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

It may be because it is so individual for each person. There is a version of one's 'karma' in any of these practices, western or eastern. In the eastern side, of course, you can only ever gain by overcoming or transmuting karma. In the west it's just called the will of God - even in the grimoires there's usually a 'caveat' to the effect of "Only with the assistance/cooperation of the almighty can you accomplish these things". So I think that there are cases in most of the practices where the priests/initiators have to be vague; that there is a basic level of improvement you can derive, but that the rest is really out of their hands and to some degree unpredictable.

The few instances where I have heard this is not the case is with specific enlightened masters, gurus, and such, who it is said can absolve your karma, or otherwise take it upon themselves. I don't know anyone specifically, it's 'one of those things you hear about'. So who knows.

peace

Part of the problem is the necessity of this vagueness. If you have read or are informed about the process of buying/selling or in this case telling/accepting then you know they are hitting you with a truthful part and that truth part is that vagueness is undoubtedly part of the way we live. On the other hand part of the deal is to simply buy into the fact of 'faking it till you make it' which is, to be honest just, just partly true when dealing with matters such as these.

However, for those of us who are seeking a truer and more personal level of discipline and power we must look at many of these teachers with a very guarded skepticism. Those that fail to offer not only lucidity but fluidity in their methods are probably not worth taking much from on a whole, though these people may have nice ideas from which occultists might steal. It comes from being removed from the source of the power.

I think it was a few years ago when I talked to someone about a website made by some of those 'occult masters' who would be willing to accept every student for a mere price of yadda yadda per month. In any specialized field, teachers that fail to identify which people need a higher level of communication and knowledge to which to progress are a failure unto themselves. Handing out generic advice and expecting each person to bite is not only foolish but detrimental for not only the teacher but the student and the other students who could have gained from one acolytes rise to prominence.

It may be because it is so individual for each person. There is a version of one's 'karma' in any of these practices, western or eastern. In the eastern side, of course, you can only ever gain by overcoming or transmuting karma. In the west it's just called the will of God - even in the grimoires there's usually a 'caveat' to the effect of "Only with the assistance/cooperation of the almighty can you accomplish these things". So I think that there are cases in most of the practices where the priests/initiators have to be vague; that there is a basic level of improvement you can derive, but that the rest is really out of their hands and to some degree unpredictable.

Right, however, taking it out of Fatherjhon's personal experience I would feel very safe in saying that many people who are teaching metaphysics are hiding behind the ideas that other people have presented, to which was a presentation from more others. This is never the exact case, indeed quite often we meet people who are very spiritual who profess to one way or another but that often proves to be a case of the person being spiritual rather than the way they can ?know? ?explain? happens to be spiritual.

one kind of has to learn to take pieces of whatever is given to them in different spiritual paths according to how well it resonates with them. i personally have found no one area of spiritual teachings that i can just take in whole.

i was once following a new age group consenses for many years and this movement was loaded with the vagueness you speak of. the leader of this group would go from one flighty concept to another with absolutely no explantion as to what these concepts really meant or how they had come by these ideas. i was surprised after a while at how many would willingly go along with this person without calling them out on what they were saying. i stopped following this leader and the group quite a while ago after noticing how "vague" these teachings were but the strange thing is at the beginning of it all i actually got alot out of this movement that is still with me today.

ive often thought about how in the new age movement as a whole they go about throwing around concepts of light and oneness but give no real teaching on what these things are or how to achieve them and i feel if i ever wanted to become a teacher that i could impart in great detail how to gain awareness of these, bypassing the vaguensss altogether. but no, ive no desire to be any kind of wayshower, at least not now while im still trying to get fullly submerged in what ive been gifted with. maybe some day.

clear blessings

Igisi

It may be because it is so individual for each person. There is a version of one's 'karma' in any of these practices... even in the grimoires there's usually a 'caveat' to the effect of "Only with the assistance/cooperation of the almighty can you accomplish these things". So I think that there are cases in most of the practices where the priests/initiators have to be vague; that there is a basic level of improvement you can derive, but that the rest is really out of their hands and to some degree unpredictable.

On the other hand part of the deal is to simply buy into the fact of 'faking it till you make it' which is, to be honest just, just partly true when dealing with matters such as these. However, for those of us who are seeking a truer and more personal level of discipline and power we must look at many of these teachers with a very guarded skepticism. Those that fail to offer not only lucidity but fluidity in their methods are probably not worth taking much from on a whole...

Most everything I know about Buddhism came from the fake it till you make it approach. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I do not have an issue with vagueness in outcome or even the ambiguity of what we learn, so much as I take issue with spiritual teachers asking for commitments to a path/program without providing information. Particularly on what the intended outcome is, and what I will give up by doing such and such a practice. A lot of magick that has taboos, which if kept will yield some power or effectiveness, and by doing so prevent you from using some other power. Vajrayana for example aims you at Bodhisattva which prevents for the most part tantric shakti practice. Then there is always the possibility that there is an aspect of the practice that would have caused me to avoid it if I had known.

That is where I find vague phasing like "this practice doesn't prevent you from doing anything, they are all choices" very unhelpful. naturally there are choices but being unenlightened, uninitiated, and uninformed I need help evaluating the consequences of such and such a practice. Perhaps my real concern is that spiritual/occult/religious work is supposed to be empowering, but the people who safe guard that empowerment don't empower you to make informed decisions about your spiritual path. Forcing you to commit time, energy and faith in something that, you are told, will make your life better, though any determination on that has to be made long after the fact.

I don't think spirituality is suffering from vagueness any more or less than other fields of study and practice are. Look at how vague Psychology or Philosophy is. Psych struggles to be scientific by clinging to statistics and philosophy doesn't try to be scientific but nearly everything about it breaks down to pointless semantics. Essentially they share the same "problem" that spiritualism does; they don't naturally have empirically definable variables. This has been the whole argument against spiritualism for the last 200 years. There just isn't a whole lot of evidence for it.

But more to the point of what you mentioned, the vagueness in spirituality, is interesting. I think that magic is a really, really complicated structure that exists in nature but isn't understood by most people. I think people try to take the sort of structure science has and then use that for a guideline for how magic works, but I think that's a problem. Different fields of study and practice have different ways of working. I just can't practically use my knowledge of computers to intuit the structure of, say, government, aesthetics or anything else. I think this is a common error in the way people tend to think about spirituality. I do agree though, that interdisciplinary knowledge is necessarily. Leonard Berstein said that nothing can truly be known in and of itself, in regards to a field of study (in his example, music and linguistics). But I think that the the development of neural nets is basically the underlining issue when adopting this interdisciplinary perspective, not the development of the ability to simply overlay different structures onto each other.

I don't believe in "faking it until you make it"... most of the time. C.S. Lewis talked about how some "advanced" Christians prayed without words and how inexperienced Christians would see this, be impressed, and then do the same thing but fail because they weren't able to understand the real connection that was going on and how it worked, they only understood the superficial aspects, mostly in terms of how it looked. I have read about psychologists (I don't know who off the top of my head) that believe that the process of acting out a series of actions will lead to the feeling that those actions would have brought about had they been natural. Noel Coward (actor for theatre) talked about how that happened and can happen to actors. He makes the point that when you start to feel what you're acting you stop acting... and obviously start being. I agree with this but have a problem with it. I don't think that, in magic or spirituality, the ends justify the means. I believe that experiences are better discovered without too much imitation. I suppose this is just preference though.

To avoid vagueness in spirituality I try to have current goals with defined variables. When I define the variables of my goal and neatly order them by taking into consideration my experience, desires, and capability, I end up with the parameters of my practice of magic. I think that structured context and clearly defined variables is the result of successfully making use of interdisciplinary knowledge, and that it is this system that helps people avoid the issue of superficial ambiguity in any field of study or practice.

I think Baldwin describes the issue and solution pretty well from 4.37 to 5.25 (the video starts at 4.37 if you click the link below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb_NbdeE2zU#t=04m37s

This post has been edited by ☞Tomber☜: Apr 7 2012, 03:00 PM

I don't think spirituality is suffering from vagueness any more or less than other fields of study and practice are. Look at how vague Psychology or Philosophy is. ... Essentially they share the same "problem" that spiritualism does; they don't naturally have empirically definable variables. This has been the whole argument against spiritualism for the last 200 years. There just isn't a whole lot of evidence for it... I think that magic is a really, really complicated structure that exists in nature but isn't understood by most people.

That's valid. Remember though that in Psych you get a rubric and and are told you will be able to diagnose illness and treat it at the end of the degree program. You know you are taking a course in existential philosophy because they tell you the class deals with the nature of existence. Spiritual teachers seldom do. I have even seen large retreat planers take people to Nepal with the promise of "meditating in a mystic country" and nothing else. The difficult nature spirituality should not excuse teachers from laying out clearly what they play to teach, how, and why. Aside from whether or not they understand what they teach themselves, "why" something is taught should be simple enough for anyone to communicate. It is the only way to know if you can learn from them, and on a more basic level, if you can trust their teachings.

To avoid vagueness in spirituality I try to have current goals with defined variables. When I define the variables of my goal and neatly order them by taking into consideration my experience, desires, and capability, I end up with the parameters of my practice of magic.

A vary practical way to approach it. I dare say you would do better than many teachers I have talked to lately. Sadly only one has felt the need to take a methodical approach to teaching.

Most everything I know about Buddhism came from the fake it till you make it approach. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I do not have an issue with vagueness in outcome or even the ambiguity of what we learn, so much as I take issue with spiritual teachers asking for commitments to a path/program without providing information. Particularly on what the intended outcome is, and what I will give up by doing such and such a practice. A lot of magick that has taboos, which if kept will yield some power or effectiveness, and by doing so prevent you from using some other power. Vajrayana for example aims you at Bodhisattva which prevents for the most part tantric shakti practice. Then there is always the possibility that there is an aspect of the practice that would have caused me to avoid it if I had known.

Part of the problem/beauty of it is that magic and culture are very intertwined, The Art is universal, but there are many different ways of developing an idea. You can climb a single mountain an infinite number of ways but at the end you're still reaching the same peak. I've always felt that this finesse is something missing with many of the teachers teachings nowadays and part of that is it requires a great deal of knowledge and flexibility of world view which can be fantastically difficult to teach and impart.

That is where I find vague phasing like "this practice doesn't prevent you from doing anything, they are all choices" very unhelpful. naturally there are choices but being unenlightened, uninitiated, and uninformed I need help evaluating the consequences of such and such a practice. Perhaps my real concern is that spiritual/occult/religious work is supposed to be empowering, but the people who safe guard that empowerment don't empower you to make informed decisions about your spiritual path. Forcing you to commit time, energy and faith in something that, you are told, will make your life better, though any determination on that has to be made long after the fact.

I think this problem is most detrimental when you meet someone that doesn't embody the way that they're teaching, I think if you look at groups you'll often find the ones with the most intense spirituality who understand the concept the most is often a few of the students rather than the teachers. People who live and breathe the path they speak of at least are leading from the front rather than simply handing out words and ways that they know are valid but are not really part of their own repertoire.

To avoid vagueness in spirituality I try to have current goals with defined variables. When I define the variables of my goal and neatly order them by taking into consideration my experience, desires, and capability, I end up with the parameters of my practice of magic. I think that structured context and clearly defined variables is the result of successfully making use of interdisciplinary knowledge, and that it is this system that helps people avoid the issue of superficial ambiguity in any field of study or practice.

Actually this is probably one of the most difficult aspects of magic, what I'm reading is that you carefully pick your your target and make a thorough effort to see the path toward reaching said target. This kind've clarity is indeed a great step toward having the concrete application of magic which many ardently strive toward.

This post has been edited by Bb3: Apr 11 2012, 07:16 PM

I've always felt that this finesse is something missing with many of the teachers teachings nowadays and part of that is it requires a great deal of knowledge and flexibility of world view which can be fantastically difficult to teach and impart....I think if you look at groups you'll often find the ones with the most intense spirituality who understand the concept the most is often a few of the students rather than the teachers. People who live and breathe the path they speak of at least are leading from the front rather than simply handing out words and ways that they know are valid but are not really part of their own repertoire.

That is well put. Teachers lacking a finesse to articulate meaningfully something they have not made the center of their life, leads to unhelpful vagueness - perhaps because they themselves are not able to penetrate the vagueness inherent in spirituality. Where then does the spiritual seeker go? To a "true guru" no doubt, but we have established that they are hard to come by.

My own approach is too look for books by the great masters of the past, any book by a recognized master should stand the test of time, so I buy very little written less than 100 years ago. Still, I have a book shelf of maybe 200 books and more e-books than I could ever read, and only 12 or so have been of use to me.

I assume that spirituality is more than abiding in that happy fuzzy feeling you get when you are closer to your higher power. (One can get that without much trouble. The other type that brings with it the ability to rule ones life accordion to ones will is much harder to find.) The more I think on this the more I am convinced that looking for a spiritual teacher is not the right approach. Rather, if spirituality is empowering, then one should act affirmatively in ones spirituality and seek out divinity on ones' own. A sort of boot strap approach to higher powers. Setting aside how difficult that is, what is to prevent you from becoming a token hippy - chasing after some tangential phenomenon thinking it will bring power. I have seen so many devout people utterly unable to make anything out of there lives I must question the validity of doing it yourself.

Vagrant, is that what you meant or perhaps could it be extrapolated from your comment about Karma. That spirituality's inherent vagueness (and less than ideal teachers) means your fated to make it only so far and no further?

Vagrant, is that what you meant or perhaps could it be extrapolated from your comment about Karma. That spirituality's inherent vagueness (and less than ideal teachers) means your fated to make it only so far and no further?

There is a concept of transmuting karma, but yes basically. If you are meant to find union with a higher power, then you will do it no matter what you make the center of your life (assuming the intention is there - you can, I think, take steps backwards/accrue more karmas). So we hear old stories, or about characters, who were enlightened while baking bread, making tea, etc.

On the other hand, if you have karma to work out these things will continually arise between you and your quest for union until you either work them out or transmute them. There are practices like chanting, puja, selfless service, etc., which are said to transmute karma. Somewhere I have heard that selfless service to all beings is the fastest path to enlightenment.

So I don't know about 'fated' - but, I think that depending on where we 'start out' in one life there can be so much karma to overcome that we are entirely distracted from any spiritual path. On the other hand, we can have so little karma left that almost from birth we are attracted to the 'light' at the end of the path and can hardly focus on anything else. I think between the extremes is a very fine gradient, so that there are people who may be distracted but still see past it all and focus on the light, and people who have always seen it there but get distracted by something along the way and lose sight of it. Sometimes the distractions are teachers, and sometimes we are too distracted to learn from someone who can teach.

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 think it is meant to suggest that enlightenment, spiritual advancement, is not really found in a teacher in the first place. They might be like sign posts along our path, but if you are ready for it then anything will trigger it; if you aren't, then no teacher can instruct you to make you ready for it.

Now when it comes to occult power, that's different. And the two are very often confused. Occult power can be a by product of advancement, but it can develop without advancement as well - though if you believe the stories, that which arises from advancement 'trumps' that which does not. However, the fundamentals of occult power in isolation require only a strong will to cultivate them. The rest is dressing.

Anyway, that's my take on it. If it's hard to find a teacher, but you can stick to it anyway, then you are likely free enough from distractions to make it there; if you are simply unable to hold yourself back from chasing it, perhaps you have very little karma left between. If at some point you give up, then you weren't meant to get there in this life in the first place.

peace

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.

There is a concept of transmuting karma, but yes basically. If you are meant to find union with a higher power, then you will do it no matter what you make the center of your life...so that there are people who may be distracted but still see past it all and focus on the light, and people who have always seen it there but get distracted by something along the way and lose sight of it. Sometimes the distractions are teachers, and sometimes we are too distracted to learn from someone who can teach.

I think it is meant to suggest that enlightenment, spiritual advancement, is not really found in a teacher in the first place. They might be like sign posts along our path, but if you are ready for it then anything will trigger it; if you aren't, then no teacher can instruct you to make you ready for it.

Now when it comes to occult power, that's different. And the two are very often confused. Occult power can be a by product of advancement, but it can develop without advancement as well - though if you believe the stories, that which arises from advancement 'trumps' that which does not. However, the fundamentals of occult power in isolation require only a strong will to cultivate them. The rest is dressing.

I was going respond with a lovely post but the more I wrote the more I became aware I was arguing further from the truth.

Instead, let me say very shortly what I think I understand now. Will and Concentration are two of the foundations of occult work, both of which are required to keep your eye on a goal despite distracting karma. Teachers are helpful but hit or miss depending on if you meet the right teacher for the right student with the right conditions. Enlightenment or magick (i still think of them as the same) involves a lot of struggling towards something you can't quite know until you get there.

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.

These disciplines or spiritual practices aren't part of the free market economy in which they promote and market themselves. 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. Trying to explain these experiences is akin to explaining a painting to a blind man. 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.

That speaks to the benefits of Tantric Initiation such as I read about once while studying the Nath. It was a direct transmission of a bit of the masters enlightenment to the student if I recall.

Mind if I ask who your teacher was? It sounds like you found a good one.

vague question = vague answer

for example, if you meet someone selling cars, and you ask them "where can I go in a car?" what kind of answer would that inspire? in all likelihood, the reply would involve sweeping generalities, rather than concrete, explicit, details of where you can go, tailored to that particular person's likely traveling needs. so a question like "what can spirituality do for me?" is so vague that it almost demands vague replies, as anything specific would require a great deal more specificity in the question itself.

Even an infinitely more specific question, such as "what has spirituality done for you?", would require significant thought and consideration to answer with anything even approaching completeness. Personally I'd prefer to answer something like that with a 300 page book rather than a few sentences. So tallying all of that up, and presenting it in a concise blurb of an answer? even if one could field the question in a reasonable period of time, it's going to sound like an outline of a digest of a summary of an overview (ie: vague).

also, there is the issue of vocabulary. if a first grader asks why a black hole doesn't simply collapse out of existence & disappear, then to give a genuinely accurate answer, there may be a lot of makeshift tutoring required, just to create the background understandings and vocabulary, with which to answer the question. This is something which can sometimes be overcome with skillful simplification of concepts, and sometimes not.

plus there is the issue of mundane mindset, which seems to latch onto the idea of material gain of some kind. Whereas (speaking only for my own spiritual path), I have found more 'benefit' in understandings which promote something more like a deconstruction of the mundane mindset which would value material gain in the first place. so if someone asks "what can i gain?" and they're thinking dollar signs or sex or money or quick&easy inner peace... then, limiting my reply to just their expectations of an answer, i could only reply "very little". Which isn't really all that encouraging. Though i'd argue that there is 'much' to gain, just not (at least in my own path) along the lines they may be looking for.

all of which casts a friendly light on vague answers.

but let me be my own devil's advocate now...
i rather despise catchphrases & slogans. they take on a sort of superficiality which undermines genuine meaning.
likewise, i despise "profound-sounding-BS", where prose is seen as a valid replacement for substance.
both of these 2 sins are 'prevalent' in human interaction, particularly in spiritual circles.

also, i see vagueness often being used as a way to avoid stepping on anyone's toes. generalized terms are often used, with broad sweeping ideas, to avoid the sort of detailed specific discussion which lends itself to one particular point of view. For example, if 10 people in a room all have a different belief structure about what makes light bulbs light up. and someone walks up ans says "what makes light bulbs light up?" ...a lot of the time you'll see people answer vaguely, to avoid making the implicit assertion that anyone else's belief structure is flawed. Basically, surrendering explicit accuracy in the hope of avoiding strife. However, this practice can compound over time, leading to some excessively bland/vague spiritual mentalities. as well as a gradual cultural loss of explicitly detailed spiritual understandings.

so yeah, vague questions needfully call to vague answers. but do be wary of vague answers to explicit questions. 'what can spirituality do for me?' definitely being the former.

This post has been edited by Kath: Jun 28 2012, 03:27 AM