![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Three Spiritual Approaches
Dec. 23rd, 2019 08:35 pmSome rough notes, which is my current understanding of the three main legitimate spiritual approaches (or paths):
1. Spiritual knowledge and practice for the purpose of making one's current lifetime (or maybe the next several, if done with a longer-term vision in mind) more comfortable, pleasant, joyous, and prosperous. Or simply for learning the workings of the unseen aspects/layers of reality due to curiosity and the desire to experiment. The shadow side of this approach would be if this path was used to gain spiritual powers for the sole purpose of gratifying one's own ego and/or gaining power over other people.
2. Spiritual knowledge and practice for the primary purpose of being a service to others, whether its your family, friends, clan, tribe, nation, mankind, all sentient beings, ect. The shadow side of this approach would be the cultivation of a self-righteous and sanctimonious ego, whereby the practitioner uses their spiritual path to gain attention, glory, or a morally-purist image in the eyes of the people/group they are supposedly serving in a selfless manner.
3. Spiritual knowledge and practice for attaining union or communion with whatever one's religion or spiritual system's concept of the highest being or principle is. In the more elaborate religions this would be the attainment of various states of mystical realization, typically for the purpose of advancing one's consciousness to a higher state beyond the human level. The shadow side of this approach would be, (a) a rushed or too-intense degree of ascetic detachment from the world, before the seeker is actually ready (for the perspective of karmic and practical maturity), or (b) on the more mundane level, the path of the zealot or fundamentalist, which is the follower's total blind submission to their religion's doctrines, dogma, and ideological tenets, without the application of any reason or careful self-reflection.
1. Spiritual knowledge and practice for the purpose of making one's current lifetime (or maybe the next several, if done with a longer-term vision in mind) more comfortable, pleasant, joyous, and prosperous. Or simply for learning the workings of the unseen aspects/layers of reality due to curiosity and the desire to experiment. The shadow side of this approach would be if this path was used to gain spiritual powers for the sole purpose of gratifying one's own ego and/or gaining power over other people.
2. Spiritual knowledge and practice for the primary purpose of being a service to others, whether its your family, friends, clan, tribe, nation, mankind, all sentient beings, ect. The shadow side of this approach would be the cultivation of a self-righteous and sanctimonious ego, whereby the practitioner uses their spiritual path to gain attention, glory, or a morally-purist image in the eyes of the people/group they are supposedly serving in a selfless manner.
3. Spiritual knowledge and practice for attaining union or communion with whatever one's religion or spiritual system's concept of the highest being or principle is. In the more elaborate religions this would be the attainment of various states of mystical realization, typically for the purpose of advancing one's consciousness to a higher state beyond the human level. The shadow side of this approach would be, (a) a rushed or too-intense degree of ascetic detachment from the world, before the seeker is actually ready (for the perspective of karmic and practical maturity), or (b) on the more mundane level, the path of the zealot or fundamentalist, which is the follower's total blind submission to their religion's doctrines, dogma, and ideological tenets, without the application of any reason or careful self-reflection.
