Mi'sen

Let me say this very clearly: the last stages of the approach towards enlightenment are lethally dangerous. People go mad, people die, people break in ways which ruin the remainder of their lives and stay just subclinical. Even with skilled instructors, this stuff is COMMONPLACE.

There are a couple of decent plateaux where a person can do so much "spiritual stuff" and stop. But you need skilled teachers to spot those plateaux, and stick logs in the gears that would propel people into the next dangerous bit. Water seeks the ocean, the mind seeks its origin

But there are times, and prices to be paid. People who are heavily on the spiritual path in their 20s in India are guided towards renunciation and a monastic life in many cases, because doing work and family life while on that path is horrific for all parties in many cases.

Here, there's this "we can have it all in one life" myth: spiritual and financial and personal life success all at the same time, with no trade offs - a sort of LEAN IN philosophy. Yeah, let me tell you: not if you're going for enlightenment. It'll rip your life off your bones.

Maybe you recover afterwards, maybe you wind up living in a lighthouse staring at the world like the cosmic mystery play it really is. People are assemblages of atoms, garbage bags of negative entropy. They all die really soon. Do you want to see this every waking moment each day

What you have is a folk tradition, mostly Tibetan Buddhist propaganda and marketing in the 1960s when they desperately needed money and political asylum. They told you all this stuff was cool: it's not. It's horrifically hard, dangerous, and of uncertain benefit for most people.

My advice to everybody doing meditation or anything vaguely similar: do *the least you can* and still get some benefits, or (if you want to see it through) be prepared to dedicate 5 to 8 years to it full time, and lose almost everyone in your life and most of your material assets

lost my best friend, all my money (and then some). Shrug. But yes, people break.