Following ‘the path’ was once such an important spiritual ideal in the Theosophical Society that Jiddu Krishnamurti took it upon himself to break it down. (After first having written a whole prose poem about it ‘The Path‘) I’m not sure though whether the path itself was the issue, but the here and now. I’m sure he’d hate for me to say it – but perhaps what I’m going to say in the next few paragraphs isn’t so different from what he’d say – all the limitations of words taken into consideration.
Just like we demand freedom, we also often think that our own spiritual path is unique. That is true in a sense: each of us grows towards insight in their own way. Each of us have our own experiences that lead to change. Traditional spirituality stresses the set stages of the spiritual path, but doesn’t deny that what happens in each stage is different for each individual.
This ideal – of finding your own path – has to do with our cultural stress on the individual. We find each detail of our own lives terribly important. Which person harmed me? How did I respond? Who helped me? Which teacher had something to say that guided me? Not only do we demand of ourselves the freedom to set our own course, we also value it if others accept that. This comes down to the value of accepting others on their path, as they are.
But if the insight is central, instead of what leads towards the insight, the differences are probably not all that big. However one may want to put it, this ideal is close to the virtue I started with: freedom. We demand the freedom to go our own way. And we are each doomed to make our own mistakes.
What I like about this virtue is the insight that it is useless to compare ourselves to others. He IS successful. That one will become famous, while I continue to struggle in shadows. I could never say it that well… All of those thoughts are useless. You are who you are. You have your own unique place in the Whole. Comparing yourself to others isn’t going to help you move forward.
That is good… but also if one happens to get bored or have a lot of time and consider this virtue rather than even ‘make one’s own path’ it may lead to a slight problem. First of all when one is apperceiving one may think of ‘follow one’s….’ Then one may think ‘What is one; I?’ Then a thought may occur that one is following oneself along with ideas about what one is (consciousness levels.) Tibetan Buddhism has one of those cloth pictures about 10 stages of meditation and at the end one is even leading oneself (represented by a person and an elephant.)
Doesn’t that picture represent having control over the emotions, instead of being lead by them?
But yes – everything can be taken to an unhealthy extreme, and ‘following one’s own path’ is certainly one of those things.
I am sure the picture includes having control over the emotions, but if Buddhists have 7 categories of consciousness in which there are 2 parts of manas besides emotions, then it seems to mean higher (monadic) manas controlling middle (transient) manas controlling emotional (transient) manas. Then one may get to ideas such as I described. However, that manasic triad confuses me. In HPB’s esoteric papers maybe she did describe an idea Besant & Leadbeater used as their different monad idea, i.e. both atma and ‘auric egg,’ which does not seem to be buddhi. Whatever all that is, I still think the meditation picture means atma controlling buddhi controlling manas and so on.
I’m pretty sure Blavatsky has it somewhere in The Voice of the Silence that the mind should lead the emotions and buddhi (roughly intuition) should lead the mind. Of course one can interpret those meditation pictures any way one chooses – that’s why they’re meditation pictures 🙂