Multidharma

1

Awakening is a real phenomenon. These kinds of experiences are extremely well-documented in religious and mystical literature, in centuries of autobiography from around the world, and even in a wide range of scientific studies. Sometimes they are made out to be impossibly exalted states that only sages can experience, or they are denigrated as mental health crises, but neither of these extremes are true. Awakening experiences happen all the time to all sorts of people, both inside and outside of traditional spiritual practice frameworks.

2

No religion has a monopoly on spiritual interpretation. Awakening and spiritual growth have been valued across cultures throughout history, but different religious traditions have prioritized and specialized in particular kinds of experiences or insights. Religious dogma notwithstanding, no tradition has the single correct answer to what it all means. Although different traditions each claim to teach the truth, they are all just models.

3

Maps are not the territory. Spiritual maps and models created by different traditions to explain awakening never can fully capture the intricacies of human experience. Models are built out of words, and there’s no way they could ever accurately represent the lived reality you experience as an individual. Moreover, because modern spiritual seekers are practicing eclectic blends of spirituality within a global, diverse, and modern context, most awakenings are unlikely to conform to traditional maps or models.

4

Everyone’s awakening processes is uniquely individual. People have varying talents, capacities, and inclinations toward certain types of awakening experiences — just as in sports, the arts, or other endeavors. These differences are natural, since all human beings are different. What each person experiences in an awakening process is shaped by their individual practice frameworks, psychology, culture, social setting, expectations, beliefs, and a million other idiosyncrasies. This means that what one person experiences in awakening cannot taken as a perfect template for anyone else.

5

Multidharma does not claim to be true. The four-threaded model of Multidharma isn’t a replacement for traditional maps, but rather a complementary perspective. It attempts to make sense of different traditional approaches to spirituality, to provide more flexibility in how we might approach practice, and to prioritize and validate individual differences. Since no map can capture the truth, it’s just as provisional as any other. Only use it if you find these novel perspectives to be helpful.

6

Spiritual practice should support you as an individual. Awakening experiences can reliably be evoked by certain types of practices; however, not everyone responds in the same way to the same techniques. A supportive framework for spiritual growth will empower you to mature into an approach that is a good fit for your own unique needs and natural orientations, instead of coercing you to conform to a particular narrow dogma or practice system.

7

Hold everything lightly. Ultimately, all ideas, perspectives, orientations, phenomena, identities, and beliefs around awakening will be revealed as mere conceptualizations or mental overlays. So, there’s no point in clinging to them, lording them over other people, or getting rigidly doctrinal about any of this. There’s no point in fixating on any particular experience; any particular identity or vantage-point; any particular ontological framework or belief about reality; any particular map, tradition, teacher, practice, system, or notion of awakening. (This also applies to the Multidharma model itself.)