A Disturbing Truth About Spiritual Teachings

[AtmanIsBrahman]

This post is an uncomfortable truth bomb. But here goes—-

There’s a disturbing truth about spiritual teachings: the teaching always has to attract people to it somehow in order to survive. And this attraction will always be corrupt.

Every spiritual teacher has to offer “goodies” to people in order to continue its survival. They have to do this because almost no one cares about truth, so they have to be brought into the spiritual practice by some corrupt motive. The only way they could not have to do this is if people in general cared about truth, but that’s too much of a burden for people to take on (at least at our current level of development as a species).

For example, the classic is stopping suffering. This is the juiciest goodie of all that gets the ego salivating.

Why does Buddhism sell the ending of suffering? Because it gets followers. You’re not going to get followers speaking pure truth— It will either be demonized or no one will care. 

Now let’s look at some real-world case studies. Peter Ralston is a great spiritual teacher who actually cares about truth, but notice… what does he sell? Workshops, books, online courses. And what are these about? Absolute truth? No— they’re mostly about improving your life, ending suffering, experiencing authentically, and that kind of stuff. I’m not saying it’s bad, but that’s not pure truth. No one is teaching pure truth. And this is nothing against Peter Ralston (obviously he does care about truth), it’s just how it goes. 

Thinking about the implications of this… of course it applies to actualized.org. What does actualized.org sell? Yes, there is the metaphysical and spiritual stuff, but a lot of the content is Improving your life (personal development), improving your career, getting girls, etc. Also, notice that Leo’s most viewed content is the low-consciousness stuff related to personal development. It has nothing to do with truth. Creating the foundation of followers from the self-improvement stuff—luring in mouse with the cheese— allowed Leo to create actual truthful content. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be possible because no one would watch it and survival wouldn’t be possible.

So, this raises the question: what is the most truthful teaching? It’s when you just say the truth to the best of your ability without any disclaimers, offering of goodies, conceptual complication, or anything like that. Leo’s solipsism video is a great example of such a teaching— but it got taken down. Why? Because it has no conceptual complication, there are no goodies (in fact it’s likely to negatively affect your life). There are disclaimers, but strictly speaking a purely truthful teaching wouldn’t include them. Basically, the teaching is bad PR.

The conclusion: a pure teaching is possible but it does nothing for you and is dangerous to society.

@Leo Gura@UnbornTao@Davino@Natasha Tori Maru

 

[aurum]

7 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Now let’s look at some real-world case studies. Peter Ralston is a great spiritual teacher who actually cares about truth, but notice… what does he sell? Workshops, books, online courses. And what are these about? Absolute truth? No— they’re mostly about improving your life, ending suffering, experiencing authentically, and that kind of stuff. I’m not saying it’s bad, but that’s not pure truth. No one is teaching pure truth.

But what would it even mean to sell "pure truth" anyway?

Truth must include relative survival advice.

[Leo Gura]

Of course every spiritual teacher has to worry about survival just to be able to teach.

However, when I make practical survival videos it's also because I enjoy them and I like helping people.

There is more to this work than only truth-seeking, it is also about mastering life and living well. This does not diminish my ability to teach Truth. Mastering survival is a necessary ramp to hardcore transcendence. So the one naturally leads into the other. We are climbing Maslow's hierarchy to self-transcendence.

Yes, if all you did was teach pure truth, your audience would be tiny.

Edited 3 hours ago by Leo Gura

[UnbornTao]

Yes, we care about the truth about as much as fish care about land. Fantasy is what sells, even here. And there can be power and benefit to this, this is precisely the point. It's just not true, as you alluded to.

The work that Ralston does is different from what goes around here, to be clear. As for authenticity, we could imagine that Ramana's silent periods are a fitting example of what you mean by "pure." Maybe. Of course, you're right that such a thing (whatever it is) can't be sold.

Still, asking what truth is is itself an abstraction and can easily lead to mischief. We often unconsciously use it as an ideal - "the Truth," loaded with all our stuff, hopes, and preconceived ideas. Don't just take people's word at face value when they claim to be after the truth and when they pride themselves on that, like we all do here. It's more of a self-image and social thing than a reality. The reality of it is, well, real. I think seeing this pursuit as a direction rather than a fixed thing is more helpful.

What is simply true, here and now, in your experience (as a real anchor and "starting" point)? What is pain? What is belief? What is the need for acknowledgment? Why do my attempts at changing myself fail? Why does it seem like my internal state is created by external events? What is an excuse? What is pretension? How come I lie to myself all the time without knowing it, despite my identity as a "truth seeker"? What is telling the truth?

Edited 7 minutes ago by UnbornTao

[Ramasta9]

The point is to be truly yourself, and that in-itself is the greatest spiritual teacher without needing to be a spiritual teacher  

Want the Truth? Be Truth-Full ! Be Honest, Be RAW, Be REAL, and if you can, most importantly, Be Loving, Do for Love, Live for Love.

And those who are truly abundant know how to navigate reality by the very ~wave of abundance~ that carries them, so they thrive !

Do you remember who you were before the world told you who you were and taught you how to be?

Sit 5 - 10 minutes a day and contemplate this. All one has to do is remember who they truly are.

Then you'll find your way, regardless of with path you take, it will be illuminated.

 

 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Hmmmm.

Pure truth could be recognised as unity. Infinity. We are all It.

Recognising self in other - teaching truth could simply be the attempt at integration of truth itself. Self helping self. Self dissolving all that stands between subject/object. To raise anothers consciousness is to raise our own.

But really, survival is a powerful force.

It is very important to recognise awakening to truth does not exclude us from incentive structures - and genetics.

This might help explain the corruption in spiritual teachers. And motivation. 

[Mellowmarsh]

The truth is not in what you know or do not know. It is in the silence that remains when all knowing ends.

But don’t take my word for this. It’s arrogant to believe you can tell another what to think, or how to be, or what to believe, as if truth is something to be achieved external to your own conscious awareness.

[AtmanIsBrahman]

21 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is more to this work than only truth-seeking, it is also about mastering life and living well. This does not diminish my ability to teach Truth

I think it depends on what is meant by “this work.” At the end of the day it has to all be truth-seeking, otherwise it’s corrupt in some way.

Interestingly though, I find that the more truthful you are, the more it helps your life improve in general. I’m not sure why it works that way, but it seems to from what I can tell.
But if the goal is self-improvement from the start, you don’t get truth and you don’t get real self-improvement.
 

 

[AtmanIsBrahman]

8 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

This might help explain the corruption in spiritual teachers

I’m not saying that spiritual teachers are corrupt (though they can be), it’s more that society is corrupt in general. So even the least corrupt spiritual teachers have to accommodate the corruption of the masses

[Natasha Tori Maru]

3 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

I’m not saying that spiritual teachers are corrupt (though they can be), it’s more that society is corrupt in general. So even the least corrupt spiritual teachers have to accommodate the corruption of the masses

🎯 

I might add we are all corrupt on different levels, across different domains. 

Some are more aware of it. I would generalise and claim truth seekers might be less so. But I have been bloody surprised before! 

[bazera]

@AtmanIsBrahman How do you imagine the most trufthul teaching to be? How would it differ from Leo's or Peter's work?

Is the medium of "teaching" even applicable to the kind of truthfulness you're referring to?

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@AtmanIsBrahman what do you consider the most truthful teaching? 

Your average person will only care about truth insofar as it can be utilised in some way.

Edited 35 minutes ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Cred]

This idea that every human structure is necessarily corrupt is a false idea spread by the controlled left in order to legitimize capitalism.

This logic works something like this: if every right wing organization is corrupt, and any liberal organization is corrupt, and even every leftist organization is corrupt then it follows that it can't be expected that any human can be capable of building a system that is truly non-corrupt. It follows that any spiritual organization must necessarily be cult-like in some way.

The logic breaks down once you learn the real history of true leftist organizations and learn that their levels of corruption are completely incomparable with the levels of corruption and liberal systems and in right wing systems.

This idea that leftist organizational structures are somehow unnecessarily oppressive is a lie that is only really present in western states due to western propaganda. A lot of the non-western states have already woken up to this reality. However, western people with their narcissism still believe that their values are the highest ones and anything else is authoritarianism and oppression because of relentless propaganda from the bourgeoisie.

I know that people will read this, roll their eyes and accuse me of the attempt of spreading ideology.

What you need to understand though, is that the knowledge about the possibility of true abundance in this world is inseparable from ones word view, and therefore ones view of the self and self-worth. If you realize that the hierarchy, where "productive" business people are at the top and the "lazy" and "unproductive" people are on the bottom is a complete fabrication, only then you can truly allow yourself to live authentically and defeat self-hatred.

If you manage to do that, it is much harder for you to create a cult since the cult is a manifestation of devouring narcissism, which is itself a manifestation of self-hatred.

[Alexop]

because people do not care about Truth, they care about "how  this "truth" can help me survive?"