I was telling one of the Catholic priests there about my experience of Jesus during an ayahuasca ceremony and he was just like, “I don’t know what ayahuasca is, but the story you told sounds super legit and you are super lucky to have had that experience at such a young age. I’ve only had this experience after decades and decades of going deep into Catholicism and all the rites and rituals. All the doctrines of Catholicism are really about having that kind of experience. And you just had it directly.” And another one who heard it was just like, “Whatever you’re doing, Alex, keep doing it. It sounds like you’re on the right track.”
In the early 1980’s Father Thomas Keating, a Catholic priest, sponsored a meeting of contemplatives from many different religions. The group represented a few Christian denominations as well as Zen, Tibetan, Islam, Judaism, Native American & Nonaligned. They found the meeting very productive and decided to have annual meetings. Each year they have a meeting at a monastery of a different tradition, and share the daily practice of that tradition as a part of the meetings. The purpose of the meetings was to establish what common understandings they had achieved as a result of their diverse practices. The group has become known as the Snowmass Contemplative Group because the first of these meetings was held in the Trappist monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.
When scholars from different religious traditions meet, they argue endlessly about their different beliefs. When contemplatives from different religious traditions meet, they celebrate their common understandings. Because of their direct personal understanding, they were able to comprehend experiences which in words are described in many different ways. The Snowmass Contemplative Group has established seven Points of Agreement that they have been refining over the years:
The potential for enlightenment is in every person.
The human mind cannot comprehend ultimate reality, but ultimate reality can be experienced.
The ultimate reality is the source of all existence.
Faith is opening, accepting & responding to ultimate reality.
Confidence in oneself as rooted in the ultimate reality is the necessary corollary to faith in the ultimate reality.
As long as the human experience is experienced as separate from the ultimate realty it is subject to ignorance, illusion, weakness and suffering.
Disciplined practice is essential to the spiritual journey, yet spiritual attainment is not the result of one’s effort but the experience of oneness with ultimate reality. [...]
Contemplatives from different traditions generally agree that there is a transforming experience they agree to call enlightenment. They agree that enlightenment is attained as a result of controlling the mind with various forms of practice.
Reminded me of this: