Multidharma:
A New Map of Awakening for 21st Century Spiritual Explorers
By Pierce Salguero
MULTIDHARMA IN PRACTICE
Multidharma is primarily a tool for orienting oneself in the awakening process. Its main advantages come from its ability to describe the spiritual territory in a new way, and not necessarily from prescribing any particular way of moving through it. That being said, I do think that there are a few benefits that this model offers as a framework for spiritual practice that I’d like to share. For the most part, this chapter is addressed to practitioners, but I’ll also make some comments addressing spiritual teachers and guides below.
First, some general comments about practice methods and timing. While some traditions prescribe fixed norms about these questions, as with most things, I feel like this is a matter of personal preference and would advise following whatever approach feels to be calling you at any given time. While some people benefit most from rigorous step-by-step instructions, others find they can just “sink into” or “sit with” whatever experience they are currently having. Still others find themselves moving down the threads naturally and effortlessly with little or no practice whatsoever. Moreover, you might find yourself fluctuating between periods when more structure and effort feel highly rewarding and periods when intentionally doing anything seems to be the very antithesis of what is called for. Such things are variable, so stick with what feels most alive in the moment without getting fixated on finding the “one right way.”
I have written more about these kinds of general concerns in my previous book, A Lamp Unto Yourself. There, I also introduced a whole suite of spiritual exercises — a basic “spiritual toolkit” — that also is featured here. Let’s not rehash that advice here. Instead, let’s jump right into what makes the Multidharma approach different or unique as a toolkit for navigating the territory of the awakening process.
Navigating the Territory
While most established traditions and spiritual frameworks prescribe particular ways of navigating the awakening process, in my opinion, the most effective practice is to orient toward the central dynamic that lies at the very core of the thread(s) you happen to be working with at any given time. There are many techniques — both tried-and-true traditional ones as well as modern ones — that can be helpful for opening and deepening different threads. The central dynamic to tune into for the emptiness thread, for example, is deconstruction, dereification, or seeing through conceptual overlays and frameworks. This might be done through formal practices like mindfulness, Vipassana, Zen meditation, Advaita-style inquiry, or other techniques that deconstruct conceptual objects in a targeted way. That being said, any kind of practice that emphasizes paying attention closely to phenomenal experience and curiously scrutinizing exactly how it all works can be helpful in deepening along this thread.
In general, emptiness thread practices are of the neti-neti variety: you inspect what seems to be real aiming to realize that it is actually impermanent, constructed, illusory, or nonexistent. While working in this vein, certain styles of practice advise that you look for some deeper layer of reality underneath what is being deconstructed. But if you want to keep moving down the thread, this newfound truth should only ever be considered a temporary waystation. For example, if you find yourself saying “I thought I was me but now I realize that I am awareness,” you have seen through the grosser concept of the self but you are reifying a subtler concept called “awareness.” It’s now time to turn the power of deconstruction on this next seemingly real layer and investigate if it’s actually a real thing. In this way, you continue moving deeper and deeper toward the total dereification of all constructs.
In contrast to emptiness, the dynamic of the oneness thread is all about unification, blending, merging, and nonseparation. Deepening into this thread can involve all kinds of traditional structured techniques of meditation, prayer, mantras, chanting, visualization, and so forth. Some common examples from Asian traditions include metta bhavana, tonglen, guru yoga, offering rituals, and surrendering practice. As before, some people will find themselves sinking in in a more organic fashion or even deepening spontaneously down the thread without the need to practice anything in particular.
Along the way, you might apply an inquiry into the non-separation of specific objects, directly evaluating whether or not they are included in the field of oneness, love, or divinity you are experiencing. For example, if it’s easy to sense a field of compassion that includes your loved ones or even “all beings,” does that field include a specific enemy? How about an abuser? How about your wounded inner child or your deepest fear? Whatever it is, when you find something that is not included in the unity, apply the practices you are using and see if there really is a boundary or a border anywhere between what’s included and what’s not. Is it true that this object remains in opposition or separate from the whole?
The dynamic of the energy thread is about dissolving what seems solid into a flickering, fluxing, alive, pulsating vibration. Working with this thread can involve traditional Asian styles of energy cultivation including yoga, tai-chi, qigong, and various types of breathwork. The Chinese model of qi, Indian prana, Tibetan loong, and the models of other practice systems are, in my view, all potentially valid templates or blueprints for visualizing and skillfully working with energies. Plus, there are countless other examples from Western practice systems that I am less familiar with personally, but that I know can be just as effective. No need to get hung up on which one particular system is right or true. So long as the goal of the practice is to point you toward having the actual embodied experience of energy for yourself, it will eventually lead to deepening down the energy thread. In the end, all of these frameworks will be transcended anyhow, so clinging to a fixed ontological viewpoint about energy only gets in the way of deepening into this thread. So, just pick a system and dive in.
Whatever framework you choose, the most essential skill, in my opinion, is learning to ground strong fluctuations in energy so that you are not overwhelmed or incapacitated by them. Learning to balance and direct energies in your body and mind in order to support deepening into this thread while keeping yourself safe and balanced is an additional capacity that is honed over time. The point of it all is to increasingly experience all of reality as pulsing, fluxing energetics without any sticking points or resistance anywhere in the system.
Finally, the dynamic of the psyche thread is all about welcoming and surrendering to the previously unknown dimensions of progressively deeper layers of the psyche. Different people will benefit by engaging with different tools when working with this thread, depending on what’s arising and how they understand it. Some popular options include trauma-focused therapies, awareness-based coping mechanisms, body-based somatic techniques, Jungian styles of depth psychology, Internal Family Systems, shamanic rituals, vision quests, trance dancing, dreamwork, dark retreat, psychedelic-assisted therapies, imaginal work, and artistic creativity.
Each of these has radically different built-in assumptions, theoretical structures, and practical approaches. But, whatever practice system you resonate with, the main point is to liberate each layer of the unconscious to fully express itself without needing to be bottled up, held at bay, or swept under the rug. If you’re working with a psyche-thread practice that is based on movement, that means you are giving your body the freedom to take over and move in the ways that it wants to without interference from the mind or ego. If you’re working with visualization- or vision-based techniques, it means the picture-making function of the mind has the same autonomy to freely project whatever images lie latent in the psyche. If you’re working with techniques that center on words, you are freeing the word-making function of the mind to say things that have been heretofore unspoken. If you’re working with dreams, you are freeing up the dream-maker to express its wisdom in its own ways. And so on and so forth with other kinds of practices. As different facets of the unconscious are freed from the ego’s overweening tendency to micro-manage experience, all of the shadow materials and other previously unconscious elements of the mind can be seen, recognized, and welcomed into the light.
In addition to attuning to these general dynamics, each of the threads also has its own targeted mode of inquiry that I call its “guiding question.” This is a question that goes to the heart of what the thread is all about, and which can carry you from the very beginning of the thread all the way through to the end of its trajectory. If you are working within a tradition that highly values a particular thread, then its lessons and perspectives will be highlighted in its teachings. Since you will have been continually pointed in this direction, you will consequently already know its guiding question well. However, if you are piecing things together yourself, having these explicitly written out concisely might be helpful.
Working with a guiding question can involve an inquiry using thoughts and words, although it doesn’t necessarily have to be so literal. It might also just be a gentle inclining, a tuning in with your body, or an intuitive somatic sensing — whatever works best for you. The guiding questions for each of the threads are:
- Emptiness thread: What still seems real, actual, or present — and is it really so?
- Oneness thread: What still seems to be separate or stand apart from love/divinity/unity — and is it really so?
- Energy thread: What still seems solid, static, or non-dynamic — and is it really so?
- Psyche thread: What still needs to be controlled, is not fully surrendered to, is not fully welcomed —and is it really so?
There are an infinite number of variations on these questions that you may discover, and whatever version of this question works best for you is fine. The point is to find what effectively leads you deeper and deeper into the thread you want to explore.
As we discussed in the previous chapter, deepening further into more than one thread will likely mean that they start to braid together and eventually integrate. No doubt at times this will be glorious, and at others it will be quite challenging. When navigating these processes, it can be helpful to continually modify your practice, emphasizing techniques that help you to sink into or deepen down into whichever thread is most active at any given moment. As different threads come to the fore, keep deconstructing, unifying, dissolving, or welcoming; keep your eye on shifts in the braiding process so you can marshal appropriate resources and tools; and savor the moments where you feel like integration is starting to happen.
During braiding and integration, you can continue to use any of the individual guiding questions mentioned above when a given thread is in the foreground. If it feels right and timely, you can also implement multithreaded guiding questions that are specially formulated to move toward integration:
- For integrating seemingly incommensurable threads: These dimensions of awakening seem so different, incompatible, incommensurable with one another — but is it really so?
- For integrating of daily life with awakening: What aspects of my everyday life still seem separate from awakening, untransformed by my realizations — and are they really so?
Later, when integration is complete and the threads are ready to start releasing, the guiding questions that once provided valuable compasses throughout the awakening process aren’t necessarily effective any longer. It’s now much, much simpler: the more acceptance of what is, the more the whole system just unwinds itself naturally. If there’s anything at all to do during the release process, it is simply to relax the body and mind and let things happen naturally. Thus, the guiding question, if there is one, could only be:
- What concepts, ontologies, identities, and ways of seeing and being have I built up around this thread — and what would happen if I dropped them?
Awakening vs Healing
While the social media version of spirituality often exclusively focuses on love and light, every person who experiences an authentic awakening soon enough realizes that difficult experiences invariably will arise at various times. A lot of these challenges have to do with unhealed psychological wounds and other deep-seated conditioning related to protection, safety, and control. Thus healing is often an important part of the awakening process.
While they are interrelated, I think it’s worth making a clear distinction between healing and awakening. The overlaps in terminology between these two realms might potentially be confusing. For example, the term “energy” is often used in the context of healing practices like acupuncture, reiki, pranayama, and other techniques that work to open or clear stuck patterns of sensation in the body in order to optimize mental and physical wellbeing. These practices are fantastic, and I fully support engaging in them. However, this is all entirely different from the energy thread per se. An energy healer may be able to work with qi or pranaskillfully to help others — and patients may be able to gain insight into how the bodymind works by engaging in these practices — but unless there’s that radical shift in identity, perception, and worldview I outlined in the very first chapter, then by my definition it has nothing to do with awakening per se.
You can make the same distinction between therapeutic work on the psyche versus an awakening process that involves the psyche thread. Going to a certain kind of healer (whether a psychologist, a shaman, a past-life reader, or any other type) to repair the psyche, to strengthen or support the self, or to work on past wounds and traumas is fabulous, and everyone should do it. However, this is again something entirely separate from that marked shift in identity, perception, and worldview that are hallmarks of the awakening process. For me, the minimum criteria for anything to be called a thread is that it must involve those three shifts and a developmental trajectory that deepens into the insights that result from those shifts.
These distinctions are important to make to counteract the myth, which is pervasive in many spiritual communities, that awakening is going to magically erase all of your troubles. Profound spiritual experiences can often spontaneously heal some energetic and psychological issues, but they usually also surface deeper energetic or psychological knots that can make the awakening process quite challenging for a time. Energy thread awakenings can be volatile with long-term health consequences, and psyche thread awakenings are often initially experienced as mentally destabilizing rather than therapeutic. Emptiness and oneness can be overwhelming, disorienting, or destabilizing as well.
When you find yourself enmeshed in the rockier part of the territory, it is often smart to take a break from awakening-related practices and to redirect your attention to healing. This might involve clearing your subtle energy system or doing some therapeutic work focused on uncovering, processing, and welcoming unconscious materials and conditioning. Temporarily pivoting to healing in this way can often be more beneficial than trying to “push through” to deeper states or experiences on a thread. Indeed, sometimes you will find that taking a break and making some space for healing is the very thing that was needed to move deeper in the awakening process.
This book doesn’t have much to say about the details of specific healing practices, which is a whole complex topic in its own right (some basic practices are covered in chapter 3 of A Lamp Unto Yourself as well as here). That being said, the Multidharma model can offer some helpful meta-level suggestions for how to navigate challenging situations. First and foremost, because it validates individual differences, the model can validate and help to attune you to paying attention to what is happening right now. Instead of wishing your experience was like someone else’s, this model encourages you to maintain an open-minded willingness to surrender to the awakening process that is here at this very moment — whatever that looks like for you. Sometimes just accepting how things are is all it takes for stormy weather to start to clear.
Moreover, as your familiarity with the Multidharma model grows, you will undoubtedly gain more appreciation for how issues arising along the way can be understood and addressed in complementary, multithreaded ways. You’ll learn to weave threads together in ways that avoid the pitfalls or challenges that can entrap or entangle practitioners who have fewer tools at their disposal. For example, you’ll avoid the temptation to bypass the complexity of the psyche by always retreating into emptiness or plowing yourself into oneness — choosing instead to engage with unconscious material on its own terms. Likewise, you’ll know that you can’t quell concrete physical problems by imagining “it’s all just energy” or “it’s all just conditioning.” You’ll clearly appreciate that you need to balance your practice of meditation with psychotherapy, for example, or your practice of devotion with breathwork, or your shamanic work with nondual inquiry. You’ll understand that awakening is a multifaceted process and that all the answers cannot be found in just one set of techniques, ideas, or teachings.
The four dynamics and guiding questions for each thread also can help to identify or isolate four distinct approaches to any difficulties that may arise. We can apply the principal dynamics of deconstruction, unification, dissolving, and welcoming/surrendering to any challenge, sinking in or inclining toward whichever perspective might be most helpful in moving things forward. In the thick of the braiding process, we might meet challenges with a guiding question that is the combination of all the others:
- Is this challenging experience really, actually, present? Is it really something separate from love or divinity? Is it really so solid, static, and non-dynamic? Is it really so unresolvable, unacceptable, and unwelcomeable?
In addition to the dynamics and perspectives of the four spiritual threads, we can also have in our toolbox a whole range of everyday approaches related to the daily life thread — those conventional interventions that are available more broadly that have no specific connection with awakening. We can run our concerns by whatever medical doctors, physical therapists, life coaches, or other professionals might have beneficial tools or perspectives to share. We can ask ourselves:
- Is there anything practical that I can do to help me to address or improve this situation in the here and now?
To take a concrete example of what this multifaceted approach might look like in action, let’s consider a common challenge that arises during awakening: dealing with unpleasant or traumatic memories. From within the emptiness thread’s worldview, traumas are unskillful thought patterns that need to be seen through and released. When they arise, they can be deconstructed using techniques like vipassana meditation, Advaita-style self-inquiry, awareness-based practices, or other emptiness-centric ways of producing detachment and equanimity toward unpleasant sensations by separating them out from the mental story that accompanies them. On the other hand, a oneness approach to that same trauma would be to melt it into a field of love, forgiveness, acceptance, or divine grace — or to see its fundamental non-separation from those things in the first place. The energy thread offers a third approach, which involves seeing trauma as energetic flows or vibrations, which one can then learn to dissolve, dynamically clear, or integrate into the system using movement, breathing exercises, visualization, and other kinds of techniques. Meanwhile, the psyche thread leads us in yet another direction, accepting traumatic memories as integral parts of who we are and welcoming these wounded parts of us back into wholeness. Finally, in addition to the four spiritual threads, there are also the practical everyday approaches to trauma including techniques such as conventional psychotherapy, EMDR, medication, good diet, improved sleep, and other common interventions that work by rebuilding and strengthening the physical body and the conventional narrative self.
By understanding the threads as offering these separate but equally valid approaches for working with trauma, we have greatly enriched the possibilities for engaging with challenging situations in a multitude of skillful ways. Instead of having only one kind of approach coming from a single direction, we now have a whole menu of diverse techniques and orientations to draw from. Instead of a hammer that sees everything as a nail, we now have a collection of screwdrivers, pliers, and other tools that can allow us to more skillfully meet a wider range of challenges.
All of that being said, it’s also true that for some people the quest to become completely healed can become its own trap. At certain points, the awakening process can seem to be completely dominated by huge dumps of painful conditioning or energetic residues that require a laborious process of clean-up. As one does this work, it may feel like one is getting progressively lighter, or like an ever more harrowing rollercoaster, or even like an eternal slog through a dark night of the soul. Eventually, however, as one becomes clearer and clearer, the last bits of woundedness can seem to loom large or stand out in increasingly obvious and uncomfortable ways. At this point, chasing after every last iota to finally “heal it all” so you can settle into a state of perfection can become an obsession. You may not realize that it is the drive to be fully healed itself that is the problem. Letting go of the fantasy that perfection must be attained, that every pain must be vanquished, and that all suffering must be transcended, can itself be a crucial realization.
One lesson of the psyche thread is that the complete elimination of conditioning — whether understood as psychological, karmic, or energetic patterns — is neither possible nor desirable. Many traditions talk about the total transcendence of the human condition, attaining some kind of blank or “unconditioned” state, but this is an idealization or a myth that produces unreasonable expectations. For sure, many unskillful or suffering-inducing patterns of conditioning can be healed during the awakening process. Some of these spontaneously resolve themselves just by seeing them, while others might require some healing work or even lots of dedicated attention. However, there are huge swaths of conditioning that are integral parts of the system, where removing or purifying them is not what is called for.
This inescapable baked-in conditioning includes particular ways that our bodyminds have been shaped and sculpted by our experiences, our genetics, our ancestry, and our sociocultural contexts. This conditioning also may include psychological wounds that are so deeply etched into our ways of experiencing the world that they simply cannot be rewired. What changes with awakening is not necessarily these deep-seated patterns of conditioning themselves, but our relationship to them. While they may never be eradicated, these types of conditioning can become released from identification, fixation, and resistance, becoming free to spontaneously express themselves. As they are disentangled from the ego’s desire to control them, we might even find that in some way these aspects of conditioning turn out to be assets or gifts.
With the release of the threads, even the notion of relating to conditioning in these more awakened ways disappears. Someone who accidentally places their hand on a hot stove doesn’t need to create a whole belief system around who they are, what reality is, and what the meaning of life is before they pull their hand away — the action just happens spontaneously as a result of having natural human reflexes to pain. Other aspects of human conditioning can similarly become free to operate just as autonomously and authentically, without needing premeditation or monitoring — even when they involve uncomfortable feelings. The whole bodymind can become free to just be itself, however it might be, wounds and all.
With thread release, there really is no option other than to just live life in a kind of flow state with conditioning running on autopilot. But, crucially, even this is not an endpoint in terms of healing, change, or growth for the individual person. There is a relaxation of directing, managing, or orchestrating, but the bodymind continues to learn, to adapt, to respond to the environment. There is more and more spontaneity, more and more relaxation, less and less resistance, less and less fixation. But there’s never an arrival at any kind of final perfectly healed state. On the contrary, there’s a realization that that desire, ideal, or expectation has been part of a spiritual fantasy, and it can now be released.
A Note on Spiritual Emergencies
When the awakening process inevitably unearths your deepest core wounds and traumas, the result is often a seemingly impenetrable wall of existential terror (or, maybe, multiple walls on different occasions). This kind of fear pretty much always has to do with your resistance to something that you perceive as fundamentally threatening, the last gasp of the ego trying desperately to maintain the illusion of control. Even as you have surrendered everything else to the awakening process, you have held out one last piece that you feel simply cannot be released or relinquished. What is being gripped onto is different for different people. It might be the fear of going mad, the fear of death, the fear that one’s ordinary life will fall apart, the fear of losing one’s family, the fear of giving up a cherished idea, or some other fear that strikes to the core of one’s being and seems simply nonnegotiable.
No matter how terrifying it may seem, even the deepest existential fear can be dealt with in the same way as all the other tangles and knots you have met along the way. While remaining gentle to avoid overwhelming or traumatizing the whole system, patiently and persistently sink into the fear itself and see if it’s really, actually present; if it’s really something separate from love or divinity; if it’s really so solid, static, and non-dynamic; if it’s really so unresolvable, unacceptable, and unwelcomeable. Seeing waves of fear as merely sensations accompanied by thoughts, or seeing how fear is ultimately inseparable from love, or seeing how fear is an fluctuating energetic pulsation that can never be pinned down, or welcoming fear as a core part of what it means to be a conditioned and vulnerable human, or even everyday approaches such as deep breathing, physical exercise, and herbal medicines for anxiety — all of these approaches, or a combination of them, can usually ameliorate the situation.
However, occasionally, existential fear and other extreme spiritual experiences (perhaps particularly those on the psyche thread) can overwhelm your capacities or resources. If you are feeling this way, taking a step back from spiritual practice and engaging in grounding, healing, and relaxation practices for a while is highly recommended. You can find some specific practices to include when designing a “spiritual first-aid kit” in A Lamp Unto Yourself as well as here. You also shouldn’t hesitate to reach out and get help. There are organizations that can provide a community to support you in navigating acute crises, as well as awakened therapists, energy workers, and other individuals who specialize in these matters.
SOME RESOURCES FOR SPIRITUAL EMERGENCIES • American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (www.aciste.org) • Cheetah House (www.cheetahhouse.org) • Spiritual Emergence Network (www.spiritualemergence.org) • Spiritual Crisis Network (www.spiritualcrisisnetwork.uk) • Spiritual Emergence Anonymous (www.spiritualemergenceanonymous.org) |
All of that being said, sometimes relief is simply a matter of having better context for what is happening to you, and here is where Multidharma’s approach can really be helpful. Researchers in psychology and other fields have repeatedly pointed out how critical it is for people to have context and feel supported when navigating intense or challenging spiritual experiences. Many people have spontaneous awakenings with zero background knowledge or community whatsoever. Maybe they went to a mindfulness class or a yoga class at the gym to reduce their stress, and suddenly they started having experiences like the disintegration of the self, kundalini, seeing spirits, or other unexpected spiritual phenomena. Maybe they were just sitting at their desk in the office when all of this came crashing down on them out of the blue. If someone has no context for what is happening to them when their identity, perception, and worldview get turned upside down, it can understandably be alarming, extremely confusing, and potentially psychologically destabilizing.
Another possibility is that seekers practicing in a particular spiritual tradition are expecting only to have the kinds of experiences that are valued by their community. What happens when things unexpectedly go sideways? Maybe it’s a Christian who is moving along the oneness thread but is suddenly cast into a void where God and the world are rendered completely meaningless. Perhaps it’s a Buddhist meditator who is adept at exploring emptiness, but suddenly their body is taken over by a serpent-like energy that floods them with overwhelming sexual drives. Or, it’s a yogi who is an expert at cultivating energetic bliss but is suddenly blindsided by visions of massively traumatic memories that had been repressed for many years.
When your own experiences don’t make sense within the familiar models of your tradition’s or community’s belief system, it is common to spiral into fear or into thinking that you’ve going crazy, and the unsupportive reactions of your community can make things even worse. Again, we know from the research that lack of context, community, or support is not only disheartening but actually quite dangerous. Many people who find themselves in these kinds of situations often think they are having a mental health crisis. They may seek out medical care, pharmaceutical medication, even hospitalization, with the result that they come to feel that their experiments in spirituality were a failure or even a source of trauma.
Might it have been easier if such people had a more encompassing model of awakening in advance that was able to provide some orientation instead of making them feel like they were alone out in No Man’s Land? I certainly think in many cases that it would.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that changing one’s map is all it ever takes to avert spiritual crises, and I’m not saying that there isn’t the possibility of true mental health emergencies arising. However, I do believe that for those who are experiencing a spiritual emergency, a map that recognizes and validates more of the range of phenomena that can take place in awakening is urgently needed. When you feel completely lost, a map with a little arrow saying “You Are Here” often is all you need to get back on track.
Teachers
While I always emphasize discovering your own unique path of awakening, I’m not suggesting going it alone every step of the way. Multidharma is in no way rejecting the idea of spiritual teachers. In fact, one of the chief advantages of this model is that it can help you to become more intentional in how you seek out advice, trainings, and teachings when you want to.
For more basic advice concerning ethical student-teacher relationships and the importance of protecting your own sovereignty when you seek guidance, see my discussion in A Lamp Unto Yourself. The main point I want to make here is that understanding the difference between the threads means you no longer need to imagine that one individual teacher will fulfill all your needs, and you can now instead think in terms of spiritual specialization. Once we understand that spiritual teachers are not omniscient and that they are usually more aligned with one thread than another, we become empowered to seek out the best advice for what we need in any given moment. When we’re navigating the emptiness thread, for example, we can consult a teacher who emphasizes this particular area of the territory in their teaching. Likewise, when we’re exploring the depths of oneness, energy, or the psyche, we can seek out specialists in those areas. We shouldn’t expect a teacher who is steeped in a different thread to be the best guide for where we are right now. That would be like expecting a plumber to also be good at fixing motorbikes: of course, it could be the case, but we shouldn’t assume it will be.
If you are a spiritual teacher, coach, or guide yourself, this same understanding can help you to identify the scope of your own expertise. Recognizing that your own teaching centers around certain threads (or parts of certain threads) allows you to appreciate that there may be whole swathes of the spiritual territory that lie beyond your focus. Understanding that you specialize in opening a particular thread rather than another, or that you focus on deepening and know less about integration, or whatever your specific case may be, allows you to appreciate that there are people who might be better suited than you to advise students in certain parts of the territory. Then, if one of your students is experiencing something that doesn’t fit well with your teachings, you can recognize that this is not necessarily an indication that they’re off base. It may just be that they are exploring a type of awakening that you know less about, and that they will now need different kind of support than you are able to offer.
I think in an ideal world teachers would develop referral networks, working alongside others with divergent specializations that complement their own strengths. This would enable the creation of new types of spiritual communities, and potentially — if it’s not too grandiose for me to say so — an entirely new spiritual culture. At present, I find the prevailing norms in the spiritual scene are frequently marred by dogmatism and fragmentation. Groups coalesce around specific teachers, teachings, traditions, or practices. They enforce rigid ontologies and hierarchies around particular aspects of their practice and doctrine. Their idealized and mythologized heroes set an impossibly high bar that they judge people by. Everyone outside the group is seen as being deluded or wrong.
A community that took Multidharma to heart, on the other hand, would be totally different. Rather than a centralized, competitive, or cultish guild with a rigidly dogmatic approach, there would be a pragmatic openness to a variety of techniques and teachings. There would be an interest to provide students with a range of meaningful orientations and contexts while honoring the intrinsic sovereignty and independent trajectories of each individual person. There would be a celebration of each tradition’s strengths and contributions while maintaining a focus on helping each student to navigate the territory for themselves.
On a practical note, anyone who intends to utilize Multidharma to help others to navigate the awakening territory will need to be able to assess which threads people are oriented toward and where they are in their own individual awakening process. The more familiar you are with this model, the more readily you will be able to do so. To me, the key is to listen to the particular language people use when describing their experiences. Each thread has its own underlying phenomenology, and it’s important to pick up on that.
When someone is describing their experience, you should look past any doctrinal terms they might use, such as “Brahman,” “Pristine Awareness,” “the Ground of Being,” “True Nature,” “Buddha Nature,” or what have you. Listen instead for words and metaphors conveying a sense of emptiness, such as “seeing through,” “collapsing,” “hollowing out,” or the “mirage-like nature” or “non-arising” of experiences. Listen for phrases eliciting the feeling of oneness, such as “unifying,” “merging,” “intimacy,” “being held,” or “being absorbed into.” Listen for mention of “energy,” “dynamism,” “creativity,” “exchange,” “vibration,” “pulsation,” and “potentiality.” Listen for talk about “discovering lost portions of the self,” the “unconscious becoming conscious,” “fracturing into pieces,” “fulfilling a deeply held mission,” or realizing that “one must embrace one’s wounds in order to attain one’s full innate potential.”
If you pick up on more than one of these clusters of impressions, listen to how the person speaks about the relationship between them. Are these different flavors of realization in tension with, oscillating, or temporarily obscuring one another? Is there confusion or anxiety about how they fit together? Or, are they coalescing into a coherent picture? Are they being seen as different perspectives on a reality that is multidimensional and can be seen in various ways? Finally, listen for any signs that the threads have been released. Is there a not knowing or a not caring about profound experiences, truths, and realizations that were once so centrally important to the process? Is there a dropping away of interest in the whole topic of awakening or spirituality altogether?
Attuning to patterns of speech underlying people’s descriptions of their experiences — and really digging into the phenomenology as opposed to the ontology — will be invaluable in helping you to determine the best form of guidance.