I think I did see that show 5 years ago or one just like it and it absolutely blew my mind. I also remember them burying a guy for 7 days and he came out alive and some other guys jogged barefoot for 27 days (or something like that) over all sorts of terrain and they're feet handled it all.
If you think about it, those guys didn't wake up one day able to do all those things. They probably started small, and by that I mean both with small feats (not life threatening) and started from birth surrounded by people doing those things so there was no such thing as the belief in limitation.
Tibetia Monks don't just train daily to do these feats, they live their whole lives differently than we do. These performances are the side effects of how they live. Their lives are simple and they are completely devoted to listening to and obeying the Universe. How could anyone born and raised in the USA do what they do? They live in a completely different world.
When I read "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda I pretty much had the same reaction to it that you are having with this show you saw. Man, it would be nice to be able to do all that, even if it's just for fun but take a look around you. Look at all the time we spend just working on survival. Cooking, eating, working, fixing the house, doing chores, and taking care of family takes most of our time. I'm lucky if I have 2 hours a day to devote to spiritual study so how far and how fast am I going to evolve compared to Tibetian Monks who spend their whole lives in devotion? I just can't compare.
If you want to simplify your life so that you have more time to meditate and train this way, go for it but I wouldn't look to the West for someone who can do all this stuff you saw. No one here has even had the time. I'm not saying there aren't highly evolved people over here we can learn from but none over here are at the level of the Monks. They are truely unique.
I heard a story long ago about a young man who went and saw a concert violinist perform. He was so moved that he had to find out the masters secret. After the show the young man waited outside the back door of the concert hall in the hopes of being able to talk to him. When he finally came out the young man ran up to him and said, "I would give my whole life to be able to play like that!" The violinist looked at him and said, "I did."
Very few people give their whole lives to anything. Most of us have so many responsibilities that our attention and energy is so scattered all over the place that it's a wonder any of us are good at any one thing!
The best we can hope for living where we live is to find a balance between our mundane lives and a life of exploring and practicing these higher possibilities.
There's one thing you have that these Monks don't have. You are in hell compared to them. You are living in and surviving a hell on earth. You have gone through things that they can't even imagine. The psychological gravity that you have to live with would bury them. Sure, they live in the garden of eden and can meditate all day and bend reality but if you think about it, you're doing the same thing only in a completely different environment. You are working against the forces around you where you are and are accomplishing things too, maybe it's not heating your body up or anything like that but you've experienced comparable stress (psychologically) and by working with your will you've changed your reality so that it doesn't kill you, and it DOES kill people. Just making the best of a bad situation is a miracle if you look at it. Those Monks will never experience the death of a child. They'll never know what it's like to lose everything in a divorce or be wrongly convicted and imprisoned. They'll never have a business fail. They'll never watch their parents rot in a nursing home. Our miracles, our achievements, our trials, even though they don't seem like much- if they were to watch us on tv maybe they'd be as amazed at us as we are of them.
I think that in our own way, we are bending the reality around us just like they are, only in a different environment and under different circumstance. Technology is both a blessing and a curse. We are fighting against a machine that didn't even exist 100 years ago. They're doing what they're ancestors did 5,000 years ago. In many ways we're poineers compared to them because our battlefield is uncharted territory and we're literally navigating by trial and error. By simply questioning reality, you're in the battle. You've voluntarily joined a fight that almost everyone else has said the heck with. Those Monks have broken reality where they are and I think you're doing the same thing here. I don't think you need to go to Tibet. Your Tibet is right here. Bend YOUR reality.
