skyblue

In no shape or form have I ever heard Sadhguru deify himself. The quotes posted here are taken from longer talks and are completely out of context.

It depends on what you consider failure as. If failure to bring about an eternal world peace and communal bliss to the planet is considered as his failure, then yes. He failed. If him being one of the pillars of the worldwide spread of Daoism and just spirituality in general counts as success, then he succeeded. I think that he did what he could, and went his own way to attain the Dao. He worked for the emperor, felt dispassionate, and went away, but not before leaving the sagely treatise. Acted as an example to the world as a live and an excellent personification of the concept of 'letting go'.

I have the exact same opinion. Only, I have experienced this phenomenon in lots of Hindu practices as well. If I immerse myself too deeply within them, I'd start to lose touch with my surroundings. There is a sensation of a loss of grounding which wouldn't come back unless the mind is brought back and relaxed into mundane reality, time and time again. This is one of the reasons I'm more engaged in Daoist practices as of now, developing qualities within me while I look for certain other things in the people around me, the sky, the trees and just about everything. While they might be helpful on the spiritual path, the disconnect caused from the 'here and now' makes my being rather uncomfortable. So while I haven't completely stopped interacting with Buddhist sutras and Hindu texts, I go about reading them at a slow pace, trying to digest little things and seeing them play out in my day-to-day mundane life. We just have to remember that while the direction is the same, each one of us walks their own dao, their own path.

SKY BLUE

Sappy blue pear

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Damo Mitchell podcast where he delves into Qigong, TCM, etc. : https://www.scholarsage.com/

Exactly my problem. For some reason, I was convinced that as a cultivator, I should never be tired, frustrated/angry, have no weaknesses and be perfect at everything. And this was when I had barely begun to open my body. Now that I think about it, it was very self damaging. The self-criticising part is still here, but it seems to be dissolving slowly. I actually needed to distance myself from anything spiritual for about a while for this to happen.

Wow. I gained a lot from reading this. I shall read it again and contemplate. Thanks.

A funny video I came across.

Hi. What exactly is humility? And how does one remain humble without hurting their self esteem (which can be extremely harmful, more so for cultivators)? How does one keep their self esteem relatively high without becoming arrogant? I am probably misunderstanding something here, but when I read about becoming the lowest of the low (like water) and tried to emulate the mental quality in me, something felt very incongruent within. So I stopped doing that. However, doing it for quite a while (months) left a scar within me, so that whenever I did something, a part of me would desperately struggle to perform it better while constantly reminding me that I am not very good at it. This feeling has eased recently with careful and gentle contemplation, but it's still there. I would like to invite discussion on this topic to get more clarity and understanding about one of the fundamental qualities of Daoism.

Hey there! Congratulations!

Isn't he supposed to be a nirmankaya, one who can consciously recreate a form they choose to appear in and dismantle it after their job is done?

Kalpas and yugas are a fascinating topic for me, personally. I'm not like those who would argue against proven scientific facts by quoting sacred texts but I still think that there had to be some merit in them. I mean, why would the highest of cultivators of those times just write some imaginary numbers as the number of years and use these numbers so frequently in the description of the world? Moreover, they are similar in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies. There should be some reason as to why Shakyamuni Buddha, who chose to reject all ancient Hindu rituals and even the complete notion of atman would go on to use the same extraordinarily large numbers in his temporal model of universe. Whatever it may be, there's this one thing I gained from these temporal descriptions. It's that human life is short, way too short. In this bubble of a lifetime, I was fortunate enough to come across something that helps me peer into the nature of reality and the source of creation. I'm very grateful for that.

Hey @XianGong, how exactly do you define cultivation? I'm asking because I feel that it's a lot different from the general, more popular meaning of the term. Secondly, is there an end goal to your cultivation? If so, what is it?