Vagueness In Spirituality, Anyone else notice this Options

I have been noticing a common practice with anything "spiritual", be it one of the many yogas or occult groups or religions. They are all vague about what joining or practicing will do/accomplish/benefit. "Make you life better" sound nice but it is not much to go on. Perhaps I am spoiled, having come from academia where everything is laid out with what is taught, why and what you can get out of the course.

Recently while talking to several priests, Taoist and Buddhist, about empowerment, classes and what I can expect, I was met with almost dismissive vagueness and tired cliches. After talking with them I am just as uninformed as when I started - having no better idea of why such and such a thing is done or what it enables. Looking back, I find a lot of my current practice where not explained, and lacking that it took much longer to gain anything from them, only after long practice did I have enough knowledge to judge their worth. Indeed many that look promising turned out to be useless to me after months of work.

Vagueness in spirituality is necessary to some existent, but with a little application the people who run these orders, and organizations could explain things clearly.

This post has been edited by fatherjhon: Apr 5 2012, 10:06 PM

I have been around the block with teachers, both seeking them out and learning from them. I have encountered some concrete and some vague teachings - the most important of these was that the teacher doesn't teach. If there are fifty people in a room with a 'teacher', and only one of them is karmically prepared for enlightnment, the teacher could say anything at all and that one student would become enlightened - the other 49 could hear the most profound words, the most perfect truth that could be spoken, and that teacher might as well have told a story about taking out their garbage that morning.

I agree with that. But I also think that people can be steered into experiences best for them, by using astrology or something. I think that with modern education and books and such, people think that words, stories, texts (like the Bible, Torah..ect) are the standard for learning something. Really though, first hand experience is the best way to learning something. I think texts of any kind are best used by people who just need a little extra help in the right direction, or maybe to help with creativity. Without experience to back up words, only 1 in 49, or something like that lol, will take anything away from the teachings.