There are ten different benchmarks that indicate our progress or lack of progress in our practice. These benchmarks also point to our destiny in the next world.

The first benchmark is to know for sure that our fabricated personality will not survive the death. We will understand this when we can see its personality, an invention based solely on thought and memory, a pure matter entity that cannot survive in physical death.

The second is to admit that it is futile to rely on religious rituals, beliefs or dogmas to get rid of our predicament on earth, rather than the hard work of self-exploration.

The third benchmark is when we no longer doubt that meditation and self-investigation can release us, not just material existence, but existence itself.

When we reach these three very important benchmarks, we can't reach them by thinking that we have reached them, but after a clear shift in consciousness, we become a different person in many ways and look at things in a completely different way. Then we will be born again for physical existence up to seven times.

The fourth and fifth benchmarks are a bit unusual, because simply weakening them will push us into a different fate rather than completely conquer them. If we weaken them, we only need to be born again as material existence and all its complicated situations. When we completely conquer these two benchmarks, we will no longer be born again in material existence.

The fourth and fifth benchmarks are anger and sensory desires that must first be weakened. This is the feeling that we still maintain some aggravation and annoyance, and a gentle desire for the pleasure of existence. Then, after they are greatly weakened, they are completely abandoned as the self-exploration deepens. Now we have no potential fear. This is the root of anger. There is no sensory enjoyment of desire. We just eat when we eat, sleep when we sleep, and work when we need work.

By conquering these five benchmarks, we have become saints in the eyes of the world. However, in order to become something that no man or woman can understand, go to a place where no man or woman can imagine – beyond the world's existential form and the informal world, We must conquer the remaining five benchmarks.

The remaining five are the remaining desires left after we believe that we have conquered all our material desires, and they are very insidious. The five final benchmarks are; the world that wants to be born again into form, wants to regenerate the invisible realm, spiritual uneasiness [still looking], pride or self-righteousness [I know], and finally the lasting belief in the eternal self.

The last five are the most difficult to conquer, because the people who work to achieve them must disappear completely, but to some extent maintain and function in the world – this is the only way they can overcome.

In order to achieve this goal, it must be fully enlightened.

Meditation – the benchmark for progress was originally published on Spring