Direct Life Communion and the cult of mass communication 

People tend to develop what they assume is a spiritual community or spiritual practice on the basis of their thinking and experiencing as a separate-self identity. I italicise these two words because of the huge variation in interpretation and misunderstanding of what a community is, let alone a spiritual community. In other words, one imposes a meaning or expectation on another, or on any kind of community based on the expression or extension of one’s egoity. And in this way, the usual seeker assumes if a community is called a spiritual community, it must surely offer them all the self-improvement and love they desire. You know, everyone will be a perfect human being and treat me with perfect understanding, no matter my own judgmental disposition. Good luck! 

Many, it seems, have been involved in a spiritual community at some time or other. Well, that’s the description or label assigned to everything from self-improvement regimes all the way through to the prospering plethora of new-age cultic Hollywood guru clubs that cater for celebrity enlightenment, not to mention all the common dogmatic religious beliefs and body-centered yoga methods. No wonder there is plenty of disillusionment and disdain expressed about spiritual communities by individuals who hoped to find whatever they hoped to find but whose experience fell short of their dreams. 

In a society where Spiritual Being is trampled underfoot by the frantic and relentless cult of materialism, Spiritual integrity, Spiritual sensibility and Spiritual lucidity are regarded as antiquated practices, disciplines and qualities. In such a society, where the material outcome is the most important, the human spirit becomes buried by the predominating pursuit of worldly success and acknowledgement. The meaning of spiritual practice now becomes synonymous with superficial remedies, which momentarily indulge and relieve the individual. As materialism proliferates and intensifies, so too do fear, anxiety and depression. As these symptoms of spiritual poverty increase, we further reduce the spiritual to a cult of perpetual novelty. Just so, even at the level of local community, what was once the community hall is so often now a calamity centre. 

Our so-called advanced materialistic, technological consumer world, that persuades and convinces the population its aim at increasing happiness, has in fact produced a techno-military-industrial society, destroyed natural environments and spawned a corporate pharmaceutical empire, in the wake of a pandemic of anxiety, depression and physical decline. 

And, in the midst of this ruination of the essential Being, words such as Guru, Spiritual Practice, Communityand Ashram-Hermitage have been debased and perverted, within the cannibalistic greed of materialistic consumerism. In a society where people are raised in the cult of material wellbeing, these words and phrases have been incorporated into our glib and fashionable terminology. 

I would have to not use the terms people commonly use, because if one uses the language we were either taught in school and/or commonly use in public arena about religion, life, belief, human being, culture, truth, spiritual practice and so forth, all those terms lead a person to be unable to understand the Truth Reality - the prior-to-conditioning Reality. In fact, these once Sacred words now have meanings that obscure the Truth or the Inherent Self Being they pointed to long ago. 

People have limited their understanding of spiritual practice and love and relationship to the meanings they assumed within the forms of those learned words and their own convictions. 

Unless one is open and receptive to critical self-inquiry, it is all too common for an individual to go to Tushita Ashram-Hermitage within the presumption they are involved with the Process of Self-Realisation, otherwise called Enlightenment.

Just because one goes to a Living Spiritual Renunciate’s Sanctuary and does this or that, or just because someone has been going for many years, this does not necessarily constitute spiritual practice nor does it mean one belongs to a spiritual community. This is one of the first egoic assumptions that must be addressed if we are to not mislead ourselves. So, right from the start in a Living Renunciate Hermitage, one is confronted with instructions to go towards a radical inspection and understanding of one’s search. In other words, radical (at the root) self understanding. 

This is critically important because as long as each individual comes with their own personal expectations, a spiritual community cannot emerge. That is not to say there is not the foundation of a spiritual community in Tushita Ashram-Hermitage - it is in the Hearts, minds and hands of the Renunciates. 
What is forgotten time and time again is that the Process of Self Realisation is the Process of ego-renunciation. 

Spiritual Communion (which is a more accurate description of spiritual community) is only realised to the degree the individual submits or surrenders her or his personalised self into the All-Abiding Life Regenerative Spirit – the Living Nature of Being of All. The entire Way is founded on the feeling contemplation of the Unity of the Spiritual Reality and therefore the transcendence of a separate-self entity. 

However, the seeker (the separate-self identity) insists on limiting spiritual practice to the forms of their own convictions and the expectations of their search. In other words, limiting spiritual practice to accommodate their sense of separate self and its desires. 

The seeker wants Me to understand them, to accommodate them, to give them attention, to satisfy them, to give them what they think and expect is spiritual practice and, by extension, spiritual community. 
The self-concerned mind/person is always seeking justification of the Way or not the Way, within the mechanics of their personal self-importance, their personal desires and their personal judgments, in other words the personal, separate self-entity. 

This kind of character wants a spiritual community to be something that is good for him or her personally - something that will acknowledge and validate his or her underlying sense of separate-self identity. Well, of course, surely, why not? If it’s a spiritual community, then indubitably, inevitably that community of individuals will recognise your worldlier, more knowledgeable, sophisticated and superior background. What’s more, one may feel one is a more spiritually and culturally improved person than the rest of the rabble. 

The usual seeker maintains the notion and idea that a spiritual community will make everything right for them; it will answer all their personal and particular problems - something (or someone) they can off-load responsibility onto and later blame if it does not work out for them. 

But, you see, one cannot merely say, “I am involved in a spiritual practice,” while, at the same time, hoping one’s personal desires will be fulfilled. Simply because the words spiritual practice or community are the phrases people (usually seekers) like to use to describe a certain group of people they are involved with part-time does not mean one’s personal expectations should be or will be fulfilled. 

In fact, very often when an individual associates with a spiritual practice or spiritual community, their expectations and condemnations of others become much more ramped up than before. In interactions, each individual expects the other to be a saint or an obligingly nice spiritual person. Eventually, of course, one finds out one is not treated like a devotee or wise elder or, well… anything at all. Oh dear. And now perhaps, the hurt, disappointment and eventual disenchantment with the program - as some would call it – sets in. 

As a genuine Student in Life, it is worth looking at what is behind our need to label things. On what basis do we call a group of people a spiritual community? Just as on what basis do we call a group of people a family?
These titles, these labels are loaded with expectation - expectations that once again are an extension of our own separate-self desires. Most often those labels are created or devised as the signature of our own expectations. How else are we going to justify our expectations and our blame, if we haven’t got a hook to hang them on? I have heard as many people say they are sick of spiritual communities as I have heard say they are sick of family. Labels and titles are more an expedient means to enable the possibility of blame. 

Various humans of every level of commitment or understanding populate any so-called community or familyand this is no different in the case of spiritually-based communities. What is more significant, more revealing, is how the usual individual expects the community (whatever that is) to align itself with him or her. In terms of a spiritual community or Spiritual Practice, this expectation becomes inflated and highly coloured by the individual’s personal practical and spiritual desires. 

There is one thing for sure: anyone who tries to participate in the process of Sadhana on the basis of their separate-self sense as the principle of existence, will always feel “put down,” disillusioned and frustrated. Why? 
Because such a one is fundamentally devoted to a struggle with their own separate-self family/social/nationalistic self-identity and its need to be fulfilled. They are still looking for that acknowledgement and appreciation which their family or society or friends did not give them. 

Furthermore, this kind of character, when leaving one or other lover or community or family, even after years of direct or vicarious enjoyable experiences, is commonly motivated to denigrate whoever or whatever they are leaving. It seems that some are compelled to speak of the faults and shortfalls and disappointments of others in the community or family when wanting to leave the arrangement they were previously involved with. 

Unfortunately, this is an all-too common occurrence within the usual human affair - the affair of blame as a means of justifying whatever it is we want to do next. 
Sadly, so often, in one sweeping gesture of personal indignation, the individual loses humble gratitude, the giving thanks and the expression of genuine respect for the wonder of any experience at all, good or bad. 
Ultimately, what becomes clearly transparent in our communication with each other, and especially by means of spiritless techno mass media, is the fact that when our wants/desires for personal satisfaction are not met, out comes the blame and ridicule.  

Spiritual Communion is the ecstatic whole-bodily energy confession of Love Unity. The Sadhana of Satsang is practically concerned with the practice of thoughts and feelings that cultivate Intimacy or Unity with Life. It is not in any way based on an argument for the self. And, if one had been involved in moving beyond themselves into Love Union with all Existence, they would have no need, no motive to broadcast disparaging or negative remarks about their past involvement with anyone or any community.
But, you see, one cannot even consider the matter of spiritual community while in the disposition of fear. In other words, while still in the disposition regulated by the ego-mind. 

What a shame. What a pity one feels one has to run down another person or deprecate another community or culture they were once involved with, merely to elevate themselves and justify their leaving. 

 Go in Peace.