Not in the slightest, it is only that you have given this as your example.
Surely you agree: they won't really know until they try it.
Certainly, and you know this because my whole approach is that if you have not tried and confirmed, you cannot claim a truth. Every statement I have made is about locating and facing truth head on, about forgetting about amassing knowledge and simply dive into truth.
The person is placing faith in a living person, or in a living community, to give them something that they have come to crave and desire. Someone of the community is selling it, and providing it. Sort of like drugs: someone in the community believes in using them, sells them, and does provide them.
People do insane things instead of facing truth head on. It is likely that their situation is that of homosexuality, and they think it will be easier to face this if it appears to others to be heterosexual. As all such endeavors, they seek something which is a lie thinking it to be fact. They deny their state of perfection to such an extent that they wish to change something fundamental to their being. Perhaps they think that if the person looking back from the mirror is different, they can drop their discomforts with themselves - what more drastic change is there physically? I have also heard of those that have been comfortable with homosexuality, but have gotten a sex change and will continue to be homosexual with the other sex. This is quite bizarre indeed, for they think that being the same is what creates the comfort, but the comfort is entirely of mind, as is the converse. It is a shame that sometimes it actually works, so the person fails to understand.
Who sells and provides the mental masturbation? Achieving that orgasmic pleasure, awareness, or enlightenment, as you have described it from your experience of meditation: who exactly did you place faith in, and why did you come to place faith in them? Was that even a consideration in your decision to pursue it?
This is actually something strange it seems, unique to myself as far as I can tell. From an early age I have felt that all religions are valid in some way, else why would people follow them? In England, my favorite class was Religious Education because it provided insight into strange cultures and I loved each of their stories. My first ventures into no-mind have been completely accidental. I have become bored in a group conversation and simply entered into my core, then two hours have passed and we are to go home and I am wondering where it has gone. I never knew what it was, but it was quite easy for me. I began seeking synthesizing religions - those which attempt to give an over-arching principle - because I did not wish to choose one over another, for me they were all beautiful but I knew there must be something fundamentally the same. This created in my a great single-mindedness, but never was it particularly guided by a given group. I knew truth cannot be confined to a sequence of opinions. A deep love for what I was discovering arose, a love for existence itself - you may call it God. Then, one day, a simple phrase from Buddha and a simple meditative practice and I was face to face with reality itself. It was no longer questionable, what was just beautiful texts has been presented in its purest form. Now these scriptures are dead, for I only need re-enter that state and I am back with the living scripture - that which the dead things point.
Perhaps the greatest blessing of my birth is that I have not been programmed for a religion early in life. I have been able to dive into it with a more developed mind, refusing to be pigeon holed because I knew this would create a mediocre presentation. I will say that existence has guided me, and it is what I have faith in. I am not interested in the dead, religion must be a celebration of life, a higher pinnacle of the experience we call life otherwise it is against life. Now I have such joy, such love that I wish others to partake in it, this is my current course, to discover a way to convey through experience for others so they can know it as well. I am not interested in discussing other pointers, I wish to refine my own so that all that is necessary is an open mind and a willingness to try. If I can help others see, there is no need to create a blind-mans-cane. The cane misses the point, the person is blind and you have treated the symptom - he bangs into things and harms himself, you try to prevent this - but it is because most will not see that the cane must be given them. I am not interested in lost causes.
