ITT: ask a monk

>expensive
Ah, so it's a cult

I haven't played world of warcraft since Cataclysm hit, so you'll have to ask /vg/.
Every teacher of meditation is biased to promote his or her own school as the best.
I answered your question. If you don't like the answer, ask a better question.

It's ffxiv

Yeah, and you're responding based solely on bias and shutting everything else out. You don't sound like you have a very expanded consciousness at all if you're so unable to speak of different viewpoints. Go to any intelligent religious or spiritual figure and they will be able to speak with you honestly about differences in belief and practice. You're simply predatory.

I didn't ask a question. I wouldn't ask a question of you. You're a total hack idiot.

Newsflash: Monks still eat food and pay bills. My study at the mountain was still cheaper than, for example, studying a semester at a college in the US. And the lessons were of far more value.

In what universe is fucking off to another country with no income to speak of not ludicrously expensive even when the place you're going to ask for nothing? I assume the fucker still had to pay his rent back home.

How do you deal With feeling lonely and feeling like you are undesirable?

I am not able to compare various practices against each other because I do not have personal experience with many other meditation practices.
What I know is that there are many ishayas that I have spoken with, who have practiced many other things, such as mindfulness and buddhist techniques, that say that none of these can compare to the simplicity, sublety and power of the Ascension Attitudes.
Anyway. Hold on to your judgements if that is what you desire.

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Thanks, just wanted you to admit you have a very narrow experience and that your lack of worldly experiences makes you barely if at all qualify as a monk.

Sorry you got scammed, buddy.

If I feel lonely, I talk to a friend.
If I feel undesirable, I meditate on love.
The four Primary Ascension Attitudes are based on an upward spiral of positive emotions, starting with Appreciation, continuing with Gratitude, Love and finally Compassion. The Love technique heals the trauma that creates beliefs such as "I do not deserve love."
As far as the emotion has a thought-aspect to it, such as "I will never experience love," I treat that thought like any other thought: I let it go.
Many roads lead to Rome. A man walked to Rome. Upon meeting him, you ask him how he got to Rome. The man points towards one of the many paths that lead to Rome, saying he came from there. You say that the man cannot possibly have reached Rome because he has not traversed all the paths that lead to Rome.

Yeah, but there are different levels of effectiveness between methods and yours is the absolute best, right...

Haven't even tried more than one of them you absolute brick of an individual.

trips of truth

scam

also dude stop you're only supposed to teach this in person your gonna get in trouble and lose your monkship lol

What do you think the difference between being a monk and being an engineer is?
As an engineer, you learn to focus on problems 10-14 hours a day, you abstain from sex and you devote your life to understanding. I know we also use our skills for something useful, but that is just to get paid.

You're not really curious about the difference between a Buddhist monk and an Ishaya. If you were, you would have asked questions. You are just arguing for the sake of arguing, becasue that is your hobby here on Jow Forums.

You can spend 10 hours a day trying to solve a problem, or you can spend 10 hours a day resting in an experience of peace where you observe the appearance of "problems" as trivial movements in your mind.
There are ishayas who work as engineers. I also do problem solving in a different field. Our experience is that if one can choose to rest in the present moment, the solution appears to you; you do not have to search for it, or to wringe one out of your mind.

You just said you don't know the differences, which is why I'm not asking questions.

You should start reading Krishnamurti now that you've gotten this far and realize the utter worthlessness of being a monk or practicing any sort of philosophy.

Knowing perfectly well that I probably won't read that book, could you give me a TL;DR?

I don't know what kind of problems you have solved through inner peace, but a lot of the things I do take a systematic approach so I can work out a method of solving the problems. It requires extensive knowledge of how the world works, what others have done and how I can use this to further my solutions.
Problems you can reason yourself to without learning what others have learned are usually trivial.

this , or zen

Settle down ladies, settle down.

I'll be the judge if OP is legit or not...

What's the meaning of life? What are your experiences with out of body experiences? What kind of questions do you wish people asked you? So that they can get closer to "the truth"

Of course, someone who is not schooled in physics and engineering subjects cannot solve a typical engineer problem simply by meditation. But a schooled engineer can do creative problem solving faster and more brilliant through meditation than through thinking.

Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

Man has built in himself images as a fence of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking, his relationships, and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all humanity. So he is not an individual.

Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.

>What kind of questions do you wish people asked you?
Questions that matter.
>So that they can get closer to "the truth"
Questions about truth.
>What's the meaning of life?
For what purpose did God create us? Ask God yourself. For me, to live a life in service of God means to live with whatever purpose God bestows unto me, which is the greatest purpose possible. The alternative would be to live with whatever purpose my ego invents; a purpose abyssmal compared to the Will of God.
>What are your experiences with out of body experiences?
They happen. In my experience, they are unpredictable, which means that I cannot create them on purpose, and when they do happen, the experience is unstable. Our tradition does not focus on chasing such experiences.
I have yet to meet someone with the ability to leave one's body at will.
Ishayas have the ability to choose for Stillness at will. We consider this a far more valuable choice.

I agree perfectly with the second paragraph.
There is indeed great freedom in observing without controlling.
There is such a thing as a choice.
The only choice you have in life, is where you choose to focus your awareness.
Do you choose to hold on, or do you choose to let go?
Freedom is found in letting go.

-How has your family taken your decision to move like that?
-What are your views on Christianity?
-How did you choose this group particularly over all the others who practice meditation?
-What are your favorite non fiction and fiction books?

Meh/10

While I'm sure you may have had quite an experience, 6 months dont make you enlightened. Please don't call yourself a monk. Faggot.

What type of music do you listen to? What do you think of genres like gangster rap and metal?

lol scammer

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All I see in this thread are people with concepts derived from ignorance about what it is to be a monk and what it means to be enlightenment. If someone doesn't fit into these concepts, you reject their experience. It is a shallow perspective.
If you are an authority on what constitutes enlightenment and what does not, would you like to share your wisdom with us?
I listen mostly to classical music, some jazz and occasionally progressive/symphonic metal.
In music I am looking for interesting harmonic developments as well as how fitting the music reflects the lyrics. If the instrumental part is not interesting, good lyrics aren't enough to make me listen.
I haven't listened much to gangster rap, but my impression is that a lot of the lyrics reflect a juvenile state, as if the rappers are mentally and emotionally 13-14 years old.
I think that music has the power to transform consciousness, and ultimately to guide us towards God. Good music is found in all genres, and I recognize God in all good music. I find that music such as gangster rap, as well as most of today's pop/dance/club music tends to do the opposite; to lead its listeners away from God.

Fuck off newfag. 25... You dont know shit, barely left childhood.

My family accepted my decision surprisingly well. I told them that I would study to become a meditation teacher, which is true. They don't know that I took monk vows. They wouldn't understand, even if I told them.
I choose the ishayas because I had been practicing Ascension meditation for three years prior, and I found that this meditation significantly improved my life, even when done in small amounts. I also got to know some absolutely brilliant men and women, good rolemodels, who were ishayas. They showed me that is was possible to live a greater life than what I previously imagined.
I don't have a single favorite non-fiction book because there are many great books for different purposes. One of my favorite possessions is a Thieme anatomy atlas, because I use it a lot in my studies, but it's not on my list of recommended reading. If I were to pick a favorite, I would perhaps say Plato's "Gorgias". I like Plato.
To explain my view on Christianity, I would have to explain my view on religion in general.
There are two ways of approaching the world; directly experiencing it as it is, or trying to reduce your experience to concepts and think about these.
For example, you can possess a library full of books on wine, how it is crafted and how to taste the difference between French and Argentinian grapes, without having ever tasted wine yourself. Surely, you would say, you know everything there is to know about wine! But you have never tasted it. Yet someone who has tasted wine only once will have a completely different understanding of what wine is, than you. Knowledge is worthless without experience. Experience requires no knowledge.
Christ had a fully developed experience of enlightenment: God-consciousness. He had the direct experience of himself and God being one. He taught his disciples means of developing such a consciousness for themselves; I strongly believe that Christ taught his disciples some sort of meditation/meditative prayer.
Cont.

However, Christ's teachings have long since been misquoted and mistranslated by people who did not share his level of consciousness. A statement of divine Truth from an enlightened being, when heard from a state of ignorance, can very easily be misunderstood without the direct guidance of that particular Teacher. Trying to translate such statements from a state of ignorance is bound to fail. Therefore what we call Christianity today has very little to do with what Christ actually taught. How many Christians have developed God-consciousness from reading the Bible, going to church and praying for forgiveness for their sins to a God outside of themselves? The mere notion of praying to a separate God outside of yourself, when you are actually God, proves how far Christianity has moved from Christ's teachings.
My Teacher, Maharishi Krishnananda Ishaya, expounds upon this in this short interview:
youtube.com/watch?v=oVCrhAi_fnQ

How old was Christ when he took disciples? 30?

try this mediafire.com/file/9avnnk9e5180bon/Meditation.zip/file
and this meditationexpert.com/ebok/howtomeditate.pdf

I am very much into the occult, but I am certainly no authority on what constitutes enlightenment. but I unfortunately agree with the folks here that you are indeed a huge faggot, not a monk

Do you have any experience in Vipassana meditation?
And have you reached a point in your practice where you can experience the intrinsic selflessness of consciousness? (breaking the so called subject/object illusion)

Given its uniquely good translation and transmission of an ancient text on what grounds do you hold Christian doctrine and tradition to be a perversion of Jesus teachings without working from the base level that ones own religion is the only truth?

Would you say that Islam has corrupted Muhammads teachings?

What is your opinion on magic ?

What are the main differences between Ascension meditation and full consciousness meditation, or zen meditation ?

What does mean by "letting go all attachment" for, let's say, your relationship with your family ? Do have friends ? Do you intend to have a SO ?

How is unconditionnal love different from regular love ?

>Do you have any experience in Vipassana meditation?
I do not. I do understand that on Vipassana retreats (at least the ones I've heard of), one is silent for ten days. During my monk training, one day a week was "the silent day" where we did not speak. I liked it a lot, it was often my favorite day of the week.
>And have you reached a point in your practice where you can experience the intrinsic selflessness of consciousness? (breaking the so called subject/object illusion)
Yes, I experience this often. The goal is to experience this all the time. I come back to this experience as often as I remember to, I am familiar enough with it that all it takes is a switch of my attention.

Any true spiritual path, any genuine spiritual practice, of which there are very few in the world, is a path that leads ultimately to God-consciousness. Any teaching that declares that you are separate from God, that you must pray to a God outside of yourself as opposed to within yourself, is completely off the mark. Any priest, rabbi, mystic or guru who preaches concepts about God that he found in a book, as opposed to sharing his own direct experience of God, is at best a robot, and at worst a dangerous fool.

what’s the best kind of meditation for anxiety? preferably no longer than 10-20min...

i went to a buddhist temple once and meditated (for a college project) and it calmed my anxiety down significantly but the monks walked me through what to do

i wish i could go back to the temple (it was in cleveland) but i can’t because i no longer live there and i would be too imtimidated to do so anyway because i’d look like a basic becky hipster

>what’s the best kind of meditation for anxiety? preferably no longer than 10-20min...
see

Eh. I don't believe in "magic", as in humans performing suparnatural acts motivated by ego. However, I have experienced several times what we might call "miracles," whenever I reduce my ego to zero.
For example, if I choose for absolute Stillness and Silence, during conversations words will come out of my mouth that I never planned on saying, that have a profound impact on the listener. For example a meditation student asking for advice, a friend looking for consolidation, or warming up an audience before a show (I work as a musician). I have witnessed others perform similar acts, and I have experienced other monks talking to me, rather, God talking to me through other monks, telling me things that they had no reason or possibility to say if they had relied only on their minds.
When I meditate consistently 2 hours or so every day, I also experience an immaculate "flow" during the day, similar to what Harry Potter experiences in The Half-Blood Prince when he swallows the luck potion. Suddenly everything in my day just aligns perfectly. I bump into people that I happened to have to talk to, people return borrowed stuff that I had forgotten about, appointments go beyond expectations, and brilliant ideas come to me at work with no effort. It's as if God has planned out everything perfectly for me to begin with, and all I have to do to live life in perfection, is to get my ego out of the way. That's a pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.

Against anxiety, I strongly recommend body-based meditation that develops your sense of grounding. A practice that anchor you in the safety of your own body, while at the same time stretching and relaxing muscles that often tense up due to stress. Yoga, tai chi and chi gong are examples.
I work as a Timani teacher, where I work with musicians on reducing performance anxiety (among other things) by relaxing muscles that tense up due to anxiety, and by training muscles that can help provide a feeling of safety, such as m. transversus abdominis.
I highly recommend relaxing the psoas muscle. To relax the psoas muscle, lay down on the back and rest your feet on the floor with your knees raised. Your legs should be parallell. Your arms can rest on the floor, or on the belly. A thin pillow or sweater may be used beneath the head. Stay there for about 10-15 minutes (meditating recommended). Afterwards, lay on the side and curl up into the fetal position, resting for 2-3 minutes. Take deep, long breaths. Rest your head either on a pillow or an arm.
I've released a lot of stress from the psoas this way.

As I have a very limited experience with other types of meditation, I find it difficult to compare them.
One of the particular characteristics of Ascension meditation is that you can use the meditation techniques with your eyes open, not just with your eyes closed, allowing you to meditate while at work, with friends, while driving your car etc. People I've spoken with say that they can notice a difference not just in their own inner experience, but also in how people around them behave when they use the techniques with their eyes open in the presence of others.
>What does it mean to let go of all attachments?
It means to have no expectations. I stay in contact with my family. I have friends. I recently began dating another ishaya monk ("monk" is a gender neutral term in our order.) We have possessions. But we're not attached to them. I don't have expectations towards my family to owe me anything, not even their love. I don't expect my friends to show up to my birthday party. I don't expect my partner to promise to stay with me forever. There's a Zen story that goes something like this: A Zen monk enjoys a cup of tea from his long-worn favorite cup, when one day he knocks the cup off the table. The cup falls to the floor and shatters beyond repair. The monk nods, and says to the cup: "Thank you."

I'm a hedonist, convince me that giving up worldly pleasures is more fulfilling than embracing worldly pleasures

Honestly, as a fellow hedonist I didn't even come to this place, I immediately went to, "why not both?"
Indulgence to the utter extreme, knowing we face a singular, unchanging end either way-- yes, that is the truth of hedonism, to peel up human nature at the corners only to find it stuck to the table. You HOPE that's glue and not cum but I got bad news for you son

>How is unconditionnal love different from regular love ?
That is an excellent question.
We are all born with love. Love is a natural trait of human consciousness. As we live, we receive also love from the outside. However, we are never taught how to return to our source of love within. We instead expect love to come from us only on the outside. We strive to earn the love from people we consider important: our parents, our teachers, our friends, our peers. We try to act more like them, and we surpress the aspects of ourselves that are different from them. If someone judges an aspect of us, we desperately try to hide that aspect of us because we believe that we cannot experience love as long as that aspect remains expressed. I have met far too many adults who were told as children that they were poor singers, who are ashamed of their voice, who never speaks up, who will barely join in on "happy birthday" because they are insecure of their voice.
And then we meet someone and fall in love. What do we do?
We present to them only the aspects of ourselves that we have learned are worthy of deserving love, and we hide from them the aspects that we believe are unworthy of being loved.
Yet these shadow aspects of us long to be loved, and we subconsciously hope that the other person will love those aspects of us for us. So then, little by little, with great insecurity, we show our partner one of our shadow aspects, terrified that they will judge us or run out of the door.
The whole mechanic of such relationships are mutually parasitical: We enter the relationship because we WANT something from our partner; we WANT to be loved in the aspects where we have forgotten how to love ourselves. Couples live in mutual co-dependence where they are dependant upon receiving love from each other in order to experience happiness.
(Contintued.)

yeah i'm all about pushing the limits of human experience, so things like asceticism kind of appeal to me, but i feel like i'm kind of missing the point, there must be something to this whole monastic lifestyle thing or people wouldn't keep doing it

Unconditional love begins with oneself. Once you recognize that you are not your possessions, that you are not your social status, that you are not your body, that you are not your emotions, that you are not your thoughts; when you recognize that you are Pure Consciousness, eternally Still, separate from all these other temporary phenomena, you immediately recognize that you have never been, that you aren't and that you never can be broken; you recognize that you have always been, that you are, and that you will always be Complete; and that nothing, that no-one can change this eternal Truth. From experiencing this level of consciousness, all judgements one had previously held of oneself are dissolved. Self-acceptance is the immediate and inevitable result. As you become more and more familiar with this state of consciousness, as you begin to see your fellow humans from this state of consciousness, you recognize that they were never broken, that they aren't broken, that they have always been, that they are, and that they always will be Complete, Perfect Pure Consciousness. They may appear ugly, they may appear clumsy, they may appear materially, intellectually, culturally and spiritually poor, yet you recognize that they are none of these things, for they are not their appearances - even when they do not recognize this themselves. And from seeing other humans from this state of consciousness, all judgements you may have had of them dissolve.

When you live life from a state of unconditional love for yourself and for your fellow human beings, the dynamics of intimate relationships are reversed. Rather than seeking a relationship because you WANT something from your partner, you choose to develop a relationship with a partner because you want to GIVE to them. You shower them in love, with affection and kindness, not because you expect anything in return, but because you are so filled from within with universal love that it naturally overflows from you.

What do you do if you're a squeak if

The word "sin" is poorly translated from Hebrew texts. The word originally means "to miss one's target". In a spiritual context, our aim is union with God, experienced as God-consciousness. Life is supposed to be lived from this experience. To live any other kind of life is to miss the point of being born human. In this context, to sin is to miss on union with God. Said another way, to sin is to make a choice that moves you further away from God-consciousness, towards ignorance and the ego.
There's nothing wrong with pleasure. But there's something wrong about confusing pleasure with happiness. There's something wrong about being so blinded by pleasure that one forgets about one's target. It is a grave mistake to be so distracted by pleasure that one forgets the reason he was born - to be so distracted that one forgets all about God.

You don't have to give up on anything to experience the underlying reality of everything.
But in my experience, the more self-aware I become, the more I heal my nervous system of stress, the more attuned I become with my intuition, the more I let go of unhealthy habits, addictions and lifestyle choices that simply don't serve my experience of peace. Sometimes it is a conscious choice; for the most part, this happens subconsciously, slowly over time.
I would like to add that I enjoy worldly pleasures, but I enjoy them differently. My senses are far more sensitive and refined. I experience food, music, emotions and physical touch far more intensely than I did previously in my life. At the same time as I am more sensitive to emotions, I am even more rooted and grounded in my experience of peace. I've undergone some extremely intense therapy sessions where I've screamed, howled and crawled on the floor afterwards because I couldn't walk. Yet no matter how extremely intense my experience is, I am still conscious of the presence of God, and therefore, no matter how bad the anxiety attack, I am still at peace.

>The word "sin" is poorly translated from Hebrew texts. The word originally means "to miss one's target".
Oooh er, looky her, someone knows "hamartia".

Your nervous system is developed (designed?) to experience God-consciousness. However, living in a modern society has damaged the nervous system with heaps of mental, emotional and physicall stress - the poor condition of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and to top it off, all the stimulants we take, just to mention a few examples.
Doing a meditation study at a monestary secluded from the modern world, allows the body to heal its nervous system at twice the effect of what you would be able to do at home: Not only are you healing the nervous system through meditation, but you are also protecting the nervous system from accumulating more stress during your stay.
Consciousness also has a "ripple"-effect. Think of consciousness not as separate entitites trapped inside heads. Think rather of consciousness as a metaphysical energy field woven into the fabric of the universe. What happens in one consciousness has a ripple effect on consciousness all around it. When you surround yourself with people living in stress, your nervous system will pick up on their stress and trigger defensive systems. When you surround yourself with monks experiencing profound peace beyond the mind's understanding, your nervous system relaxes.
I cannot read minds. But I can sense whether people around me are stressed or at peace. Whenever I meditate in a group, I can feel the energy in the room take a different quality. When I meditate among fellow monks, the experience of Peace is so thick that if you were to stumble into our monestary, you would almost knock your head and fall backwards due to how solid the experience is.

is it kind of like, you can see your life from an outside perspective and stuff that would normally make you feel awful becomes just another experience that you can appreciate like you would an art piece?

or have i totally missed the point there

Yes. Exactly. My physical sensations, my emotions, and my thoughts are like movements on a screen. Sometimes the movements are tranquil and gentle. Sometimes it's a wild west movie. Sometimes a horror. Ultimately, it's just movements. They inevitably change. No experience lasts forever. They are movements external to the seat from which I experience them - my eternally Still consciousness.

It's actually great to experience life like this. I don't mind if my experience of life is uncomfortable, as long as it's extremely uncomfortable, because that's exciting too, in a way. For example, pain, while being unpleasant, becomes an incredibly fascinating experience at extreme levels. Some time ago I had the most intense headache of my life, and I remember thinking to myself: "Wow, this is a totally new experience; I've never had a headache this intense before. Am I gonna faint? ...Apparently not. Ok, then. Let's see this through til the end, then."
And emotional releases are just great. Just great. I love crying. I love it, knowing that it's just stress passing through my nervous system. I allow it, knowing that if I just step out of the way, it will move quicker. I know that if I don't resist it, there is no discomfort - just intensity. And I can endure intensity.

yeah i totally get that, limit experiences are what make life worth living, i just get them from doing loads of ketamine and dancing to jungle with hippies rather than meditating

Hello there monk user. Your post caught my attention because I find this sort of thing to be interesting. I have looked into the Hare Krishna monks, some of Tao Te Ching, and have blended it together with some Christianity to make a spiritual world view. I am curious to hear what it means to be a Ishaya Monk. Also what are your thoughts about the Hare Krishna's?? They talk a lot about God consciousness and fulfilling higher potential. I was wondering what some of the overlap was.

I would like to get back into meditations again because I found them to be helpful. One I remember was the time I sat on a rock and meditated through the 4 seasons. It started in the Fall and I felt the cold of the winter approaching. Eventually the warmness of Spring came along with the feeling of rebirth, then the heat and fire of the summer ignited some feelings of passion. It sounds a bit unconventional but I was just letting my intuition guide my thoughts. I have tried other ones as well and could talk about those if anyone is interested. Peace my friends.

Ishayas are monks dedicated to healing the world through healing the Self. Through Enlightenment. I am not familiar with the Hare Krishnas, but if they're all about realizing one's God-consciousness and living one's highest potential in accordance with God's will by stepping aside and reducing one's ego to zero, then we're on the same page.
One characteristic of the ishaya monks is that while we study in a secluded place, we live normal lives, have normal jobs, and many ishayas are married.

Have you learn something about ancient civilizations?

I always freak out when someone starts capitalizing regular words

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Oh Really? Why Do You Think You Feel That Way?

Is Tuesday Lobsang Rampa credible?

>leave future-wife to get drunk with a bunch of dudes on a mountain
gayest story ever posted on Jow Forums if you ask me

in which way would you say your religion is better than Christianity? i am torn between being a christian, as i was baptized, or embracing a different religion. i need a compass but I'm unsure, i don't know which one is better and i don't know what to believe in.

Don't go to Germany.

Top kek.
protip: no

do chakras exist?

what do you think about open relationships?

OP, what do you think of individuals below the age of 20? Would you advertise your practices to the youth, despite their lack of worldly reference?

See:
I find the question: "Do you believe in God?" to be misleading. To experience the presence of the Divine requires no belief. Actually, faith is the result of having a consistent experience of the presence of the Divine. And all that is required of you to notice the Divine presence, is to be fully attentive to what is right here, right now.

I am not familiar with his works.
The short answer is "yes, kinda." The chakra system is an intuition-based system for explaining the human nervous system in its relations to emotions and spirituality. Having studied anatomy, emotions and consciousness, I am impressed by how detailed the ancient sage's understanding of the human nervous system was, considering they only relied on their own experience of what it feels like to be human.
I've also done a significant amount of emotional body-work similar to psychomotoric physiotherapy, and there's undeniably a correlation between tensions in the body, and emotional disorders such as depression, anxiety and anger issues.
However, I have no reason to believe that these energies exist independently from our physical body, as some mystics seem to claim.

Worldly references are not an requirement for directing your awareness inwards on itself.
All children are born with a crystal-clear intuition, and we adults squander it ruthlessly. I've worked as a grade school teacher, and I felt awful having to treat children like dogs. We should change our education system to allow children to be children until they are mature enough to tackle classroom education. All children should be taught some sort of meditation, in order to preserve their connection with their Source while they still remember it.
We teach Ascension to children, but only when the children themselves ask to learn.

Two questions:

1) Do you believe in yourself? What is your view on individuality and achievement? What would your teacher's be?

2) In my opinion, many spiritual teachings are only a philosophical way of describing and explaining much simpler truths about human nature, body and mind. While I don't deny that these teachings are helpful and can lead to sort of an 'enlightenment', I do think that they can stuff your head so much that they become your ego and spoil your thinking. What's your opinion on this?

Good question.
We are equipped with jealousy from evolution. Men get jealous to ensure that their partner's children is indeed their own and not that of another man. Women get jealous to ensure that the father of their children stays around to protect and support her family. Jealousy, then, is a completely natural emotion.
Personally, when my partner spends time alone with her male friends, I get jealous - unless I am very close friends with those men myself; mutual friends.
Sometime in my life, I would like to try living in a closed polygamic relationship of four people - two men and two women - sharing a life together.

did you ever shit your robes from the piss poor diet monks eat

The food in Spain was of very high quality.

Concepts feed the ego.
Directly experiencing Reality as it is requires you to detach from the ego.
A path towards Truth must be a path that teaches you a method for detaching from the ego and developing your own experience of Reality.
This is what I found in the teachings of the Ishayas. It offers me a method for exploring consciousness without having to subscribe to a whole doctrine of concepts.

>1) Do you believe in yourself? What is your view on individuality and achievement? What would your teacher's be?
These questions are a bit hard to answer due to the paradox of talking about myself as an individual in the context of a universal consciousness.
Consciousness resonates. If you are crystal clear about what you desire, if your desire arises from a clear consciousness, then consciousness all around you will resonate with that desire. In other words, if I commit to something, I will receive all the help I need from the universe to achieve it, yet there is no individual "me" achieving it. I am merely a witness to the achievements of consciousness moving in syncronization.
As for my Teacher's views, you would have to ask Marahishi Krishnananda Ishaya yourself.

What made you come to Jow Forums to create this thread ?

What is your opinion about what is discribed in this link ?
forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,74565,page=2