Is the focus for someone who's starting the journey
I can only speak from the perspective of what worked for me (or that I delude myself worked for me), at least in the sense of developing myself. Ultimately there's no measure for such things.. it's about getting to a place where you think you are on a path you'd like to be on.
Reading most of the material certainly helped, e.g in search of the miraculous, the various Castaneda books, the Wave, the various psychology books etc. Of course, don't take your health for granted either. What really took it to the next level for me personally was finding a way to work with my machine, in a way that I feel allowed the character development described by Dabrowski in his book "positive disintegration" to take place (or feel like it took place).
Everyone is different so the "material" you have at your disposal to work with will be different. For me, in hindsight, perhaps, from a spiritual/esoteric perspective I had debilitating anxiety and depression many moons ago. These were the key material I had that were inherent in my machine to work with. Depression was the first dragon to be slayed, then anxiety is an interesting one, as it's not necessarily slay-able but it is something you can tame. As someone who spent many many years seeking out anxiety, you come to learn that there are certain areas where it is healthy to seek it out, and others where it isn't. So you seek it out in the healthy places, and avoid venturing to the unhealthy ones. In this sense, you can never really slay it because there will always be areas that you will accept it exists but acknowledge you have no interest in meeting it in those places. Hopefully makes sense!
In any case, by putting yourself on a collision course with the things in you that you must overcome, you come to meet yourself and your machine, and generate heat which is the fuel you need. To overcome such things draws qualities from you that allow you to climb that ladder of your own personal development into a person you feel more comfortable being. The process is gradual and it's only with consistent application that you slowly disintegrate from one level and reintegrate on another, and so on.
The other thing, whilst not something to wish upon yourself, is if you happen to find yourself in such a situation where you are blessed to be in the company of a petty tyrant... Well, you can work with such individuals in such a way that the net effect is advantageous to you from a spiritual/esoteric point of view, but erhmm... it's not something to seek out, because such situations aren't entirely under your control.
In any case, I think the key is not necessarily just learning what the books say, but finding a way to Work in real life if that makes sense - not in a theoretical way, but in a very real way. Life will give you ample opportunities, or ways "in", to get on that pathway. Personally I think at some point it takes more energy to avoid investing effort in such stuff rather than just committing to it because we literally live in a world that is here to harvest our suffering.
A clever person told me, "if the deal is that you must suffer in this life, you might as well get something out of it also, so you might as well use the suffering as fuel to climb that ladder". I lie, no one said that.. but it makes sense.
to the forum!
