I had a few drinks on Monday with a friend of a mine - she's a bit of a spiritual type and so some of our conversation was about meditative and emotional experiences.
We've had pretty different 'spiritual' experiences over the years, mine are quite unremarkable - being breathed, intense calm and going deeper into my own sense of discomfort, typically male-framed I am sure!
Her experiences sounded a lot more intense - she thinks she's super-empathetic and can pick up on other people's emotions, she actually started literally crying in the pub later on the day, although I'm not sure the 4 glasses of wine and 2 pints of Peroni helped that, but there you go.
Anyway, as far as she is concerned she's getting in touch with something a bit deeper and asked me what I should do about it... she's been looking into various spiritual groups - including energy work and cacao sessions, sounding like she's doing the whole post-modern spiritual shopping trip....
I've got no feelingful idea what she's going through, had to be honest about that, but I'm hoping my rational male advice got through which was basically this:
Avoid any so called Gurus that are offering their services for payment. In my experience these people have nothing to teach you - rather they've noticed a gap in the market and have set up a spiritual business and it's very much them and their bank accounts first and their 'clients' second.
And even worse are the cult leaders who rather than monthly payments ask for large lump sums - although she's got enough sense to avoid those, but then again it's worth a reminder.
In my experience the Gurus that have the most to teach you about anything spiritual (whatever trip you might happen to be on) are the ones that don't call themselves gurus and don't charge you for it.
In fact these people may just be ordinary people, living their day to day lives just happily and contentedly and it's good practice to spend more time around these people and learn from them.
This will naturally be a slower drip-drip progress, but authentic, and better than going on a bullshit retreat or retreats which while claiming to accelerate your spiritual growth can very often teach you very little but very effectively drain a few hundred squid out of your pocket.
Spirituality can be a minefield, and of course ultimately, and my ultimate advise/ reminder is this - remember The Buddha, he did most of it on his own by just sitting there!
I don't know about spirituality but my best role model is my cat. She does everything she's doing completely. If that's loving and giving attention to someone, playing by herself, doing what seem to be here weird little errands I can't say I understand but they seem very important to her. She doesn't care what you think but cares immensely how you feel and she knows exactly what it is that she wants out of every situation and when its a great time to draw a boundary if someone gets in her way.
I really do think to myself daily I want to be more like her.
!LOL
I can go with that - cats are fantastic creatures, I just love them!
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If I understand correctly, there is no such thing as a female buddha anyways.
Women are bound to relations and they can not achieve spiritual enlightment through meditation anyways.
Best advice would be to calm down and concentrate on family.
My honest advice to you would be to keep some distant to that lady.
Not a popular opinion, but I do not care anymore.
I've never heard that about Females and Enlightenment, I'm not inclined to believe it though!
Calming down generally is good advice or course as is giving whatever opinion you want!