1. Pick a location and prepare to suffer.
If you want this to really work, the location must be random. There is a school of thought that holds it would be better if you go live above a butcher in old dhaka, or above the sewers in the estancias of Quezon City, but here, as in many things, the JEE law is operating: (see below) - no matter what you do, you won't have any money, and the wind-swept streets of Essen, or some green and leafy suburb from which the Holy Spirit has long departed, can easily deliver you more suffering than the biggest, miserable, starving, happy family in Bangladesh. On the other hand, there's something to be said for falling in love with complete strangers, watching them die for the most absurd reasons, and being able to do nothing to help them. Don't try to pick the place where you are going to live; however you pick it, it will be wrong. Do something simple, like throw a dart at a map.
When you go to this new place, take nothing with you. The clothing that you wear should be ordinary, nothing too poor, nothing too rich, but fitting to the customs of the place: don't wear a miniskirt and makeup in Iran When you arrive, set yourself your limits: beyond a certain boundary, you will not go. This is the most important rule in the beginning: the point is to suffer truly and deeply, not the light and easy suffering of a wanderer. (At any rate, the avoidance of suffering is why most people wander, and you are going on this journey to welcome it) It might seem crazy to you: you might think, "I'll never be able to do this". Don't worry. The part of you that wants - that needs - to suffer - will awaken on this trip and guide you, and you will develop an instinctive fear of certain neighborhoods, of certain streets: no airports or train stations will appear within your line of vision. Trust yourself, and you will know where you can, and can not go.
2. Make contact with your fellow men.
The main reason our disciples fail, and their suffering, instead of innobling them, destroys them, is that they sit like a rat in a frightened hole, afraid to make contact with anyone else. Starving pointelessly is, it is true, a form of suffering, but one that brings no nobility to the soul. The intensity of psychic suffering is much higher than that of the worst physical tortures, and only the most intense and painful suffering can refine the impurities of the soul
You will go to a place where no one knows your name. If you are very handsome or bright, mark yourself with grime, be silent when the moment comes to show off the powers of your great brain. There must be no reason at all for anyone to help you, other than the fact that you are a woman, or a man, a living being which requires comfort, tenderness, or love. How quickly everyone's hands will be turned against you! You will lurk in corners, trying to make eye contact, like a weak and beaten dog in a country during famine, and no one will have any reason to notice you at all!
There are always people out there who are looking for bodies. They are making some kind of internal calculus, the economimcs of which would terrify you. They need people to aggrandize themseleves in their own mind, to impress others, to convice themselves that they are the proper warriors for their cause. Soon, you will outgrow them, but for a while, they will control you.
This will be the most intense moments of your suffering, at the mercy of priests, narcissists, madmen and politicians: they will dole all the things your heart desires with measured spoons in order to train you to no longer be a man, but a number. Most of mankind is in their grip.
All spiritual lessons contain the possibility to fail, since it is the free part of you that is being tested, and the free part of you is the part which decides . Are you going to fall prey to their grip? Or can you, lonely, helpless, hungry, and alone, reject them, one after another, despite the lack of everything you need, and find the people - simple, probably, the rich never truly help the poor - who, for a reason none of us truly know, but is the only real manifestation of whatever on this planet makes it worthwhile for us to live here - will take you in and give you what you need.
3. No bank transfers from your wealthy man's account!
If you are lucky, and have been given grace, you will meet a group of people who are probably in distress. There are reasons of economy for this: only joyful people generally help others, and the terrible rule of the JEE operates in this area as well: joyful people are not necessarily the happiest people in material things. When you meet that group of people you will know it; you will feel the difference between those people and the soul-counters in every nerve from brain to toe.
I dount these people will be very happy or very wealthy. They will have a certain sort of rough, elemental joy, something very difficult for you to understand. You will need to take it from them (but no matter how much of it you take, they will have more of it to give). To do that, you must share their sufferings: and their sufferings are numerous. How will you know what people they are? There is no a priori way to tell. Some fellow Journeymen have found them in: drug addicts in an abandoned building in S.-----; refugees from the B.----- war; impoversished textile weavers in the C.---- factory in the industrial city of Y.------; but they will have one thing in commmon: exotic though they may be, in reality there is nothing very exciting or beautiful about their lives.
Your temptation will be to solve their problems and certainly you have enough money back home to do so. Don't! It will ruin their joy...(see the rule of JEE)...and ruin your chances. All will become that same grey glob of calculations you have come to me to avoid; if they suffer, you must suffer with them; and if you learn to love them, you will learn to suffer with them. This will be your hardest task: you are a good person, or you would not be here: alter nothing, except with your hard work, and your mind. There are many ways to suffer through this portion, and all of them will teach you.
4. Go away.
This life is not your life, and you will have to go home to use what you have learned there: a home that will seem barren and grey. You have taken life from the places you have been: go to your grey home now, it is your task to color it.
How do you know this will work?
There is no struggle without faith; without faith, we lose the will to struggle at the first sign of catastrophe. There are no arguments I can give you. I can only ask you to ask yourself what all saints-in-training must ask themselves before they take the path: do you feel in your heart, that what I have said is true?
What is the principle of JEE?
JEE is an acronym which stands for the Joy-Efficiency Equilibrium. It is a broad based principle which states that there is a deep and unsurmountable structural inefficiency in anything that brings us joy. Let's look at the extremes of Joy: cocaine, certain perverse addictions, murder - all the methods to release great emotion (since the release of pent up emotion is what joy is) - they all create inefficiences in one's day to day undertakings which makes it impossible to live in a state of pure joy: one goes ragged, one burns out, one dies. On the other hand, without joy, there is no point in living, and on the third hand, the most important hand, a little bit of joy tends to be crushed by the efficiencies, or rather, to expand and destroy the efficiencies entirely. From our point of view, mundane happiness is merely the correct management of efficiencies, and can never truly give us a reason for living. The answer to this conundrum - live a life of efficiency, or joy? - can not be found through logical analysis. It is a matter of faith, religion, suffering and god. The purpose of those things, for some people. This exercise, which will work if you perform it well, is a special way of bringing these two things in equilibrium. You will learn the true meaning of this equation, and ther terrible things about life it foretells, every day of your life as you grow older; we are taking a risk here, by attempting to fool it.
Good luck on your journey! Many have been healed while taking this pathway, and many other people have been destroyed. Waste no time rereading what I have written here, even if it means you get the details wrong: throw your dart at your map, empty your pockets (except for your ticket) - Begin!