Greetings from New Zealand

LostintheBardo · #1 06-01-2019, 09:23 AM

Hello everyone,

I am a 27 year old male from New Zealand. I guess I sort of got interested in the spiritual path in my late teenage years/early 20s first through reading Julius Evola and through him finding Rene Guenon and the other Traditionalist writers such as Frithjof Schuon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt, Charles Upton etc, etc. I feel I should add that at the time I often struggled with really grasping the essence of what they were trying to communicate and there were always some aspects of what they presented that I was not totally onboard with.

I would briefly practice in ISKCON before deciding it wasn't for me and eventually I would try to practice Shakta based Hinduism (taking my inspiration from the Devi Mandir people in California) but I struggled with this due this to being in New Zealand and having to practice in isolation alongside the fact that in hindsight I don't believe I was in the right mindset for spiritual practice for a long time. This, along with some general doubts about what I was doing, resulted in me falling away from the Traditionalists and spirituality in general for a long time.

This may seem out of place to mention here but I want to make a point of saying that at the point right before I fell away from my interest in esotericism and Hinduism that hadI begun reading Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine out of curiosity and made it about halfway through before stopping even though I knew that the Traditionalist writers largely had a negative view of him.

Then, around about two years ago I started getting into Cannabis and it gave me a lot of realizations about myself (some that were very, very painful) and allowed me to mellow out in the long run (although I still have work to do here). From 2017-2018 I also tried magic mushrooms and LSD. Shortly after my first magic mushroom trip I began to notice that I was feeling more creative (I am a musician but had felt burnt out for quite some time) and that I was also appreciating nature a lot more.

Towards the end of last year I decided that I'd give spirituality another go, albeit with a much less binary, more critical and more experiential approach. I started by reading a bit of Rene Guenon and felt like this time round my experience of his words was so much more intuitive and less abstractive, I really felt as if I could just intuit what was being said so often. I had also begun trying to meditate using youtube videos.

I then decided to read Sri Aurobindo's Secret of the Veda and felt pulled right in by it. I'm reading his book The Integral Yoga right now and am really loving it, I also have The Synthesis of Yoga which I plan to read next and will read The Life Divine the whole way through after that. Basically, I think I intend to read all his stuff over 2019 if I can do it all in that time.

I feel I should mention that I still have some feelings of apprehension around Aurobindo and his teachings because as anyone familiar with the Traditionalists knows they viewed him as counter-traditional and promoting false teachings. I've grown more critical of the Traditionalists however as I feel like most of them had more of a knowledgeable foundation in Islam/Sufism and Christianity and held some debatable ideas on Traditions outside of those.

Anyway, I apologize for an introductory post that will likely prove to be convoluted and confusing to read but I hope have given anyone who reads this some idea of where I am coming from.

Kind regards,
William Braddell

Chrysalis · #2 06-01-2019, 05:00 PM

Greetings LostintheBardo and welcome to SF!

happy soul · #3 06-01-2019, 05:38 PM

Hi LostintheBardo!

I loved reading your post because it's so elegant and well-written! You seem very intelligent.

And you've given me some new (new to me) names and titles to look into so thanks!

Btw, what should everyone call you? Will? William? LostintheBardo?

Clover · #4 06-01-2019, 06:24 PM

Hello and welcome!

LostintheBardo · #5 06-01-2019, 08:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by happy soul

Hi LostintheBardo!

I loved reading your post because it's so elegant and well-written! You seem very intelligent.

And you've given me some new (new to me) names and titles to look into so thanks!

Btw, what should everyone call you? Will? William? LostintheBardo?

Wow Happy Soul, I don't know what to say to that other than thank you and that I'm happy to be called Will or William.

LostintheBardo · #6 06-01-2019, 09:04 PM

EDIT: double post.

SaraTherase · #7 07-01-2019, 01:12 AM

Welcome,

Its always nice to sight a fellow kiwi on here

Enjoyed your intelligible introduction.

Hope you enjoy exploring the site.

Recovery · #8 07-01-2019, 11:22 PM

Hi Will, and Welcome!

Thank you so much for posting your reading selection! I've been looking for some place to start and having some names really helps.

Native spirit · #9 08-01-2019, 12:25 AM

Hi and Welcome To Spiritual Forums

Namaste

LostintheBardo · #10 08-01-2019, 01:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Recovery

Hi Will, and Welcome!

Thank you so much for posting your reading selection! I've been looking for some place to start and having some names really helps.

I made this post to share my Goodreads page with you which has some stuff on it that might be useful to you but I've discovered I can't share URLs until I have 15 posts. Oh well, I'll reshare it here when that is the case.