The Evolution of Spiritual Traditions

In a way, every tradition is a response to the previous one.

If we look at Eastern spiritual traditions, we have the Sutra of Emptiness, the foundation of all of this. Then Vajrayana came and was like: “Fuaarck man! This is not complete. You’re just having no emotion. We don’t need to be a zombie just sitting in a cave.”

So the Vajrayana people set out to put more juice into Realization and get more Form out of Emptiness. So they tend to focus more on energy, power, and emotions. They don’t shy away from emotions. Vajrayana/Tantric asks you to feel the emotions, but have the discernment to not indulge.

Then Dzogchen kind of merges both of the previous approaches. For them, every moment is realization, every moment is enlightenment. Fuck as much as you want like how the Tantra people point you towards. But then the next moment, be flexible enough to jump straight into abiding into Emptiness, the No-Self perspective. Then the next moment could be God's Consciousness, then just a human being going to the club, hitting on some girls, and having fun.

So every moment is practice. But to be able to do this, you have to have the foundation of the Emptiness realization, and a lot of Compassion work previously.

So to be a shapeshifter, you need the prerequisite of having all the different tools and techniques. To go through, experience, and lock many different flavors of states, Insight, and Realization.

Bringing it all together and creating a kind of Contemplative CrossFit for Awakening. Yeah. The last superhero example of this “Maxxed Out”, “Highest”, or “Ultimate” is someone who has the power of Invisibility times Flight.

Because invisibility is blending into the environment, having no separation. Being in the selfless estate. And flight is like transcending your suffering, getting higher and higher into different states of consciousness.

So nothing is happening, but everything's happening. I used to be obsessed with both invisibility and flight. Even though I did a lot of crazy shit to attract attention, there was still always that element of being invisible to it.

It’s like you can just fuck around and people can’t see you. Just filming people without them knowing and things like that. There’s a certain power to that.

When you completely let go, it feels like you're becoming invisible. That's what happens when you do the Do Nothing meditation. It feels like you're just disappearing into the world.

Flight takes some energy too. Transcending not just the suffering, but you’re also getting the “higher” levels of consciousness, which is the same thing as transcending suffering.

The more suffering you release, the more solidity/conditioning/karma you dissolve, and the higher your consciousness will be.

But ultimately, there's no level to Consciousness because there's just air. The sky is just the sky.

So you combine flight with invisibility, that's the ultimate superhero, Dzogchen superhero. That just combines everything and nothing.

So we want to adopt an all-inclusive attitude towards different traditions. It’s not true to say that one school is objectively better than all other schools. But it’s also not true to say that every school is equal. Both views are extreme, which leads to endless debates.

Test different things, see what works for you, and build your own MMA Meditation toolbox.