Seeking guidance on my spiritual journey

[ErickManifesting777]

Hey everyone,

I'm new here (well, kind of—I’ve been around before but never really got involved), and I’m looking to connect with like-minded people. My journey into spirituality has been growing, and I feel like I’m at a point where I want to dive deeper but don’t know where to start.

So far, I’ve been focused on manifesting, grounding, using affirmations, and keeping my energy protected and cleansed. I also pray to God, my ancestors, and spirit guides, and I feel like they’ve been guiding me in different ways. I’ve experimented with things like charging water under the moon, affirmation spells, and working with energy, and while it’s all been powerful, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.

I’m really drawn to the idea of making spirituality not just a practice but possibly a career, but with so many paths out there, I’m not sure where to focus my energy next. I’d love to hear from anyone who has insight, advice, or recommendations on where to go from here. What helped you elevate your practice? Are there specific areas of study, rituals, or disciplines you think would be worth exploring?

Looking forward to hearing from you all and learning more.

 

[Vandheer]

I’m really drawn to the idea of making spirituality not just a practice but possibly a career, but with so many paths out there, I’m not sure where to focus my energy next. I’d love to hear from anyone who has insight, advice, or recommendations on where to go from here.

Not much there to say imo, you are putting in some good work with the above things you have mentioned.

I understand the feeling of scratching the surface, but when time will come for bigger and better things, those fundamentals you are practicing now will be the ground you are going to stand on for them. Until then, going with the assumption you are not reading much about it, you could do some reading and see what paths resonate with you. From your post, Neville Goddard could be a good first stop.

 

[ErickManifesting777]

Appreciate that, Vandheer. That actually makes a lot of sense—I guess I just need to trust the process and keep building on the foundation I’ve started. I haven’t read much of Neville Goddard yet, but I’ve heard his name pop up a lot. Any specific book or concept of his you’d recommend starting with? I'm gonna look into his books right now.

 

[Baranova Alya]

If you know how to work with oracles, get yourself diagnosed. Tarot cards can show you which tradition will gladly accept you and help you on your chosen path. It will also show your predisposition to the tradition. You can learn more through meditation, or make a request through a dream. Would you like me to help you? You can write me your real name, and the date of birth, that I had a binding, and I will try to look at the runes.

 

[HoldAll]

Based on my own personal experience, my standard advice to anyone embarking on a spiritual path is learning how to meditate. Many people have no idea how powerful the ability of maintaining an empty mind for a protracted period of time can be. Without it, you can fool yourself into having fake spiritual experiences by inadvertently following the hackneyed narratives defined by books or youtube videos without even noticing for years. My pet peeve here are NewAge-inspired guided 'meditations' where you loll on the couch, listening to affirmations like "I feel the soothing vibrations of universal harmony…", etc. over spaced-out ambient music, designed to give you a warm fuzzy feeling - as long as you got your headphones on. And then what?

Sure, learning how to relax is a good thing but few people ask themselves why they are so tensed up as to need relaxing in the first place. What empty-mind meditation can teach you, among other things, is to dispassionately look at yourself and your emotions - not to 'confront' them as you would do in certain types of shadow work but to calmly observe the tempest raging in your mind without judging and allow it to blow itself out without interfering. After a while you learn how to distinguish between the chimera thrown up by your own over-anxious imagination eager for spiritual experiences and genuine phenomena produced by outside sources by establishing an empty-mind baseline for extrasensory perception, so to speak.

Like I said, it's easy to fool oneself into superficially sensing those 'soothing vibrations of universal harmony' while all the time there's rampant chaos underneath. Mastering empty-mind meditation is difficult but it's well worth the daily effort.

 

[Baranova Alya]

Исходя из моего личного опыта, мой стандартный совет любому, кто встает на духовный путь, — научиться медитировать . Многие люди понятия не имеют, насколько мощной может быть способность поддерживать пустой разум в течение длительного периода времени. Без этого вы можете обмануть себя, получив фальшивые духовные переживания, непреднамеренно следуя избитым историям, определенным в книгах или видео на YouTube, даже не замечая этого в течение многих лет. Моя любимая мозоль здесь — вдохновленные New Age направляемые «медитации», где вы разваливаетесь на диване, слушая утверждения вроде «Я чувствую успокаивающие вибрации вселенской гармонии…» и т. д. под рассеянную эмбиентную музыку, призванную дать вам теплое пушистое чувство — пока вы надеваете наушники. И что потом?

Конечно, учиться расслабляться — это хорошо, но мало кто задается вопросом, почему они так напряжены, что им вообще нужно расслабиться. Чему может научить вас медитация пустого ума, помимо прочего, так это бесстрастному взгляду на себя и свои эмоции — не «конфронтации» с ними, как вы бы делали в определенных типах работы с тенью, а спокойному наблюдению за бурей, бушующей в вашем уме, без осуждения, и позволению ей угаснуть, не вмешиваясь. Через некоторое время вы научитесь различать химеру, созданную вашим собственным чрезмерно тревожным воображением, жаждущим духовных переживаний, и подлинные явления, вызванные внешними источниками, устанавливая, так сказать, базовую линию пустого ума для экстрасенсорного восприятия.

Как я уже сказал, легко обмануть себя, поверхностно ощущая эти «успокаивающие вибрации вселенской гармонии», в то время как внутри все время бушует хаос. Освоить медитацию пустого ума сложно, но это стоит ежедневных усилий.

Oh yes, most meditations, especially those done by questionable people, should, I would say, beware. I remember a few years ago I found a meditation and started practicing it. What was my surprise then, when I became stronger in my magical practice, and realized that through meditation a person connected me to his channel, and my gracious energy went to him. That is, the man was stealing, and the beginners who listened daily gave him their success, health, prosperity and luck. Such an artificial egregore. It was a bit difficult to cut off this channel. On the channel, by the way, there was of course a “protector”, now I'll even find this picture of how I got him out of my field. As you can see, here's the face. Who was guarding the very “channel” that my energy was flowing through. So be careful. After that I meditate either in complete silence, stopping the inner dialog with a special breath. Or I turn on the sounds of the sea, fire, fireplace, sounds of nature.
P.S. I used an old Slavic method of exorcising demons. I cast myself in wax, using additionally elemental magic.

 

[Amadeus]

@Baranova Alya

I read about it. Over there in your country, with the exploding interest in spirituality which probably went even higher when they started mass producing bitva extrasensov. Everybody is suddenly a guru, selling courses, doing something. There was an article saying how certain people are doing what you said.
The guru, leader, gives them practices and then takes all the energy, everything. Expensive courses that offer you the world but in fact give nothing, or gives you something just enough so that you return and sign up for the next courses. The cycle continues. All kinds of weird people.

I think a good way to approach meditation is to use the known traditional methods, like if you take something mantra based, work with the known ones. When there is something really strange being offered, better have some doubts.

I've always sticked to the very traditional ones, Orthodox, Sufi, main Hindu practices.

 

[Baranova Alya]

@Baranova Alya

I read about it. Over there in your country, with the exploding interest in spirituality which probably went even higher when they started mass producing bitva extrasensov. Everybody is suddenly a guru, selling courses, doing something. There was an article saying how certain people are doing what you said.
The guru, leader, gives them practices and then takes all the energy, everything. Expensive courses that offer you the world but in fact give nothing, or gives you something just enough so that you return and sign up for the next courses. The cycle continues. All kinds of weird people.

I think a good way to approach meditation is to use the known traditional methods, like if you take something mantra based, work with the known ones. When there is something really strange being offered, better have some doubts.

I've always sticked to the very traditional ones, Orthodox, Sufi, main Hindu practices.

Oh, yeah, there's a lot of psychics, mediators, and soothsayers out there these days. Funny people. We call them funny “info gypsies” because we associate gypsies with extorting money and selling unnecessary goods.) As for those people who believe, pay a lot of money and think that just like that they will learn magic and other things, we have a cool saying “life is bad without a sucker”. Natural selection of fools in action. No one wants to work day in and day out, even in magic. Meditations, power recruiting, rituals. People want to pay money and wake up young, beautiful, rich, and in bed with a beautiful partner. Ha ha. People who are truly practicing, skilled, they don't alight on instagram, on local social media. Their phone numbers are carefully passed from hand to hand, we have several closed forums where we exchange experiences, share new ideas, thoughts. And of course, everyone is successful and financially independent, without selling courses)))))

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Welcome to the forum!!

I’m really drawn to the idea of making spirituality not just a practice but possibly a career

The practices you've shared are all solid and foundational, but you're right, they do scratch the surface a bit. Life is much more than a career, and the same goes for spirituality. It can radically transform you and how you see existence, which is nessecary if you want to truly interface with it more deeply.

The main things that pushed me early on were curiosity, a dissatisfaction with the debased mundane, and a willingness to burn.

Some advice for your journey would be to understand that there is no path to pick, no tradition to follow. If you align with something established, that'll make it easier, but you can never shirk the responsibility of yourself onto someone else's method. You only ever walk your own Path, and in the end no one but you will be responsible for how far you've evolved/devolved.

A fundamental practice and jumping off point is Zazen. Still the mind, and from there you can do incredible things with it. But above all else you need to get control over your mind & will, otherwise you'll just wind up a whore of Apep.

 

[Konsciencia]

Welcome!!! Yes... meditation is a great start.

 

[Mannimarco]

Hey everyone,

I'm new here (well, kind of—I’ve been around before but never really got involved), and I’m looking to connect with like-minded people. My journey into spirituality has been growing, and I feel like I’m at a point where I want to dive deeper but don’t know where to start.

So far, I’ve been focused on manifesting, grounding, using affirmations, and keeping my energy protected and cleansed. I also pray to God, my ancestors, and spirit guides, and I feel like they’ve been guiding me in different ways. I’ve experimented with things like charging water under the moon, affirmation spells, and working with energy, and while it’s all been powerful, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.

I’m really drawn to the idea of making spirituality not just a practice but possibly a career, but with so many paths out there, I’m not sure where to focus my energy next. I’d love to hear from anyone who has insight, advice, or recommendations on where to go from here. What helped you elevate your practice? Are there specific areas of study, rituals, or disciplines you think would be worth exploring?

Looking forward to hearing from you all and learning more.

Well, you certainly have a good start. You're doing what I should have done at the beginning. Finding a path that you like, which also likes you, is one of the most glaring weaknesses of the occult. Huge numbers of people give up and quit because they can't find a system that fits them. The universe does not seem to be set up to encourage success in this. If anything, it's the opposite.

You could ask for guidance from whoever you're working with, to find a path that fits, see what pops up, do some research into it, then do divination on that path, to see if it will give you what you want, in the way you want it. You could also get that divination confirmed by an objective third party.

Best of luck!