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Claims to attainments

The DhO is explicitly dedicated to the mastery of the art of meditation, the stages of awakening, and to the spiritual life in general. Thus, it makes sense to be able to have frank discussions about attainments and experiences so that we can draw on the wider range of the community to further our own practice and to help support that of others.

However, problems can arise when claims to attainments are made, and thus it makes sense to have some guidelines to help keep things productive and civil when possible.

If you wish to claim whatever, this is the place to do it, so long as you are honest about what you have attained to the best of your knowledge and ability.

The higher the claim you make, the more likely you will receive some feedback of some kind, obviously, so don't be surprised by this.

Realize that you may be wrong about what you have attained, and in fact this is very common. Thus, many seasoned practitioners here recommend talking with other practitioners before coming to firm conclusions and seeing how things shake out with a bit more time.

These lead directly to realizing that as people will get stuff wrong, so long as they do this in the basic spirit of the DhO, meaning that they are just trying to practice well, honestly evaluate their own practice and not fool anyone or make some strange power play, they should be treated with respect and understanding.

Also, there will inevitably be disagreements regarding whether or not someone has attained to what they claim. Read the Evaluating Other's Practice page for more information on this.

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