Best Of

The more mature practitioners among us are already well-pickled in words and experiences, yet are not exactly enlightened. So are we such great exemplars? Shine your light, but do so with humility and while leaving the space for others to shine theirs, and appreciate all equally.

From another thread:

If one can not even understand how a discussion on one's spiritual experience can make others suffer, then what does that say about that speaker's understanding of empathy, sympathy, tenderness or compassion for others.

There is talk today about how its important to look beyond our intent to the impact our words have on others. But when does that cross over into diminishing yourself and can that act also have a negative impact? My thought immediately went to the Marianne Williamson quote.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I feel there is some balance to be found here. Don't brag on yourself, but also don't hide your light. Your spiritual experiences might make some feel small but it also might inspire others. How responsible exactly are we for the feelings of the most wounded person in the room?

Considering others or diminishing your light?
How responsible exactly are we for the feelings of the most wounded person in the room?

Interesting question...

It's a case of "Words can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time" ....no matter how careful one is with choosing what to says....

One person's kind words is another person's fighting talk (No pun intended...Hmm perhaps just a little one )

If one can not even understand how a discussion on one's spiritual experience can make others suffer, then what does that say about that speaker's understanding of empathy, sympathy, tenderness or compassion for others.

Indeed.

The function we can each understand is bringing others to wisdom, humility, virtue, insight and the many descriptions of helpful behaviour and practices.
https://thewisemind.net/what-are-buddhist-virtues/

Sitting around like self congratulating fruit does not serve others. It is clearly narcissistic inflation.

I knew that.
I must be some kind of … person with common sense. Yeah beginner for ever …

If you'd like to nurture a spiritual experience, pay no more specific attention to it than you would to anything else. Treat it no differently than any other arising, existing, and departing phenomena. This is largely what a meditation practice is for.

If you want to turn the expansive fluidity of a spiritual experience into a still postcard of a memory, just try to mentally dissect it. It will simply become as sullied as any other arising. existing and departing phenomena that we are unable to meditate with.
All spiritual experiences are little more than the veil of our own obscurations being pulled aside. That obscuration is just the habitual storytelling of our ego/identity or the selfish self. The absence of that obscuration is the fruit of selflessness.

Some reasons for not deliberating on spiritual experiences are...

Monasteries traditionally teach their practitioners to not deliberate on such experiences because such actions are the actual antithesis of what was allowing those experiences to arise in the first place.
All that separates each moment of a spiritual experience from manifesting as enlightenment or as delusion, is your ability to meditatively get yourself out of its way.
The common ego makes us all junkies in relative states of re-hab. Spiritual experiences that can be personified by our ego are like a beckoning source of crystal meth. The only thing that's tough enough to not have the ego indulge within it to some degree, is a meditative practice that trains us how to stop empowering that ego.

All humans suffer under relative states of an innate inadequacy. There is no easy way to talk about a spiritual experience without having many of those who have not had such experiences, feel even more inadequate. If one can not even understand how a discussion on one's spiritual experience can make others suffer, then what does that say about that speaker's understanding of empathy, sympathy, tenderness or compassion for others.
Are they actually speaking from that spiritual experience or from their ego's grasping of it?

Everyone eventually seems to have spiritual experiences in life. Much of a spiritual practice is just our preparation to not fiddle around with it as it passes by. Large or small, singular or many, they have as much potential to enlighten as to delude. Most Sangha are usually littered with the examples of both. 2600 years of history has resulted in most teachers saying that as with any phenomena, its not about whether it arises, exists or departs but is about how we can allow it its own unmolested passage through our sense gates that's actually the important thing.

Is the deliberation of a spiritual experience about a practice of accumulation or a
renunciation?

LOL
Perhaps the guy who just missed his own zoomed sitting while focusing on writing about this, should just pay a little more attention to his own practice.

@Bunks said:
In a similar vain, I once had a Buddhist teacher tell me that one sign that you were nearing enlightenment was a ringing in your ears.

I have had Buddhist teachers tell me that the Awakened can see the Buddha's halo permeating all of the world.

They say that the Buddhas utter one sound in order to speak with all sounds. This is substantiated in the Great Wisdom Treatise (Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa), the Prajñāpāramitā itself, as well as within the great Flower Garland.

The Far-Reaching Prajñāpāramitā in a Single Syllable is one such sound, namely "Ā," the seed-syllable of Mahāvairocana Dharmakāya. The non-dual "Bodhi sound" is likely IMO what they were referring to, versus just any old mundane ringing.