Thank you for sharing your thoughts,
@Bigguns50 and
@SteveO .
At first it was great because it taught me to pay more attention to my automatic reactions (like, a trigger = instant anger; I learned to see it and stop it before it intensified).
But the deeper I got into it, the more it depressed me. Then I also realized that a lot of spiritual stuff is based on the teachings of—excuse me for this judgment—idiots (or charlatans) from the past. Singer is a huge fan of Yogananda. The guy talked in his autobiography about some ridiculous, pseudo-scientific stuff. A lot of the spiritual "masters" from the past (and modern ones as well) seem to belong to this category as well. Of course, little science existed then so it was common to make up stuff. But still, from the modern
perspective, a lot of spirituality is based on nothing else but lies and/or hallucinations of uneducated ancient people who didn't know any better.
As for specific teachings, all this talk about not needing anything outside made me apathetic. If you shouldn't rely on anything from the outside to feel good, then why have any
goals or do anything in life? Just sit and meditate all day long and hope that your bet will pay off when you transition into "nirvana."
I felt guilty when things on the outside made me feel good because it meant I was buying into the "mind" instead of being the "real me." Singer would say that if surfing makes you feel good, then surfing is your crutch because you should feel good all the time just existing. If you "use it" to make you feel good, you're being manipulative.
When I felt bad, Singer's solution was to stop feeling bad. As he likes to say, you "choose" to feel bad. This kind of downplaying inner turmoil is extremely dangerous for people with mental health issues. Sometimes it's not your "mind" at all but a physical issue. Singer would say that it's a "disturbance" of your energy but it is not. It's a sickness cured by science, not by telling yourself you aren't your mind.
I started feeling like a person with a dissociative identity disorder. The mind was "bad," the "high self" was good. I couldn't have any opinions because it was the bad mind, not the real me. I couldn't complain because it was the bad mind. I couldn't have any preferences because it was the bad mind. A true spiritual person doesn't have any of it. They're perfectly neutral all the time, and to me it doesn't sound like a life, it sounds like resignation. In essence, it promotes complete passivity in life and that's depressing.
Also, the world during the time of the Buddha (another big inspiration for Singer) was a terrible place. Asceticism was very popular because it was a coping mechanism to deal with a hopeless life most people had back then in India.
They didn't believe in the afterlife so they had no hope like many poor religious people can have today. They believed in reincarnation and thought that they were destined to a life of suffering, sickness and despair and destined to repeat this cycle over and over again (Episode #09 of Philosophize This).
No wonder resignation appealed to them. They had zero power over their lives. No social mobility. No opportunities to not go hungry. No opportunities to not get killed in a war or die of a horrible hygiene-related disease. Telling oneself that everything was neutral was for many the only way to stay sane.
Learning more about philosophy made me realize how all these major spiritual teachings were influenced by the state of the world when they were created. But the fact that they're old doesn't make them true or relevant today. Relinquishing the horrible life filled with hunger and despair in India perhaps made sense. Today, the world is very different and we actually have some power over our lives.
Perhaps I'm not at the right stage of life, or perhaps I just can't get past my conditioning, or perhaps this "spiritual" talk doesn't really have to be true for everyone. Either way, I'm now learning how to be more instinctive about my own life philosophy. I don't think it's a good idea to blindly follow one teacher. I was once banned for a few days from Michael Singer's group on Facebook because I dared to mention Naval's words. I'm extremely allergic to cults and sects. When people have this level of blind following, it's time to run away.
I don't want to live a life where I tolerate everything I get in life, where I don't seek new experiences because ultimately that's "feeding your mind", where I'm not allowed to have an opinion because an opinion is only your conditioning and not the real "you," etc.
I could write more about it but these are the first reasons that come to my mind why it stopped working for me and made things worse.