stopping the mind

i agree with plato that stopping the mind is far more important than samhadi, or however you spell it. that’s basically a temporary trip to the spirit realms, and then you retrun to your everyday life no better off than you were before, except a little enlightenment and desire to return–in other words, a desire to escape life.

i would redifine what palto says however as stopping and then transforming the ego. the ego is the dark side of the soul that imprisons it and prevents its true expression. different traditions have different ways of dealing with this issue. in the HT methods, we access the work on the ego thru the shen. in western mystical and alchemical traditions they work with psychological elements, demons (symbolizing the various ego elements), or fragments. transforming these and returning them to the soul is ultimatley themost effrective way of gaining enlightenment and fulfilling destiny. destiny in this case is very different from karma or fate.