they aren’t doing their more unique workshops like ENB or TEL or something like that.

Highly recommend you go to a Cheng Hsin retreat over Spira’s. Peter doesn’t really facilitate workshops anymore. He only really facilitates apprentices at this point but he drops down every day if you do a workshop like ENB, IEW, or a CI. Brendan is a great facilitator. The whole retreat is concentrated on you having a breakthrough and does a great job not deviating from that. At the end of the day though, the concentration to stay focused and on target is on you even if you go to a retreat.

@Raze Read what I said again. I don’t call it a cult because I don’t like it. Bentinho Massaro is a worshipped personality in his community and is doing the classic cult tactic of deluding his followers that he and his movement are going to bring about new world change through enlightenment (garbage). He also peddles bullshit ideologies that his followers gobble up like how movie companies are secretly withholding secret technology or some sort of bullshit along that kind of flavor. Again, let me be very clear again, I don’t doubt he’s had an enlightenment experience. As far as I can tell he has but that doesn’t mean he’s peddling genuine stuff to people. As far as I’ve seen, as I’ve already seen, he transmits a certain state that people get hooked to that usually put them into a rather suggestible state. This is true of any teacher that puts out things like shaktipat or even use things like psychedelics. The difference is whether or not it’s abused and as far as I can tell people are being led astray, getting sucked into a community, and believing in horse shit. Real teachers don’t do that. Ralston used to put out the same state up until the early 90s when he saw it was just a distraction where people would just get hooked to him and he stopped putting that out for people and told people to scram if the weren’t committed to getting what’s true which has nothing to do with states. Cults by and large try to get people to stick around. Real communities or organizations empower you not to rely or need them. And I mean FOR REAL. Not lip service. FOR REAL. The profit and money this guy is making off this stuff as a business should raise a red flag. There’s a reason Jesus got angry and flipped over the money table in the temples because the temple isn’t the place to charge for that which is priceless.

Dude is running a cult. Funny how when he was put on the spot for his claim of siddhis to change the weather straight up nothing happened. I don't really have any doubt that he seems to have had an enlightenment experience. That said, he's running a cult and a greedy one at that that's making him rich off of it. As far as I can tell the people who follow him get hooked by a transmission of a certain state of his that he puts out for people. This is understandable but the best teachers don't pull that stuff because the recognize the danger of it.

how did you find it?

No. It's completely natural. It's called the majority of human history. The idea that your espousing that doing stuff that doesn't "bring you joy" (which presumes external things or activities you engage in are the source of joy in your own experience) is one that wasn't truly born until the beginning of the postmodern emergence in the 20th century.

Bump

You're going to be working with Soryu! I wish you the best with your endeavor as this stuff isn't always exactly the easiest decision to truly make, even when we know deep down that this call is what our hearts have been shouting and starving for. So I bow to your courage. I myself have been struggling on the fence with my decision to join a more formal monastery for some time. I think it's great that you found a container where your work is compatible enough with the schedule and demands of Monastic Academy. I'm going into real estate and I think there are just some jobs you simply can't work remote from in order to maintain your income so I congratulate you in things working out. Sorry for sure seems to be the real deal and I don't have any doubt that you'll experience some great training there. Stay with it and I have no doubt you'll get far. All the best to you, friend! ??

As do all ideas, thinking, and everything else that comes with an experience of self. The ego is also responsible for saving a puppy that’s about to get run over by a truck. That is not the point being made.

This post is honestly really spot. To tell you the truth, I’ve struggled with that myself as the kind of person this person talks about in her post probably does apply to me in some way. I would certainly say it 100% did a few years ago but I think I’m out of a lot of it now and I see a lot of what she talks about all the time and I can sympathize with that sort of frustration with bullshit because I see it all over the place, particularly on sites like this one where “people” are usually lumped into one big idea and are referred to as just deluded sheep or chimps and so forth and that “people are just wasting their lives”. When in fact many of those so called deluded a people are the ones that might not be the most educated but might be single parents holding down the fort for a house of 3 kids or working at a hospital or whatever. This person really did hit the nail on the head though when it came to the comment on doing a psychedelics and now thinking they know how the world works and using all these bullshit words almost as a form of jerking off. All because there’s anger in a communication doesn’t make it wrong. Jesus expressed a lot of anger when he flipped over the money tables in the temple. Same goes for judgement. You’re judging things all the time in the very way you perceive things. If you pull up on the block in East Los Angeles and you see 7 dudes dressed in all red that look at you with a fierce death glare, you're going to judge and you’d be a fool to rationalize otherwise. You’re judging and assessing this persons post, otherwise you’d have no disposition. Practice making good quality judgements. Which ironically is what this post seems to be an exercise in. A partial view that is calling out blatant spiritual bullshit by people that are ignorant of the privilege they inhabit while they parade some pseudo spiritual superiority or something because they think they’re onto something almost nobody else is on to. To some extent I think the behavior is kind of understandable and I think it does take some arrogance coming into this path because fundamentally it isn’t all that common and does tend to appear to grind against the grain when it comes to what most people seem to be up to. That said, there are also gross excesses that people, myself included, be really ignorant to because they don’t realize the kind of privilege they sit on.

@Leo Gura still thinking of moving there?

@Shambhu do you get to work with your teacher in person? How do you receive Shaktipat? Do you and your teacher live in the US?

So far as there is a process then purification literally is the path. None of these things are absolute or set in stone. No, you don’t need to because what’s already true is what’s already true. And yet there is also a process. It’s true, chakras and all this stuff have nothing to do with the absolute. In yet purification of the body/mind also helps. It helps when most of your focus isn’t lost in thoughts about pussy or your favorite tv show. And Peter is right. Plenty of teachers that even facilitate a spiritual process would agree on this point. Peter actually does facilitate certain processes. What do you all this emphasis is on honesty and experiencing all these other aspects of self, mind, principles, and so forth is? He just doesn’t facilitate people in the form of a belief system but helps people actually experience this stuff. @Shambhu nice to see some actual lineage on the forum finally. Careful though, there’s been a lot of corruption in that one like people Muktananda and Gurumayi

@Shambhu who is your guru?

First off big guy, it was a joke. So stay in your lane. Second off, I don't know what Leo knows or doesn't know and neither do you. So let's make that clear. I've yet to see this stuff really being talked about in that much depth that I've shared here as well as actual resources when it comes to working with attachment disturbances. I never said I'm the first to talk about it. I was intending to share resources and an understanding that, from my POV based on what I've seen and mores haven't seen, was lacking in the forum that I wanted to highlight and share as this is a really common thing that can cause a lot of deep issues for people in life as well as their contemplative endeavors.

@Leo Gura come on, no credit for sharing this on your forum before you posted on the blog? lol

@Leo Gura you’d dig this There is no better pursuit in life than the pursuit of some juicy ass bush pigs

Shaving has been around for at least 100,000 years.

Interesting thing to me is seeing people like that where distinctions like wisdom, meaning, and all this other stuff doesn’t even exist. Those were all made invented structures of mind that are not inherent at all and were created after the fact. In the same way enlightenment is actually a developmental realization that only occurs from a first person perspective onwards as there was no need nor possibility of such realization.

Spiral Dynamics Values Stage Purple As are plenty of others at higher stages. Infants are examples of beige. Yeah, hallelujah, no belief system ? they don’t need one. A person at Orange doesn’t need to be obsessed with money and success or be an atheist or whatever to be at Orange. We also tend to exaggerate what actual “animistic” interpretations really are in practice. For example, say you go down to an Amazon tribe and one tribesman approaches you seeing you smoke a cigarette and then perceives that as you literally breathing fire and then tells his whole tribe in his much more primitive form of communication and points at you screaming how you can breathe fire. Meanwhile you’re standing there bewildered like “uhhhhh… what?…”That’s an example of animistic interpretations.

No. You might as well ask whether or not being a better surgeon makes one better at being able to socialize with people. These are distinctly different processes that do different things. Yes, you'll find plenty of people and teachers for that matter that lump a bunch of different practices that do very different things on one retreat where no one has any understanding that all these different things are distinctly different processes. In the same way you can go for a "workout" but a session of 3-4 sets of low rep bicep curls till failure doesn't at all develop the same thing that you would be targeting if you were to go to a track and run 10x400 meters intervals at mile race pace with 90 seconds rest. You can include a bunch of different things but that doesn't mean you're doing or developing the same things. Trauma release and psychotherapy is not oriented towards waking up. Can it help? Yeah, you work on your hindrances. That's spiritual purification right there (provided you're following an orientation for what Wilber would outline as "Showing Up" which is about demonstrating in practice one's own purification through honest speech and so forth - the classic exoteric stuff that comes with religion). Don't expect an enlightened teacher to help you deal with shadows unless they are specifically trained for that. I wouldn't go to a yogi to teach me how to bench press or help me train for a 100 mile race. Don't expect a psychoanalyst to help you awaken. They don't need to. It's not a psychotherapists job to help you awaken. Ultimately that's on you. Teachers, psychedelics, or whatever else you can think of will not awaken you. Can they help with your process towards awakening? Yeah of course. It helps to have a psychotherapist you actually resonate with that is understanding and what not but they don't need to be aware of that stuff. This is not what CBT is. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a very specific form of therapy. I've been in it. I'm not a fan but if it actually works for someone, go right ahead. I don't really know of a single form of talk therapy where patients/clients to delve into their past via their stories and biographical narratives. Psychoanalysis is traditionally 3-5 times per week. Going into matters regarding insurance doesn't really have to do with the methods of practice as that's based on the healthcare system as a whole. Our entire healthcare system in the United States is downright criminal. A patient's ability to get more sessions regardless of what the form of therapy often just comes down to how much the patient is willing to spend out of pocket which is usually pretty pricey. Psychoanalysis is not popular in the US and is usually very expensive as it's pretty much never covered by insurance but there are inexpensive routes despite paying out of pocket. I don't know what you mean specifically when you say "heal them". That's just a pretty vague statement. Vague abstractions aren't useful in this kind of dialogue. This just reflects you don't know what psychoanalysis is. CBT attacks surface level behavioral issues and doesn't appreciate and lacks the understanding of the deeper psychic structures of mind. You're attacking things from a conscious level. Surface level stuff. You say these techniques "simply need to applied for long" not understanding that the whole issue has to do with motivation because patients actually don't want to change deep down even if they say they do. It's not addressing the unconscious and the deeper inner conflicts that manifest in daily life as unconscious slip ups. You know, those things that just seem to happen again and again and again and again and you can keep trying to apply the same surface level strategies that fail again and again and again and again and again no matter how hard you seem to try. There's a lack of appreciation of the deeper issues because the orientation is not about understanding but just about changing mechanical minutia. The kind of people that I see have "success" (people have different vantages points of what they might consider success, self understanding, and so forth) with CBT are usually the people that by and large have had a pretty stable upbringing and deal with pretty minor neuroses. I see that form of therapy really failing because there is so much depth that it lacks that is so deeply need in human culture in the world today that is missed because people want to deal with the quicker surface level issues rather than take the time to really dive deep. The integral relationship between CBT paradigms and the failing mental health care systems inform me of just how much this stuff truly is missing the mark because people just want faster changes. Sorry, I'm not convinced.

You're not really saying anything here. Be more specific and clear as to what you experienced, what happened, and so forth as to what lead you to come to this belief/conclusion. We're going to need so many things in place in our culture that just flat out does not exist for that to really have it's place. Not to mention a 2nd tier anthropological understanding when it comes to our entire healthcare system which I imagine is a minimum 100 years away (assuming we survive as a species). Annnnnd not to mention an ideal scenario where we've gone beyond this materialistic understanding of mind and also have a better understanding of what psychedelics do and don't do (I'm not going to raise my usual critiques with this forum when it comes to what people here believe they do, e.g. "raise your consciousness"). As far as meditation goes, yeah it can be healing in some sense but the authentic orientation of contemplative practice is not about healing you. It's about waking up. Yeah, along the way that stuff might get sorted out but often times it doesn't. There's reason Waking Up, Growing Up, and Cleaning up are outlined as different processes because they are. Don't assume that all because you've had (an actual) enlightenment experience or mystical-whatever that that means you're anymore morally developed or more cognitively developed. Yeah, there might be some interaction between those different lines of development but that doesn't mean it's inherently the case. Interesting. I notice you're from Germany and I would've thought psychoanalysis would've been bigger there. Interesting. I mean fuck, all of this started in Germany with Freud. To be anal for a second, psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy aren't the same. Psychodynamic therapy you might say is psychoanalysis's little cousin. It's a lighter touch. Which I'm not saying that's better or worse. The theoretical framework is basically the same as psychodynamic therapy is something that came out of psychoanalysis many decades down the road. CBT suits the modern paradigm of scientific materialism where everything is oriented this mechanical like view of behaviors and dealing with this sort micromanagement sort of shit. The problem with all of this is that it neglects the deeper origins of all these conflicts and why the patient/client doesn't want to do any of the things they're failing to do because it's happening at a deeply unconscious level. CBT may work for some people but the majority of people I see doing it it's just dressing over the actual problems and isn't really dealing with any of the deeper rooted shit. It's just coping tools on top of coping tools on top of coping tools and people are kinda getting driven nuts with it all. Then again, if you're someone with say schizophrenia, I imagine it can be pretty useful to have a therapy that doesn't need to keep jabbing at those very powerfully disturbing aspects of one's experience and mind and can have something that helps them establish some stability and control over their lives. Yeah, I'd say much of that by and large is true. Much of my personal issues for example are preverbal traumas which is why I'm now actually hunting for body based trauma therapies like Somatic Experiencing to release those deeper contractions and disturbances because stories and talking can actually become a form of actually re-traumatizing myself. Then again, psychoanalysis has extensive history with alleviating preverbal stuff too. Go read a book called "Hysteria" and you'll read some crazy cases. You can read cases of people getting out of things like paralysis and so forth. It can be deep as fuck. I've certainly had my case of "hysterical releases" and boy was I shocked.

@Irina Wolf what kind of therapy have you done? I’ve had a lot of experience with helping old exes with their self harm issues.

In all seriousness, this is a really great thread. Therapy is not about deconstructing the self. This is just flat out not true. In practice things like psychoanalysis can go profoundly deep and this can be answered well enough if you read about Freud and his work with patients alone. Things like emotional release and even primal release therapy no doubt can be useful but only to a point and in practice people are often dependent on these techniques. That said, things like primal therapy, emotional release therapy, and so forth are doing different things and have different goals than say something like analysis (even though analysis could get you there). Those forms of therapy are aiming and trauma which have to do with the actual nervous system and freeing certain responses and so forth. Things like analysis could actually get you there and I speak from experience. Then again, our narratives can also be a habitual form by which we actually continually we actually re-traumatize ourselves. There is no hard and fast rule and the truth is that this varies from person to person. It's important to make 3 different distinctions between what we might call Shadow vs. Trauma vs. Attachment issues. They practices or forms of therapy may interact with any of the other different issues but they're not all the same. Dealing with shadow stuff may help with the trauma but don't confuse or conflate those two with being the same because they aren't. It's like confusing spiritual development and deepening one's insight and confusing that for moral development. This is not the same thing at all even though it might interact at time. As far addressing OP... I have a bit of a bias towards psychoanalysis and doing deeper trauma work like say through something like somatic experiencing as that's the only thing that's ever actually worked for me in practice and I've been through the ringer since I was like 12. I've been through intense CBT and DBT and none of it at all worked for me. That said, I can also acknowledge I have a lot of trauma and other stuff going on and can imagine something like CBT can work great for people who might not have a lot of trauma, attachment issues, and deeper stuff going on and can really capitalize on some potentially more minor things. Hell, I can even imagine it's great for people who may struggle with deeper neuroses and disorders that just need some sort of thing to help them get some sense of control and stability in their life. That said, things like psychoanalysis is so incredibly under appreciated here in the US and it really is a pity because it has so much potential. I don't agree that psychoanalysts aren't interested at all when it comes to the outcomes of psychedelics assisted therapy. The problem that they present is manifold. First off, there is no predicability with psychedelics (though that holds true for practices like analysis so I think that might be an element that might be able to integrated quite well into the practice). You also have to deal with the duration of trips which I imagine will make these trips and forms of therapy less accessible because you will have a limited number of therapists assisting with trips that can take anywhere between 4-12 hours. There are only so many therapists and they can only help you for so long. Not to mention the extent of help they can reasonably offer a person. What is created that is fair and reasonable to assist with integration? These sorts of issues bleed into a larger contextual issue which is not having this stuff integrated, understood, and respected by the culture at large. As far as integrating psychedelics with therapy, that's another hornets nest. It's difficult because you have to address the problem of transference. There's a reason a therapist's office is organized in a particular way and that's to control the many of ways of which a client may perceive about the room that effects the quality of their session. This may sound small but it is a big deal. You have to understand, appreciate, and most importantly (especially for people on this forum) notice that your mind interprets everything you think you experience on psychedelics. The conceptual and philosophical indoctrination you received matters when it comes to these things as well as therapy at large. When you've read all this stuff about spirituality or whatever it may be for that matter and then you take a psychedelic, your mind is very likely to go off an interpret all that you experienced and fill in the blanks for everything and make a bunch of nonsense. This happens all the time and I see it on here all the time. All this is transference and there would need to be an effective way to create a container that deals with these issues. This gentlemen whose an experienced psychonaut and a Lacanian analyst goes into this quite well. To understand the deeper differences between Shadows vs. Traumas vs. Attachment Issues check out