Many times we get this question: How to know if I am on the correct path or not? How to know if I'm progressing? Am I going slow? Am I going fast? What are the signs of progress and whether I am facing many obstacles? What are those obstacles? And if I am on a suitable path or do I need to change it? and so on...
These questions are there because the seeker is not able to judge his or her own progress. Usually the answer that is given is a canned answer which says that if your peace of mind, if your Happiness, Bliss and freedom goes on increasing then you are on the right path, then you are doing the right thing, keep on doing it.
This is the general criteria and it is very good, it is good enough for many people, however sometimes we are interested in knowing some specific things. That which I am, cannot progress, that which I am, is already the highest, the ultimate. So that which is progressing must be something else and you must have guessed it that it is this creature, it is this machine that is progressing, it is evolving, the layers of the memory that have condensed into the structure, they are evolving, they have a direction and that is what I mean by progress. It’s not my Progress.
However for the purpose of this discussion we are going to descend down into the illusion a bit and I'm going to say, the progress of “The Seeker”, or your progress or my progress, relatively. We are in the domain of relative truth here and we accept this progressive path, that we are on the path of evolution of this illusory structure, while completely knowing that I'm whole and complete, I’m blissful and perfect in every way. We are going to step down into the illusion and look at this illusory structure. How does it evolve? How does it progress? And we are going to be very specific and we are going to go into a lot of details here.
Now when we ascertain our progress we call it “self-evaluation” which is judgment of our own progress on a spiritual path. This can be a must for those who are on the progressive paths. And for those who are on the direct path, as I said, it depends on your interest and you can skip it because on the direct path it will be a total waste of time.
Why do we do Self Evaluation?
To see how we are progressing and to find out how fast we are progressing and to correct any errors because if we are not progressing, there has to be some error or there has to be some obstacle. If we are not progressing we may decide to change our path, change the teacher, change the tradition etc.. and you can see the obvious advantages here that a lot of time is saved if we evaluate our progress. It is an art and we are going to learn a few tricks here.
How do we do Self Evaluation and the same thing can be used to evaluate others. We can use the same process to judge how others are progressing, What is their level of evolution and so on…
Anyhow we do it all the time instinctively. As soon as you encounter a person, there are built-in programs in us that start evaluating that person, evaluation of Others happens automatically. We judge them based on their behavior, What they are wearing? their clothes, their shoes, How they speak? What nationality, race, religion, caste they belong to? What is their education, What is their financial status? Whether they are beautiful or ugly? and so on and we do it in a split second. Humans are evolved to judge others very quickly. It has a survival advantage. Is this person my enemy or does he look like a friend? Is this person a suitable mate or not? There were some experiments that were done, some very interesting experiments you can find on net which try to measure how fast we judge if the other person is a suitable partner for mating purposes and they found that it takes just a few seconds for the programs to arrive at a yes or no answer. Whether I'm going to sleep with this person or not? It takes a few seconds and we are not even aware that this has happened. Now the decision has already happened and we simply obey it.
So, evaluation of the other person happens automatically without our awareness. There is no control over it but this can be done systematically and consciously. Once you know yourself, once you know how this structure works, how this machine works, you will be able to know all the people because they have something similar under the hood. There are minor differences but most of the people are the same. Actually once you know somebody so much, you can manipulate them, you can control them and you can misuse this ability to evaluate others. You can check how evolved that person is and you can add just your behavior or you may decide to manipulate the other person so, I need not to tell you that this ability to evaluate the spiritual level or the level of evolution should not be misused. You can use it on others but it is meant for your own evaluation and it should not be done on others. Only if they ask for it, Only if you have progressed enough so that you are getting interested seekers who are interested in knowing how you are progressing and how or what can they do to become like you to progress as fast as you are progressing and there you can help them by telling them how to self-evaluate or you can do it by observing them for a long time.
You will come to know that every human has equal potential to evolve, to progress however not everyone is at the same level. This is a bitter truth and people try to hide it and under the carpet you need not hide it. You can accept it, you can accept everybody as they are. There is no need to be ashamed, there is no need to be politically correct, especially when you decide about your own life, you decide about your life partners or friends or even your job the evaluation is very useful but it should not be used to discriminate people willy-nilly, that will be a misuse and that is stupidity.
I need not tell you that people have done this kind of social experiment and they ended up destroying the whole civilizations by discriminating against people based on their level of evolution. It does not matter how evolved one is, everybody needs to be treated equally, everybody needs to be treated equally, I should repeat it so there are some warnings here. This method that we are going to discuss now may not be 100% accurate and may not work on everybody because these mental structures are very complicated and they keep changing all the time in 24 hours. They go through a cyclic change, they go through a cyclic change yearly and there is a progression that happens on the time spans ranging from weeks to years to lifetimes.
So you may judge somebody today and you will find that after a week there are some changes. Probably he met somebody, probably he read another book, probably his blind beliefs were destroyed by a guru and so on. He is a completely different person now or probably there was a death in his family or he fell in love, married or somebody dumped him now, he was a happy-go-lucky person, now he is like a broken record and so on…
So it keeps changing and your evaluation may not last. There you can have overall evaluation, which does not change much throughout the lifetime and you will be able to diagnose problems in other people and in yourself also and don't try to treat them. You are not a psychotherapist so it is not a replacement for any kind of therapy or treatment. Go and consult a specialist and if you think that you're not progressing go and consult your teacher before taking any big decisions.
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