Just to clarify one point...
Unconditional Self Acceptance (USA) is not enlightenment.
USA is a real idea in current psychology.

Its the opposite of so-called "enlightenment".

Its accepting the "Self" as a fallible human. Its purely humanistic.
And there are finer distinctions, where the "Self" is not rated at all.
And its understood that psychology doesn't know what the Self even is.

So USA is an actual psychological idea, not some new age nonsense.

'And its understood that psychology doesn't know what the Self even is.'

Neither does anyone else, Anticult. The honest ones admit it.

Just an end note, 'mystic' visions in my experience are definitely the same as dissociation. Both are a result of placing the brain under stress. There really isn't anything much to recommend seeking them. Anticult is right that the seeking can become pathological.

The subjective meaning attributed to them has a huge amount to do with the appeal. They are often taken as proof of something because they are so vivid and hyperreal. But they are still subjective and only prove what an amazing and unknowable organ the human brain is.

I had these dissociations as involuntary happenings and there was no pleasure in them at all. Its like in computing, GIGO. I sought to find a way to diminish and stop these seemingly involuntary dissociations or flashbacks, it took me years and involved developing a very acute awareness and painstaking attention.

I wouldn't call myself cured, I would call myself someone who has learned how to not trigger these things in myself. Not a bad result, all things considered.

As to enlightenment, its the seeking that is the problem--'seeking' presupposes that there is something to be found. The whole problem is in our habitual construction of the language and taking that construction to mean that there has to be an object to the verb.
NLP stole a good metaphor from Korzybsky, 'the map is not the territory.'

For someone who has stated that I think discussion of this issue is pointless, I seem to keep wittering on about it, so apologies for the wittering.

My final point is that as time goes on I can find no reasonable distinction between 'spiritual' and 'psychological' issues.
For myself, both words refer to a collection of beliefs and concepts held by the individual and increasingly I find those words to be interchangeable.
It seems to me that spiritual people and psychological people are both addressing the same issues but from different perspectives and sometimes with different goals in mind.

I looked up both words in the Collins English Dictionary:

psyche (n)
the human mind or soul.--- from Latin, from Greek psukhe, breath, soul; related to psukhein, to breathe.

spirit (n)
the force or principle of life that animates the body of living things, the fundamental emotional and activating principle of a person, will.---from Old French esperit, from Latin spiritus, breath; related to spirare, to breathe.

The root words of both spiritual and psychological mean the same.

For those with an interest in such things, an academic paper looking at dissociation and trance states from their quite complex social/moral interpretations in different cultural settings and how the perceived meanings change depending on the social approval etc accorded them.

Not, note, to suggest that these states are ever really risk-free. A good, functioning and suspicious critical thinking capacity is never to be sneered at, IMHO.

dissociation/trance states

I agree with Stoic.

I learned a self induced method of dissociation at about age 13. Too many things were happening in my family and, by that time, inside myself.

I needed a way to 'check out' and knew that 1) running away from home was not an option. From the time I was a tiny kid, I'd see homeless people and knew, in my guts, that I'd never make it on the streets.

2) My family was already under stress because my father was a fragile heart patient. So I had to find a way to check out that did not entail the normal methods of teen rebellion.

3) Drugs and alcohol were out. I was too much under parental survaillance.

So I learned to do escapist day dreaming. This didnt cultivate a bliss state, but did give a sense of hope and mastery.

The problem came when, a few years later, I tried to stop doing this and discovered the process was addictive. I was spending about 4 hours plus a day doing this, when not doing school work and reading.

Once self induced dissociation becomes a habit, whether its Walter Mitty type wish fulfilment fantasies, or is the sort of thing that generates bliss and is rationalized and supported by an escapist community and social nexus (eg New Age cultic milieu, Law of Attraction, etc), its a very difficult habit to break.

In my case, I had a gut feeling that what I was doing was a life lived at less than my human potential. I did not have an ideology or a gang of friends or a guru to support what I was doing.

Even with the insight (at the ripe old age of 16) that this was not healthy, and even though I sensed this was an addictive process (years before anyone understood process addictions), I could not get free from this until two decades later, when I finally
found a counselor who understood dissociation and had learned other methods to get into my body.

Becoming athletic and learning to ride a bicycle helped tremendously.

The sad thing is that the culture has made it easier than ever to dissociate. One can now purchase devices such as iPods and zone out. Ditto for gaming on hand held computer devices.

'I sensed this was an addictive process (years before anyone understood process addictions),'

Process addiction is a new term for me but very apt. I have always thought of it in terms of a habitual neural pathway, used as the easiest known route to a particular goal. Forming new and better neural pathways is a long slow process requiring a very high tolerance of cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is a very unpleasant feeling of being trapped between two positions, the either/or, good/bad, right/wrong dichotomy and is generally enough to deter most people from dabbling in this. (a good thing, IMO)

This thread seems to have become a magnet for trolls and would be preachers.

The thread is now closed.