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It seems to me that this spiritual journey is a process
of tuning very, very slowly.
It's like diving.
You have to acclimate at each level of depth of water.
And at each level, you're getting different information,
which leads you to a different conclusion.
So you get down 2 feet, and you look around,
and you see a beautiful fish, and you say that's God.
And you follow that fish.
And then as you get acclimated, you're able to then go deeper.
And the minute you go deeper, you look,
and the whole universe looks different.
And there's a whole new fish to look at that attracts you.
And in a way, as you go into the spiritual journey
along the way, you shouldn't be afraid to jump into a method,
and you shouldn't be afraid, if the method feels like you're
done with it, to go on.
Now there are other times when your inner feeling will say,
I've gone as far as I can go with this method at this level,
and what I'd really like to do is go deeper in this method.
And you'll make a kind of a renewed effort to go deeper.
That is information that only you have, really.
Nobody can tell you how to do that.
I mean, people that are committed to their path
will say, well, you've done a wise thing to come to me
and follow my path.
And then you say, well, I don't know whether to go deeper in it
or leave.
They say, we'll go deeper, because of their commitment,
unless they are very wise beings, in which they will say,
listen to your own heart.
You will find that your karmic predicament will pull you
to a path sooner or later.
And you will feel at a certain point
the nonsense of looking here and there is all over.
I've found my way through.
Some people will be very drawn to working with their minds
to quieting their minds.
And then they'll get to a point where their mind is reasonably
quiet like a lot of my friends who are Vipassana meditators.
They go, and they follow their breath.
And they follow Joseph to Hawaii,
and they follow their breath.
And then they go to Switzerland, and they follow their breath.
And they go to Barry, and they follow their breath.
And they get to be master Vipassana meditators.
And then you can feel that there's
something in them screaming that isn't getting fed.
They can't break through to the next level by that method.
And at that point, some of them just blow sky high.
They leave Vipassana, and they go out,
and they have mad love affairs, and they smoke dope,
and they do all kinds of stuff.
And then some time later, either they go back to Vipassana
from a new level or they found another method.
Either way, you don't know.
Other people get to Vipassana, and they
get to that sticky place, and they just say,
what I'm going to do is I'm going
to do a three-month meditation.
And they go in.
And for the first two months, it's just like it was before,
but there's a way in which they are so one-pointed and so
determined, they come through.
And suddenly, they're in a whole new place.
Do you hear what I'm saying, that there
isn't a rule of thumb about playing this game?
You really just have to keep listening from day to day.
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