I have not made much progress in my spiritual practice for many years. No attainments or experiences worth speaking of. I seem to be as far away from enlightenment as I was when I first started taking an interest in spirituality almost 25 years ago.
But currently I am reading a book that gave me a fresh direction.
The book says that I should not aim for enlightenment or experiences. I should instead aim for self knowledge. Aiming for enlightenment is like aiming for the golden egg. I should instead aim for the goose.
The reason I was confused (according to the book) was that I took the sales pitch of spirituality seriously. In order to get people interested in their path all traditions emphasize the benefits of spirituality to interested people. But once these people have started on the path they can only make progress by ignoring the sales pitch and aiming for self knowledge.
All experiences (even the experience of being enlightened) are transient and will pass away in due course. Also the ego is that which wants these experiences. So aiming for (or attaining) these experiences strengthens the ego. And the whole goal of spirituality is to free yourself from the ego.
Also since the experiences arise only to pass away it leads to frustration and discouragement if you aim for them and are attached to them.
So this is the fresh direction I have got from my reading. Aim for knowledge of the Self.
This is supposed to be an eternal quest. Eternal does not mean a very long period of time. It means that the quest never ends. It is forever.
The link to the book is below but I think most likely you will not be able to make sense of what is written unless you have some knowledge of the basic concepts of Advaita Vedanta.
To learn the basic concepts of Advaita you can go through the following videos of Swami Sarvapriyananda. This is a 12 video series that teaches the basics of Vedanta by explaining an introductory text – Drg Drsya Viveka.
Swami Sarvapriyananda is a respected scholar and a monk from the Ramakrishna Mission. And don’t underestimate the value of these videos just because they are introductory. Swamiji has mentioned elsewhere that this same information is given to Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns only after a long and severe period of apprenticeship. But now we can access this same knowledge simply by logging on to YouTube.
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