Thursday, April 22, 2010

A JOINT POSTING FROM THE SITE CO-HOSTS: On Personality (a.k.a., Ego) and Arrogance (a.k.a., Egotism), Part Eight, The Conclusion

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An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Nothingness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

This is the first joint posting and came about spontaneously. More may happen spontaneously…or not. You are invited to visit next week when Louise will be posting.

F.: A buck and doe and two yearlings have been passing across the property recently. One of the yearlings is calm and sedate. The other is rambunctious. One recent evening at dusk, all four were here in the front yard.

The energized yearling was running in circles at breakneck speed, crossing the front yard here, running the length of a neighbor’s yard, and then running back here where it circled the other yearling that was watching the antics with what appeared to be a “stop being a jerk” look.

The yearling was playing, almost like playing a game, and that is natural. In nature, games are played without agenda (mating games being one exception, though those are natural as well).

Non-Realized persons play games, too. The difference is that the games played by persons all have agendas, are all based in desires and fears, so all induce the inevitable misery that personality's desires and fears always eventually generate.

The games are learned by persons from their cultures, and the games are taken to be very real, very important, very consequential…and indeed they are, relatively speaking. As with the yearling, all of the forms in nature that play games, except for persons, do so for the sake of entertainment. Only non-Realized persons play the games which now bring about planet-wide fluctuations between happiness and unhappiness as well as disorder and chaos.

In the case of non-Realized persons, the inspiration for playing the games that are taken to be so significant comes from the desires and fears of each assumed personality, and all misery and suffering is rooted in desire and fear.

The games are never entered into by choice but are driven by programming and conditioning and acculturation. So, there is The Religion Game, The Spirituality Game, The Self-Help Game, The Self-Improvement Game, the Growth Industry Game, The Famous Teacher Game, The Politics Game, The War Game, The Relationship Game, The Marriage (or Marriages) Game, The Accumulation of Knowledge Game, The Accumulation of Possessions Game, The Stud Game, The Find A Rich Person To Pay My Bills Game, ad infinitum.

Specifically, Type Ones play The Judge And Reform Game; Twos play The Rescuing And Saving Game; Threes play The Develop An Image To Receive Applause Game; Fours play The I Can Know-It-All Game; Sixes play The Find Someone to Take Care of Me Game; Sevens play The Escape Game; Eights play The Get Earthly and Godly Power So I Can Control Everything Game; and Nines play The Avoid And Be A Doormat Game.

Once a speck of consciousness with the slightest bit of wisdom sees what has been motivating every thought and word and deed, a “peripetia moment” can happen…an “Oh my gosh!” moment can manifest.

RECEIVED THIS WEEK FROM A SITE VISITOR: Aha! Damn!!...it really IS all BS! Mac

Reply: Finally, welcome aboard, mate.

If awakened to the silliness of personality-driven games, then those debilitating persona-games can end and whatever games that follow will be agenda-less…merely for entertainment. Then, fun happens. Joy happens. Bliss happens.

Have you ever paused to consider, “How much fun am I to be around, really?” Are you the super-serious, super-dedicated person, trapped in some form of monomania that makes everyone you approach look for an exit?

Are you obsessed with your recovery program, your religious activities, your spiritual exercises, your philosophy, your ideology, your politics, your job, your children, your pets, your mate, or seeking mates? Are you as boring as can be? Are you that way because you are bored? If so, are you creating disharmony and flux and even chaos on occasion because the only time you really “feel alive” is during an adrenaline rush?

Are you failing to see how debilitated you feel in the wake of the adrenaline drop-off that follows your post-excitement, post-inspired, post-chaotic participation in whatever events are being driven by your personality / personalities?

Or, are you using your recovery program, your religious activities, your spiritual exercises, your philosophy, or your ideology not to overlay Reality on the relative but in order to try to escape reality?

When was the last time you played The Let’s Walk Along the Edge of the Lake Holding Hands Game? When was the last time you played The Let’s Enjoy Sex for the Fun of It Rather Than Trying to Please the Pope and Make A Baby Every Time Game?

When was the last time you considered playing The Throw Away Your Stick and Quit Beating Women Whose Burquas Are Too Short Game? When was the last time you played The Maybe I Don’t Have to Convert Everyone in The Four Corners of the Earth to Christianity Game?

Persona-driven games generate the three things that Maharaj tried for decades to help eradicate (to use his words): learned ignorance, stupidity, and insanity.

Maharaj: When you refuse to play the game, you are out of it

and

Maharaj: You…spend your time and money in vain and also miss what life offers you. Running after saints is merely another game to play. Remember yourself instead and watch your daily life relentlessly. Be earnest, and you shall not fail to break the bonds of inattention and imagination.

F.: Regularly, some persons who have not stayed long enough to be visitors to this site, but who are just passersby instead, ask why religion or spirituality are “hated here.”

Those are not hated here. Nothing is hated here. The pointer is offered regularly that religion and / or spirituality comprise the third of the seven steps from identification with the body-mind-personality to understanding the Absolute. The religious or spiritual role must be assumed and must be played for a time.

So here, it is not about “hating religious people.” Here, the invitation is to be free of learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity, so it is the prime source of those that is challenged. It just so happens that the prime source of those three is, both historically and presently, what is taught by persons involved in religious and spiritual movements.

The Gottman Institute, after decades of research into marriage and relationships, has found that the single requirement for “breaking up” or for divorcing is…disgust. A marriage can survive almost any challenge, the Gottmans' research has found, except when one partner feels disgust for the other.

[While disgust is also persona-based, it could point to what Maharaj was witnessing just before people were run out of the loft. He did not hate the person, there being no person to hate. Yet might the pure consciousness have been registering a sense of disgust in the impure presence of learned ignorance, personality, arrogance, stupidity, and insanity?]

What are persons up against, though, when the call is for an objective view of their religious or spiritual beliefs?

Louise: Just as the individual or “personal” fiction-filled mind dissolves under investigation, so the fiction-filled invented stories of religion can be similarly dissolved when viewed with clear sight. The difficulty is the shared or collective delusion – hundreds of thousands with a shared imaginary discourse that they do not want to relinquish.

F.: And the problem with trying to develop the requisite “clear sight” to see lies and to see Truth is that blind faith pre-empts any chance of seeing anything clearly.

Did Maharaj reject the content of any and all holy scriptures? Yes. Did he hate religious and spiritual role players? Hardly. Did he speak of their contribution to learned ignorance? Yes. Did he speak of the “stupidity” and “insanity” of the masses, using those very words? Yes. Was he judging? No. Was he witnessing accurately? Yes.

Did he hate people? No. Did he make clear time and again that this entire “journey” is about being free of learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity? Yes. What is more insane than thinking you are a role because people in your culture told you so and then allowing that role to determine your thoughts and words and actions?

And what is more insane than believing in duality? Learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity are rooted in duality. For millions of years, humans lived in a no-concept, non-dual fashion. In the absence of language, dualistic concepts could not be taught, so the proliferation of dualistic nonsense came about after language developed and after controlling persons dreamed up stories about other worlds that are occupied with gods and goddesses that control everything that happens on this planet.

Only at that point in a multi-million history of humanity on this planet did persons come up with supernatural causes for totally natural events.

Louise pointed out one such example yesterday: The leader of Tehran's Friday prayers, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, has declared that "immodest clothing - such as trousers - cause natural disasters." The Iranian cleric stated, "Many women who do not dress modestly lead men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which causes earthquakes." He was especially critical of the wearing of western-style pants, garments which seem to really upset Allah.

[See, Allah is like the other two versions of the god of Abraham, the Jewish God and the Christian God, all co-dependents, all capable of being upset by people rather than being able to control their emotions and rather than being able to determine for themselves how they feel....a very powerless condition for such supposedly all-powerful beings, yes? Learned ignorance...stupidity ...insanity.]

Only when programmed to believe that natural events have supernatural causes could persons accept as truth the lies whereby totally natural events such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes (or God-inspired personal acts by his representatives on earth) are said to be caused by god / gods / goddesses as retribution for human conduct that angers those extraterrestrial powers:

"Pants?! Die, mortals!" "Negative karma?! Drown, New Orleans!" "Wasting the seed?! Be damned for eternity, hedonists!" "Non-Christians, gays and liberated women in the Twin Towers?! Burn, sinners!" "Jews and Christians in the Twin Towers?! Die, infidels!"

Really? Can they possibly be serious? Yes, very much so. Very serious. Very bored. Very limited in their one-dimensionality. Very ignorant. Very stupid. Very insane.

Only after persons have been programmed and conditioned to believe that a religious role—a religious or spiritual personality—really defines who they are can they become so ignorant as to believe that naturally-occurring events around the globe are actually the tools used by god or gods to punish people now (while eternal punishment awaits them later).

See, the assumption of personality removes all ability to choose, to reason, to be logical, to stop being driven by learned ignorance, to stop behaving in the stupid ways that personality inspires and to stop behaving in the insane ways that personality inspires.

Only free of personality can you be free of the influences of those disseminators of lies, lies disseminated in order to control your thought and words and deeds. There are tools being used that bring about (self)-punishment and misery and suffering all right, but they are the psychological tools being used to program you and condition you and acculturate you.

Be rid of the effects of personality and you will be rid of (1) being influenced or even controlled by ignorant and stupid and insane persons and you will be rid of (2) being controlled by the subconscious motivators that are the misery-generating desires and fears of each assumed personality.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

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