As should be obvious by now (but probably isn't), my personal definition of "What is important in life" revolves around "What could be construed as important to other sentient beings, not just the person shouting the word 'importance' as if it meant anything to other people, on some obscure Internet forum that no one reads anyway.
Given that definition, I suspect that there should be by definition a "payoff" for those willing to believe the definitions of "important" proposed by those with... uh...lesser (or higher) standards than my own. The "bottom line," in a spiritual context, seems to me (with my low standards) to be, "If I *believe* this declaration of 'How things work and how they *should* work' being proposed by those who believe it accurate *as* the definition of accurate, what's in it for me? If I accept, for example, the oft-opined view that "sexuality after 60" is a questionable thing, where does that leave *me* as an aging spiritual seeker approaching sixty far faster than I wanted, and still WAY able to spring a woody over someone woody-worthy? If I accept, for example, the oft-opined view that one's own personal views on the nature of enlightenment and its attributes can be defined by those who claim to represent that point of view, where does that leave those of us who suspect that their "definitions" of such exalted states of consciousness reflect their own hangups and samsakaras far more than they do reality? Granted, I represent the "outlaw" faction here at FFL. I, after all, empathize far more with the characters on "Firefly" and "Serenity" than I do with the characters in the Bhaghavad-Gita or other sources referred to as "Vedic," and thus "inherently and indisputably cool." I accept *nothing* as "inherently and indisputably cool." Is that bad?