I do have a decent amount of experience and my main spiritual path comes from the teaching of a Frenchman called Danis Bois.knowledge is dependent on a person’s experience and can by it’s nature only be ascertained by people who actually had certain experiences.
If so, what have you learned?
A lot, I don’t think it makes much sense to answer the question is that broadness.
In the past, attempts to engage with post-rationality didn’t seem to be particularly successful.
That depends a lot on how you frame the debate. You could call the fact that we had a lot of great solstice events a successful adoption of rituals.
I suspect more progress occurs when multiple people develop an interest in a topic at the same time than when they all explore individual directions.
In one sense spirituality is one topic. On the other hand different spiritual traditions are different. Effective learning in most spiritual traditions is done via in person teaching.
Exoteric refers to knowledge that is outside, and independent from, a person’s experience and can be ascertained by anyone while esoteric knowledge is dependend on a person’s experience and can by it’s nature only be ascertained by people who actually had certain experiences.
In Kensho Valentine writes how Koan’s were supposed to be a teaching tool that works because they manage to induce certain experiences and how rationalists dissolve them by reasoning about them in a way that that doesn’t induce any new experiences making the teaching tool pointless.
I’m at the moment on a 4-day workshop on the Danis Bois method. With the group we now bimonthly workshops for over two years. This workshop we had really great meditations and there was an opening to ask about how the workshop leader actually leads meditations and what’s important in how she does it. She managed to tell us a bit but a significant portion of the room just couldn’t follow and make any sense of it because of lack of experience and got quite agitated by it. It ended with her saying: “I’m not going to tell you more, not because I don’t know more but because I don’t think it would be valuable to tell you.”
That brings us back to Strauss. His book is good at explaining how many writers use various devices to hide information from lay people. He mainly writes about the norms of Jewish spirituality but most spiritual traditions have norms of secrecy around advanced knowledge. In the Danis Bois method, we are even relatively open and don’t have any promises of secrecy that the Jewish and for example Tantra people do have.
New Age spirituality doesn’t have those norms of secrecy and teachers willing to tell you anything you want to hear provided you pay enough money for their teaching but it’s often quite shallow as a result.
If you want to get a better understanding of the issue of secrecy around most spiritual traditions I recommend reading Strauss.
That said, I consider David Chapman’s writing to be good and approachable. There are times when Chapman says: “I’m talking about a Tantra technique that I can’t explain to you because of promises of secrecy” but overall Chapman writes a lot of things in a very open way. He also wrote multiple posts on Meaningness specifically for a rational audience.
When I read it a few month into learning the method it I didn’t draw much out of it but I found much more value when I reread it two years later.
The book has a short description on the cover:
“The Wild Region of Lived Experience introduces the emerging discipline of somatic-psychoeducation, a powerful body-mind modality developed over a period of 25 years by author Danis Bois. Somatic-psychoeducation uses aspects of manual therapy (touch), movement, and psychotherapeutic methods to help people heal from physical and emotional issues, as well as develop their maximum potential for balance, well-being, and creativity. Considering the person as a body-mind unit, this method aims to resolve physical pain and psychological suffering, thereby helping the subject regain the sure sense of his or her life. By teaching people to perceive, to feel, and to reflect, they learn from their bodies and from events in their lives.”
I do have a decent amount of experience and my main spiritual path comes from the teaching of a Frenchman called Danis Bois.knowledge is dependent on a person’s experience and can by it’s nature only be ascertained by people who actually had certain experiences.
A lot, I don’t think it makes much sense to answer the question is that broadness.
That depends a lot on how you frame the debate. You could call the fact that we had a lot of great solstice events a successful adoption of rituals.
In one sense spirituality is one topic. On the other hand different spiritual traditions are different. Effective learning in most spiritual traditions is done via in person teaching.
Exoteric refers to knowledge that is outside, and independent from, a person’s experience and can be ascertained by anyone while esoteric knowledge is dependend on a person’s experience and can by it’s nature only be ascertained by people who actually had certain experiences.
In Kensho Valentine writes how Koan’s were supposed to be a teaching tool that works because they manage to induce certain experiences and how rationalists dissolve them by reasoning about them in a way that that doesn’t induce any new experiences making the teaching tool pointless.
I’m at the moment on a 4-day workshop on the Danis Bois method. With the group we now bimonthly workshops for over two years. This workshop we had really great meditations and there was an opening to ask about how the workshop leader actually leads meditations and what’s important in how she does it. She managed to tell us a bit but a significant portion of the room just couldn’t follow and make any sense of it because of lack of experience and got quite agitated by it. It ended with her saying: “I’m not going to tell you more, not because I don’t know more but because I don’t think it would be valuable to tell you.”
That brings us back to Strauss. His book is good at explaining how many writers use various devices to hide information from lay people. He mainly writes about the norms of Jewish spirituality but most spiritual traditions have norms of secrecy around advanced knowledge. In the Danis Bois method, we are even relatively open and don’t have any promises of secrecy that the Jewish and for example Tantra people do have.
New Age spirituality doesn’t have those norms of secrecy and teachers willing to tell you anything you want to hear provided you pay enough money for their teaching but it’s often quite shallow as a result.
If you want to get a better understanding of the issue of secrecy around most spiritual traditions I recommend reading Strauss.
That said, I consider David Chapman’s writing to be good and approachable. There are times when Chapman says: “I’m talking about a Tantra technique that I can’t explain to you because of promises of secrecy” but overall Chapman writes a lot of things in a very open way. He also wrote multiple posts on Meaningness specifically for a rational audience.
I’ve never heard about Danis Bois before. Do you have a link to a good introduction of what it is about?
His main work is in French and his PHD students also published in French, so there isn’t much published in English.
One of his book is translated into English under the title The Wild Region of Lived Experience: Using Somatic-Psychoeducation. The book is however not easily readable for people without background in the method.
When I read it a few month into learning the method it I didn’t draw much out of it but I found much more value when I reread it two years later.
The book has a short description on the cover:
“The Wild Region of Lived Experience introduces the emerging discipline of somatic-psychoeducation, a powerful body-mind modality developed over a period of 25 years by author Danis Bois. Somatic-psychoeducation uses aspects of manual therapy (touch), movement, and psychotherapeutic methods to help people heal from physical and emotional issues, as well as develop their maximum potential for balance, well-being, and creativity. Considering the person as a body-mind unit, this method aims to resolve physical pain and psychological suffering, thereby helping the subject regain the sure sense of his or her life. By teaching people to perceive, to feel, and to reflect, they learn from their bodies and from events in their lives.”