Ladders

Analogy time!

Spiritual practices are like ladders. Ladders are great for leaning against houses to climb into second floor windows. The effective ones allow you to reach those windows, which are realizations of Oneness, and a disidentification with your ego and other non-Real things. However, ladders can have problems.

Some ladders simply don't lead to the second floor window... they might be too short. Some ladders are old and rickety and won't support your weight as you climb.

There's also a big assumption here! The assumption is that you know how to recognize ladders!

Truly, most people don't know how. As humanity awakens, more and more will know how, but at this point, the majority still does not. That's generally why it's helpful to have a guide or teacher, i.e. someone who knows how to recognize ladders. Some teachers can just point them out and say, "Ok, climb." (Meanwhile, that teacher is either praying that you don't fall, or just doesn't care.) Some teachers can hold the ladder for you and push your butt up the thing. Other teachers can climb the ladder above you, grab you by the wrist and TAKE you up the ladder. So there's different levels of teachers too, as you can see.

By the way, this analogy is straight out of the book "Learning How to Learn" by Idries Shah.

Most of the world's major religions were originally ladders. Any one of them can still be a ladder for those that recognize how to find the ladder amongst all the other crap that is leaning against the house. In fact, all of those religions have fairly famous people that managed to climb into the window. Judaism has many, including Reb Schneerson, the last L'Bavitcher Rebbie. Catholicism had Joseph Campbell, Mother Teresa, and others. Islam had Idries Shah, who was arguably more acquainted with the stuff inside the window than any of those previously mentioned just now. Other religions, like Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. have many current examples too.

Most ladders aren't organized religions. You can use an organized religion as a ladder if you know how, or you can choose not to. Either way, the point I'm making here is that the whole "game" is about using a ladder to climb into a window. As long as the ladder gets the job done, and as long as you have knowledge or supervision in climbing that ladder, that's good enough.

With this analogy, you can also see some of the pitfalls:

"My ladder is better than your ladder" is a common one that often goes along with,

"I AM this ladder! Climb it NOW! I keel you!" (Remember the post about the Plumber?)

Some people just search for ladders and never find them.

Some people find ladders and study them with their intellect, never actually climbing them.

Some people search for ladders and find them, but instead of climbing them, they move on, because they like the act of searching for ladders more than climbing them.

That goes hand in hand with people who identify with "I AM a searcher of ladders! Where are they? Woe is me."

Some people say, "This ladder worked for my ancestors. Therefore it will work for me." They then may or may not find out about broken ladders afterwards. I don't know if it's true, but Draja used to tell me that spiritual systems, like religions, generally become too corrupt for the masses to use after about pi (3.1415...) human lifetimes. After that time, one generally needs to dig for the material, or know someone who can dig for them and show it to them.