What type of training is beneficial for us?

There are endless courses, workshops and training in the area of self development. It is a huge growth industry. Many people are discovering that their lives don't completely fulfill them. They want to achieve more, be more complete, break through inner barriers.

But what if you don't need training at all to reveal your greatest potential? What if all you have to do is unfold into yourself to discover everything you could ever be? What if just by being the real you, the environment shapes naturally around you to first reveal and then satisfy your heart's longing?...

It seems like so much training today, although well intentioned, has the effect of creating desires and wants that don't fulfill us. The true self doesn't need to be 'better', more of this or less of that and the more we allow ourselves to be persuaded that we don't already have everything we need RIGHT now INSIDE of us ALREADY, the more we become less than the true self.

Perhaps we don't need more programming. Perhaps we need less, a lot less until there are no programs at all. Then we are free to follow the pull of the heart, pure and unfiltered. In my view therefore, any 'training' we engage in should be about connecting to the true self or further developing only those skills that we find already within us. The lyric's of the great Pink Floyd song "Another Brick in the Wall" gets the drift. If we're not careful education is just another brick in the wall blocking the path home to your true self.

"We don't need no education,
We don't need no thought control,
No dark sarcasm in the classroom,
Hey teacher leave these kids alone"

So if you've had enough of doing self development workshops that don't deliver what they promise, maybe its time to strip away the facade and do something that really helps you discover your authentic self?

www.openhandweb.org

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Ahh ...now I know why I hated school.

Sounds really good ...all the best with it Trinity .

Last edited: 15-01-2007 06:47:27 PM

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At long last, a heart that speaks my own!!!!

I am 55yrs old, I have been meditating since I was 24. I have taught it, and been an observer of this Spiritual growth for almost four decades and I shudder at it its misdirection. Although most talk of looking inward , still the focus is ever outward.

We have dredged up ancient rites, cereomony's, and knowledge, yet speak of remaining in the moment. We talk of wonders and ascensions, yet we still base the new ideals in healing, stating an ever undecurrent of illness,dysfuntion and issues.
I agree, all with good intention and heart I beleive. We all cry for a ' better ' world, and to engage such an opinion requires us to deeply focus on the ill's of the world, while on a pararlell path, great accomplishments in all areas of life are being realised.
I use to teach meditation, until I decided it was not my job to save the world. I still do to anyone that desires it, but there are no workshops, no new books saying the same old things, no energy courses remarketed under ominous names of mysterious origins.
Heart, Soul, and Mind are great unto themselves. We all desire better things, it is a forward motion, a natural desire to improve upon oneself, yet it is also accomplished when we cease to berate ourselves and others to motivate us into enhancement.
Often it is disguised under the banner of many roads, yet it is only one road ot self, only one you, only one internal universe of you. I cannot abide an idea that the Soul needs improvement upon, or that we are so hopeless a race as to need constant arbitration between ourselves and the Powers that Be.
Even since the popularity of " The Secret " movie, there is an ocean of people selling the way to make it work, the way to know the secrets of the Secret, with workshops costing up to $10,00.00 with people being grateful to get into them.
Does this attest to the gullability of people and the degree of desperation, or to the movies inability to convey the message that what it states can actually be done by those watching it?
Spirtual enlightenemnt has become the business of God, Source, whatever politically correct name we ascribe to the genuis of the Universe and the Human Race. Although our history is one of abuse and tyranny's, it is also the history of adaptability, genuis invention, and the majority of our ancestors being compassionate, loving people moving us ever forward into time and space.
I feel we have missed the mark, making spiritual evolution an evolving business to replace our otherwise mundane carreers. We will find an economy not based in the illness of the world, but not until we look inward for our miracualous ability to create miracles in the most mundane of situations. New growth industry's are emerging everday of ecology's based in ever smarter persectives of Human thought and intelligence.
The middle east is not the whole world, terrorism is not the power that guides us, nor is physical illness the unconquerable enemy of Humankind. I feel we are emerging from a new form of spiritual dark ages, returning to ourselves as our source of slavation and evolution, refusing a God that demands death to non-beleiving infedels, or even the view of ourselves as broken and in need of ever on ghoing healing and workshops.
It is a very short ' path ' to ourselves, and a seemingly never ending one to enlighenmant these days.

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Namaste Trinity,

Really enjoyed your and Darrell's postings, thank you. Both of them were quality postings and spoke to me with much force. If for no other reason that I agree and resonate with what you say very strongly.

In my humble opinion, I do, like yourselves, see so much of spirituality becoming/has became a business (e.g. Reiki) and in this process it has become so diluted and washed out. But at the same time I do think this is also a reflection on people/society. In general terms we have little education, training or experience in trying to pierce into the depths. This is the part of the problem, but perhaps a bigger part of the problem is that people as a whole don't know what is possible, they either have little or no idea of the amazing scope of experience that is their potential, and therefore don't bother their arse to seek deeply and intensely. Even many spiritualities are locked into a fragment of what is possible (note: this is not to suggest that I do know the whole story! If only!!!) and are based largely on regurgitation rather than highly defined inner experience. And so we end up with a partially blind leading the partially blind situation. Add to this dogma and we soon end up with a greater or lesser degree of fundamentalism, and religious and spiritual institutions which are void of insight and ability.

A couple of quotes that I love (these are on my profile page) by a man called Nisargadatta who was a teacher of Advaita, that relate to this:

Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what it is that you have never lost.

All you need is to stop searching outside for what can only be found within. ~ Nisargadatta


Om Shanti
Neil

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Heartfelt thanks for the response Darrell! Very well said.
It's wonderful to read your reply Neil too... and warming to know that there are others in the world who resonate with the issue raised in the intial post.

Trinity
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Greetings Trinity,
Greeting to everyone.

Yes, I was quite happy to post as it is a subeject close to my heart. Things in the US are quite commercial these day's, massmarketing, and the Medical community trying to gain control of alternative medicines and related herbs. Everyone assumed once it hit enough prohit they would try to control it like they do traditional medicine here.
We are the most expensive in the entire world and with a less than 32% cure rate.

Yet I remain firm in my opinion the only way to escape them is to focus on prevetion and to take good care of oneself, you can't beat them, so render them impotent I say.
I left teaching at the Spiritual centers because I was getting so much flack for trying to shift the focus off healing and onto welness and well being - I magine my chagrine. I was truly depressed for a long while over it, felt like a man without a home. But all good things come to those that wait, they say. It is fear of letting go of the struggle for health and well being, what lies beyond ' fixing ' ourselves and saving everyone. What we do in a world of healthy, spiritually sound and evloved Beings?
Perhaps a discussion for another thread here?

Blessings to you all,

Darrell

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It strikes me that "all I see is part of me"

When we fail to hear the still small voice within us then the true self (our true inner teacher) manifests itself in those people around us and those people hold the key to unlock our inner doorways. In truth it is 'us' doing it but we do need these external mirrors. life is a continual process of co-creation.

So whilst we don't need teachers teaching us to be something we are not, we do need 'key holders' to unlock the doorways to who we truly are.

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Yearws ago whilst at college I did a lot of co-councilling workshops ...but the strange thing was that alot of the people involved have either gone on to die early through drugs or suffer from mental illness in some way or another...seemingly unable to resolve something in their lives.

I cant help feeling that in focusing on what was wrong in their lives merely became bigger and bigger.As others have said before in other forums ...and I feel I am guilty of this to a degree there is danger in focusing on the problem and not the solution.

In many ways the mind just gets in the way.

This forum has been really interesting ...thanks

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Greetings everyone.

I walked away from the religion of my youth, relaizing religion was but a peice of the puzzle that was me. I then studied all the great teachings of all times, became a spiritual person, believing that this was the road to the goal, that in this arena all would become fullfilled and enlightened in me, and that I would attain self realization, and illuminate myself into the heavenly host of great leaders and teachers.
But today, this very morning I find I am walking away from the imfamous spiritual path, into yet another unknown. It is never finished, never fully realized, never ceases to evolve, the horizon forever moves away as we appraoch its touch.
I carry with me the best of the past, my memories, my Mantra's, my lessons learned. But I carry with me the treasure I sought so earnestly, the love I shared with all I knew , more precisely, the knowledge I can love in any circumstance.

My greatest teachers were my children, the arena where all that I learned of value came to light and was applied as the Great teachers had hoped they would be. I learned to love the Human race, realizing that everyone is a son and a daughter, that all of us can only prestend we are seperate from the whole.
There are so many teachings, so many teachers, and too many paths now. I beleive it is best to look into the woods, and make my own path, walk where there are no foot prints of others, and look into the water and see my reflection creating my own life as I beleive it to be. I am grateful for all those in my life, from yesterday unto the builders of the pyramids. Einstein was correct, time is but a thoery and our lives are but one life all across times illusion. Remove the sperations of birth and death, past lives become one present life. In it we find only what we loved remained, the rest became cosmic dust.
It is our hearts that make the differnces in our lives and others. Our hearts carry us into the realm of enlightement and wonders of creation, that bring miracles into reality. Our feelings are our inner voice, and they speak wonderoously of knowledge we need to know.

In Grace to you all

Darrell

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Neil

Absolutely couldn't agree more with you. It's such a difficult line to tread between doing something you love and trying ot make a living from that and going full-blown commercial to such an extent that the true message of your approach becomes lost. I always hope that I manage to tread the right side of that line in my teaching.

I was moved to write today, a kind of culmination of lots that I have been absorbing over the past few months (on top of everything going on already). Events had pushed me to a point of clarity and a very simplistic viewpoint evolved that seems also to be represented in your post and the quotes from Nisargadatta. I have posted what I wrote in my blog. For anyone viewing this in a few months, it's the post called "Secrets of the Ancient Yoga Masters" (and the title is less pretentious, more tongue-in-cheek).

Cheers,

Scott

Last edited: 19-01-2007 04:14:22 PM

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