Multidharma

1

Spiritual maps are never the territory. Models are built out of words, and there’s no way they could ever capture the lived reality of awakening. 

2

Everyone’s awakening processes is uniquely individual. 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.

3

Multidharma isn’t a replacement for traditional models, but rather a complementary map that approaches things differently in order to reveal a different perspective. Only use it if you find its novel perspective to be helpful.  

4

Spiritual growth has 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 a monopoly on spiritual development or the single correct answer to what it all means. Although different traditions each claim to teach the truth, they are all just models.

5

People have varying talents, capacities, and inclinations toward certain areas of spirituality — just as in sports, the arts, or other endeavors. These differences are natural, since all human beings are different.

6

Spiritual experiences can reliably be evoked by certain types of practices; however, not everyone responds in the same way to these techniques. A supportive framework for spiritual growth empowers you to develop 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

Ultimately, all ideas, perspectives, orientations, phenomena, identities, and beliefs around spirituality are conceptualizations or overlays. 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.)