Academia.edu sent me a doctoral paper on resistance to MER, the mystical experience of Reality. I didn’t know such an impossible thing existed and that it apparently has a such a name in psychology.
I deleted the paper as irrelevant to the focus of this website. But it is fascinating for its glimpses into the kind of analysis scholars are bringing to the subject, though I think they have it wrong when they call it ‘resistance’. Why?
Because any real, spiritual resistance is the teaching of MER Itself. MER teaches not to discuss the personal, individual experience with anything other than Reality Itself. Those who do will get imprisoned in the very life entanglements MER is there to abolish.
Human history is littered with the remnants of those imprisoned, tortured, killed, defamed, had their work burned, were banished or what one ‘universal’ church presumptuously calls “excommunicated” from practicing only that church’s ‘truth’, or wiped out like the Templars and ‘heathens’. Another still promises violent punishment for rejection of their ‘peaceful’ faith. Look what happened to the biblical Jesus. Molinos too, despite Papal support, and Guyon, though who has heard of these blessed individuals nowadays?
True mystics keep their experiences to themselves, don’t evangelise, teach, preach, prosyletise or explain. Marsha Sinetar found this out in her attempt to study the MER phenomena for her book, ‘Ordinary People As Monks And Mystics’. She could only get 300 very reluctant participants. Even they only seemed to respond to her specific questions rather than offer very much personal about their MERs. (Even though the good lady gave warm support to my early website she was reluctant to get into the subject personally too …).
So the obfuscating phrase “spiritual resistance” is a human phrase meaning resistance to human interest, not MER interest. (There we go again – egoistic human arrogance assuming humans are the underlying value against which all experiences, ie.consciousness, must be appraised. Such hubris).
If scientists, scholars, Muggles, and those of their ilk can’t get over their inbuilt prejudicial, bigoted idea humans are the centre of all cosmic reality then they’re doomed to eternal defeat of their own purposes.
After all human endeavour to understand MER is done, experience of Reality is still the only key to Reality. ‘Resistance’ is unthinkable, impossible. Surrender is more like it.
All Is Well.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 
People are resistant to many things, but Reality cannot be one of them. You can be resistant to ‘mysticism’ as a philosophy,..those are just words. Words can never adequately describe mystics’ experiences.
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“Surrender is more like it.”
I am sure you are right. I suppose that is at the heart of systems of thought like Buddhism. The real difficulty is having to live on this planet in this subset of reality with all the meaningless nonsense which that entails.
You have often warned of the futility and indeed damage to one’s welfare in getting fussed about what happens in our everyday world and again I think your concerns are quite correct.
Whatever reality is, it is highly unlikely to be concerned in any great detail with the petty squabbles we humans are so prone too.
Nonetheless, somehow I can not help thinking that on a personal level it would be nice to abandon all this “safely”. To go and live somewhere like Bhutan where society seems to have its priorities right.
But of course that is not really necessary if you can truly surrender, truly let go of all this “stuff and nonsense” around us.
Must try harder!
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The world just isn’t letting you go Anthony, is it? Attachment, Attachment, all is Attachment, eh? But the good news is – Reality always wins.
Regards, Keith.
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Attachment is indeed the cause of all suffering. Or so it seems to me.
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Ordinarily, humans don’t notice their attachments, their umbilicals. Seekers do.
Seekers see and recognise their attachments as spiritual impediments in their way.
By regular concentration of their minds on each of their attachments until the point of enchantment if needs be, Seekers will find the attachments gone.
They may not even realise the attachments have gone for a very long time. This is because with the distractions gone Reality has moved them on their way to more important things.
Recognition of and concentration on your attachments to the exclusion of all else will be noticed!
All best wishes,
Keith.
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Keith,
I am attached to breathing. Is that O.K.? LOL
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I was reminded by a Sufi teacher mystics are still part human so I presume breathing, being human, is part of the impedimenta in the way of full Realisation! Fortunately, breathing’s removed from us on our deathbeds as being of no further use …
Best wishes, Keith.
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Keith,
You have studied Sufism of Islam while I was involved with Hindu Vedanta.
Breath (prana) is an important element in Hinduism. For a very long description see
https://breathmeditation.org/the-hindu-tradition-of-breath-meditation
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Thank you very much, Ron. This is a very easy, lucid entry into the subject of breath from the Hindhu spiritual experience- very comprehensive and inclusive of other spiritual ways too. I’ve saved it as a permanent reference for further reading.
However, my first reactionn was to reference my personal experiences of Reality (MER) for illumination, only to discover nothing at all about breath! I feel no twitchings of intuition on the subject whatsoever. I seem to have been taken completely out of any human reference by my MERs in general, including this breathing teaching.
Of course I have often come across references to Hindhu breath control teachings but upon any further concentration at the time found nothing responded in me.
For me therefore, breathiig is simply a basic, necessary biological aspiration with no significance or use after human death.
I may be misreading the subject due to my adherence to the dawning realisation only experience of anything is valid to the exclusion of all teachings, ideologies, gossip and rumour, faith, hope or belief etc.
That sounds very severe, but is solid ground for me after my MERs. Personal xperience is the only reality, all else is secondhand, or artifice and human delusion …
I hope this is helpful. (It’s very difficult to tell if my revelations, if that is what they are, are meant to be shared, though I am told they are part of some people’s personal epiphanies. That emboldens my posts somewhat …).
mysticexperiences.net 2021
I
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PS: By the way, Ron, Sufism is not confined to Islam. It is claimed as the seminal experience of all existence, the final stage in all spiritual experience and endeavour, at the very heart of all things known and unknown, caught, not taught despite what mere historical religions might claim. Sufism existed before human history. True Sufis couldn’t dream of calling themselves Sufi and you’ll find nothing real about Sufi individuals in the thousands of works that exist about ‘Sufism’. It requires no books, buildings, dogma, propaganda, priests or clothing, not even worship. It loves, guards, guides, gives, never takes. It is and we are that.
Best wishes, Keith.
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