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

These disciplines or spiritual practices aren't part of the free market economy in which they promote and market themselves. The teachers aren't advertising executives or PR men. It isn't even as if they were part of a religion which gives out brownie points for spreading the word. Christianity and Islam believes that there is a duty to convert everyone else to their religion, but with other religions this isn't so. If you are interested in joining they are fine with that and may be open to teaching and training you, but there is no religious duty making them do so. They may or may not have financial incentive, depending on their circumstances, but there is no religious aggression. I know a number of places in which they teach for free or for just enough to cover the room rental.

Often they may be very learned, but not very good teachers or they are good teachers, but not good self promoters or spokespeople. Many of the skills involved in the discipline are non-verbal, also many of what you might be referring to as benefits are hard to explain in words. They do have a few scientific studies that show some benefits on meditation, but scientific studies are necessarily very narrow in scope. Spiritual progress is hard to measure with machines. Trying to explain these experiences is akin to explaining a painting to a blind man. Many of my experiences, well I knew that I knew and experienced something, but when I cam back into my body I found that these experiences wouldn't fit inside of my skull. My physical brain couldn't contain them. The brain and the mind are two different things you might say.

I remember meeting my teacher's teacher a few years back-- actually I had met him a few times, but this time I was joking with him about the guy teaching me how he had kinda sucked me into all this. I think that I was quoting from one of the Godfather movies, you know about how the Don's son tries to get out but gets pulled back in again against his will. The old guy just smiled and replied something to the effect that he had merely awakened my interest or hunger to learn about Qi. It actually hit the mark pretty close. Some teachers are just teachers, but some can just size you up instantly and give you a rather apt insight into yourself.