MCTB Insight map:

The Map of Tao (or any other Wisdom)

I went on a long and rather crazy 'spiritual' adventure over a period of many years full of varying degrees of suffering and including 2 trips to the mental hospital. I have now more or less found my centre and seek nothing. Once I feared life and I burnt myself up trying to escape it. The most intense, miserable and desperate time was the MCTB 'Insight Meditation Period'
Now I love life and am happy and am throughly 'Off the path'.
I turned over-many stones on the way, one was insight meditation, Ingram Style ... In retrospect looking back over my various fumblings to get 'enlightened' something to me stands out about the MCTB book... the book that often lands on your doorstep in the deepest, darkest period. It is that it is somewhat repulsive and full of enough rocket fuel to drive otherwise sensible people around the bend. If there was ever a guide that was more aimed at keeping you in a miserable state chasing your own tail for the rest of your life not understanding the paradox of your own efforts, then MCTB is it.
I don't know if he's still banging his head against the same brick wall but 'Daniel M. Ingram, MD MSPH FAAEM FACEP, Arahat, Physician etc etc.' is full of horseshit. He's got all the maps and charts to sail you off on some grand adventure.. but he lacks any kind of the natural wisdom that you need in a somekind of a 'guru'.
Maybe he'll discover one day he really is a bit thick, and that will be the day he gets enlightened. (but he'll probably just turn that into another 'stage' on one of his flow charts)
Maybe many round here really enjoy to whole hardcore no-frills intensely and aggressively trying to achieve a special title style meditation AKA Daniel 'The Arahat' Ingram and it is just a bit of fun. That's fine.
But I write this to anyone who has got stuck in the wormhole up Daniel's Ass.. AKA MCTB.
Daniel is a person who must put himself on top and explain how stuff works to others. He speaks in pie charts, equations and technical data and ladders, loops levels and dank stairwells. Most of it is nonsense, it's just we get sucked toward 'The Dark Secrets' and he's good at setting them up and explaining them like he is an expert.
To anyone who has got lost along the way and been sucked toward the ring of middle earth MCTB style and feel you need to get off the Great Path here is a short list people, and 'philosophies' i feel are helpful. There are many more.. but that's what comes to mind...
Jeff Foster
Alan Watts
Tim Freke
Non-Duality (groups who discuss it not as a state to achieve, but as an every present that encompasses all)
Tao
These all come under the category of there not being 'a path' that leads anywhere and there being nothing to attain. What you seek is already present. It is the other way around to look at it than the progressive path. Neither is right or wrong. They dont need debating. But you have to look from both sides.. otherwise you can get totally stuck.
Matthew