What we have here, in essence, is the enormously popular and deeply influential New Age notion of anything goes: anything achieves philsophical or, better, epistemological status if I "experience it for myself"; and if I "experience it for myself" in an "altered state of consciousness," why, then, so much the better. It would be difficult, of course, to over-stress the vapidity, the vacuity of such a notion, yet it is a notion that resides at the theoretical centre of New Age thiking. Imagine the poor wretch at the inquisitorial stake, on the verge of incineration, crying out his innocence to the hooded executioner and receiving in return the reply, "Silence, sinner, I know you're the Devil; I've experienced you personally as the Devil on several occasions, and once when I was in an altered state of consciousness." Not only is such thinking philosophically bankrupt and undeserving of professional respect, it is dangerous. It closes debate before debate can get started: "I experience this for myself, baby, so shut up!" Only the converted can participate -- one at a time. Each "theoretician" inahbits a self-contained, monadic capsule from which he determines the authenticity of his own experience, and by extrapolation the truth of the world or the nature of reality, without logical or epistemological or informational criteria beyond his own subjectivity, without intermeshing social, communicational, observational materials, without rigorous discussion and dialogue -- in short, without any standards for judgement. The result: epistemological kick-the-can, a philosophical world in which every position is of equal value and therefore no position is of any particular value -- no matter how diligently, how skillfully it is presented. "Well, man, I think I see what you mean about the many ways an experience can be interpreted, but this was still real for me, OK?" This is among the very worst aspects of New Age thinking -- I mean from an ideational angle, and it attests psychoanalytically to the New Ager's absolute unwillingness to probe the meaning of his wish-fulfilling thoughts and sensations, the ones that restore him to the before-separation-world of symbiotic fusion and omnipotence. Any fool is free to jump in with his "story," and no one dare chllange its "personal" veracity. This is the tyranny of "doctrine" in reverse, the tyranny of "doctrine" from the other side: "I experienced this, so f____ off!" Every person, every egomaniacal guru, every mystic, every doper, every "beginning shaman," every borderline schizophrenic in every borderline cult becomes a shaper of reality, a pronouncer of the truth.

I found the following quote to be extremly interesting, and extremly good in synthesizing my feeling respect to the general new age mentality that I found in cheap spirituality. It originally comes from Faber, this quote being from p. 116 of New Age Thinking. But I found it in the Blog of Vyoma. A couple of years ago.

It's all very well to complain about the absurdity of the human 'condition' - but unless this guy has some way to improve the situation, he's just another New Age Thinker who thinks his experiences are incredibly valid, just because they're his.

People have lived for thousands of years in multiple cultures without induging in the excessive relativism that comes out of saying: "I experienced this for myself, and so it is true".

I like to walk alone on country paths, vibrant plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child--our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

-Thich Nhat Hanh, "Miracle of Mindfulness"

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Anyone who, even for a second, feels a pure, clear confidence on hearing the truth will experience immeasurable happiness. Why? Because, at that moment, that person is not caught up in the concept of a self or a living being or a life span. He is not caught up in concepts about the world, nor is he caught up in concepts about nothingness. He does not take any notice of the idea that this is a sign, or this or that is not a sign.

For if you are caught up in ideas, then you will be caught up in the self. And even if you are caught up in ideas about nothingness, you will still be caught up in the self. That's why we should not get attached to the belief that things either exist or do not exist. This is the hidden meaning when I say that my teachings are a raft to be abandoned when you see true being.

-Diamond Sutra
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The most productive approach to meditation that I have used involves taking whatever I experience as negative, and employing this “negative” material in meditative exercises. Hence the title of this writing: “Dukkha as fuel for the transformation of the psyche.”

The best definition I have seen for the Buddhist term “Dukkha” is “unsatisfactoriness.” Let us abbreviate this and refer to Dukkha as “unsat.”

Experiences are registered in awareness as being unsat when they make us feel ill at ease, or worse. This feeling probably originates in certain neuro-emotional centers in the brain; perhaps in the amygdala. I think meditation transforms these neuro-emotional centers (NEC) so that they become refractory to those stimuli/events which had formally caused unsat to arise. For example, in the past I may have become quite distressed when my car was hit and damaged. With the transformation of my NEC I now feel little or no distress when such an event transpires.

My exercise specifically involves noticing whenever I have a dysphoric psycho-visceral feeling and then making a conscious effort to completely feel the depth of the feeling and attempting to remain deeply with that feeling as long as possible. I don’t try to escape the “bad” feeling by trying to “talk it away.”

For complex reasons, which I cannot begin to explain, this exercise appears to have transformed my NEC such that I experience negative feelings much less then before. The work has greatly reduced the frequency of incidences of my experiencing unsat. It has resulted in my more often feeling good about life, more often “enjoying” what used to be taken to be negative events, and it has caused positive feelings to arise within me toward nearly everything I am aware of. I am moving toward what the mystic Zhuangzi calls the ability to “embrace all things.”

To be able to embrace all things would be a rather handy aptitude, for thereafter nothing would cause distress, nothing would result in dukkha. To reach this state would be what the Buddhists call finding “the wish-fulfilling gem.” It is what the daoists call sovereign contentment (zile). With sovereign contentment my contentment no longer depends on the nature of what happens, but exclusively on my ability to process it in an effective manner.

And so paradoxically, with this cultivation technique I am using, dukkha is utilized to eliminate dukkha. Finally, just to make sure I don’t mislead some readers, I want to mention that I did not originate this meditative technique. Although little known, it is ancient. It may be what Laozi refers to when he says, “I let myself be sick with sickness (dukkha?) and so now I am no longer sick.”

Then I started practicing Taoism,
and after 2 years I became an immortal.
I shall not bore you with the details.

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.
- Richard M. Nixon

One way to measure progress is to notice how you respond to meanness. Do you get upset with inconsiderate people, or simply process and respond to what they do simply as neutral data? For example, someone takes a swing at your head, you duck, perhaps punch and attack them, perhaps retreat, but all without angrily thinking "what an @#%$!" (And of course most "punches" are verbal attacks).

If you find yourself stagnating at some point in the future I recommend something that is not found in the classical texts of daoism: petitioning. This means petitioning a force that supposedly lies outside (or inside) your normal self. This could be visualized as a god, or could simply be characterized as your inner-most being. For some strange reason this practice is very effective, even for those of us who don't believe such forces exists. The practice probably sets in motion some kind of neurological dynamic that keys into the behavior of the natural world. Another way of saying it is that prayer works even if there are no gods to hear the prayers. (Not that I know whether or not such things exist.)

Upon being shown the Great Wall of China, Nixon said, "This is, indeed, a great wall."