The Problem with Modern Spirituality
Reason should not end where spirituality begins, because without reason and structure you can dabble in a practice for years without ever making progress.
Dandapani questions why people apply reason to cooking, driving, business and raising children, then abandon it the moment spirituality comes up. He explains that intuition reaches the conscious mind by passing through the intellect, so an overloaded, disorganised subconscious blocks it, and the first work is organising that second floor.
What this talk covers
- In every other part of life we use reason, but with spirituality people drop it and settle for the idea that it is all just different paths and flavours.
- Getting fitter or managing money better takes work, structure and often a trainer or an expert, and spirituality is treated as though it needs none of that.
- Picture the mind as a three storey building: the conscious instinctive mind on the ground floor, the subconscious and intellect on the second, the superconscious on the third.
- Intuition has to travel through the intellectual mind to be recognised, so when that floor is cluttered with unprocessed information and borrowed perspectives, intuition cannot come through.
- Traditional monasteries teach one philosophy at a time, not because other teachers are wrong, but to organise the second floor so intuition has a framework to work through.
Intuition works through structure.Dandapani
Questions
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Usually because there is no structure and no reason behind what you are doing. Dandapani points out that we would never expect results from training or money management without structure, and spirituality is no different.
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Dandapani says consuming many teachings without organising or processing them clutters the subconscious. Traditional monasteries deliberately teach one philosophy so that the second floor of the mind stays organised.
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Start with the subconscious rather than the superconscious. Organise it, process what you take in and form conclusions, so intuition has a clear structure to travel through.
Transcript
725 words · 4:10
the different flavors of the path. My point I'm trying to make is though, why do we abandon reason when it comes to spirituality? And in all other aspects of life, we don't abandon reason. When we're cooking, when we're buying clothes, when we're driving, when we're running a business, raising a child, we don't abandon reason. But when it comes to spirituality, we abandon reason.
Nothing I'm saying is unreasonable. Spirituality, reason shouldn't end where spirituality begins. And when you abandon reason, then you don't make progress. And it's fine if that's all you want to do,
if you just want to dabble around and not get serious or anything, but just know you're not going to get traction. You're not going to make progress. Because if I want to lose weight, if I want to get fitter,
if I want to be stronger and have more muscle, It takes work, it takes structure, and that's why I might hire a trainer at the gym, a nutritionist, or whatever it may be.
If I wanna better manage my money, I might hire someone who's a financial expert who can give me guidance around finance and create structure for me and discipline
on how to save and how to spend or budget or whatever it is. So, but then when it comes to spirituality, all of a sudden we feel like none of those things
are necessary and we say like, you know what, it's just different paths, you know, different flavors. It's like, I said, why is that?
I'm very curious. And people are adamant about it. No, no, no, it's like, it's fine. It's not.
I've dedicated five decades of this, of my life to this. Ever since I was a kid, this is my path. This is what I've died of. I've sacrificed so much to live this.
Not in a plate pretend we can retreat kind of, let's just go and go to Cabo and do a three day retreat on meditating. I've given up a lot.
The untrained intellect can be a barrier to the intuition. You went conscious, subconscious, super conscious. I would ask you to go in reverse. Conscious, subconscious, super conscious.
So your super conscious, imagine a three-story building. Your super conscious is on the third floor. The subconscious, which is the intellect, is on the second.
The conscious mind, the instinctive mind, the external mind is on the ground floor. Now for intuition to come to the conscious mind so we can cognize it, it needs to go through the intellectual mind.
Now, if the intellectual mind is overstimulated, it's been fed with so much information and so much perspective, it becomes very difficult for intuition to come through. But intuition works through a clarified subconscious
and organized and disciplined subconscious. So in traditional monasteries, when you go there, the teacher trains you in one philosophy, and you're not allowed to read books from other teachers
or other traditions, it's not that they are saying those teachers are wrong or they're bad, the idea is to organize the second floor,
which provides a framework for intuition to work through to come to the conscious mind. When the second floor gets messy and cluttered through consuming information, not organizing it,
not processing it, not forming conclusions, which is a huge thing. Then the second floor gets so cluttered that intuition can't come through,
which is what's happening today for most people because look at the rate at which we consume information today. 50 years ago or 70 years ago, you had a newspaper
and then you waited for the next print and then maybe the news might come on at 8.30 at night and that's all you got. But today, we consume so much of information.
We can't even drive or walk or be on a treadmill without sticking headphones and listening to a podcast or music or this or that. But we never spend time organizing the subconscious. The subconscious gets so cluttered and then intuition can't come through.
So once we understand that, then the first step in cultivating intuition is really not about working with the super conscious, it's working with the subconscious in organizing it and creating structure so intuition can work through. Intuition works through structure.
Contrary to what most people think.