Wednesday, October 05, 2011

"There Is A Little Niggerhead In All of Us" if Full Realization Has Not Happened, Part Three

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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.

As for Maharaj, you will find here some of his early pointers for beginners but some of his later pointers that are for seekers farther along the "path." During his last years, he said of I AM THAT: "That book and whatever was expounded at that time was only relevant for that period. I am speaking differently today" and am "emphasizing different aspects." What he offered later differed considerably from his earlier talks, making clear that the pointers in I AM THAT will take you to the midpoint of "the race" but that his final talks point the way to "the finish line."

F.: It should now be seen that "the particular" is often employed by Advaitin teachers to engage seekers in discussions that eventually shed light on "the universal."

Yesterday, the pointer was offered that Chauncey DeVaga's article describing "Rick Perry's fond memories of 'niggerhead' and growing up in a Sundown Town which were the foundation of his conservative values" can expose the kind of environment that fosters the egotism, ignorance, learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity that is dominating the thoughts and words and deeds of many in the U.S. as well as much of the population of the planet.

The following pointer was also offered: to see the effects of egotism, ignorance, learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity is to understand why Maharaj (and all Realized Advaitin / Nisargan teachers) do not target persons but do target egotism, ignorance, learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity instead.

So what was that Sundown Town like that Governor Rick Perry speaks of with such "fond memories," claiming proudly that it was "the foundation of his conservative values"? Of that area, DeVaga notes:

"It was a mostly white world. Most blacks worked as maids or field hands and lived in an across-the-tracks neighborhood. Throckmorton County, where the hunting camp is located, was for years considered a virtual no-go zone for blacks who knew about the lynching of a black man at the Niggerhead location.

The 1950 Census listed one black resident in Throckmorton County out of a population of about 3,600. In 1960, there were four; in 1970, two; in 1980, none. The 2010 Census shows 11 black residents.

Mae Lou Yeldell, who is black and has lived in Haskell County for 70 years, recalled a gasoline station refusing to sell her father fuel when he drove the family through Throckmorton in the 1950's. She said it was not uncommon in the 1950's and 1960's for whites to greet blacks with, “Morning, nigger!”

“I heard that so much it’s like a broken record,” said Yeldell. And you wonder why black folks had to use The Green Book as a guide for safety while touring this country?"

[Regarding The Green Book: Not long ago in the U.S., if you were an African-American and decided to take a road trip in this country, you made sure to carry a travel guide with the full title, The Negro Motorist's Green Book. In the days of Jim Crow laws, segregated facilities, and racism that could lurk anywhere, The Green Book let black tourists know where it was safe to stay overnight, to eat, and to enjoy the nightlife.]

DeVaga continues: "Rick Perry grew up in a sundown town. There were thousands of these communities across the country where blacks (and in some cases Jews, Mexicans and other non-whites) were not allowed to live, journey through, or be present in after dark."

[Is this ancient history ... old news in the U.S.? Hardly. Former President George Bush now lives in a private, gated community in the Dallas, Texas area. As recently as the year 2000, that community's deed restrictions excluded all non-whites from owning property in their "exclusive neighborhood." Non-Realization - and egotism, ignorance, learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity - has always been about exclusion.]

DeVaga: "These towns were often created by racial violence and the wholesale ethnic cleansing of non-whites through murder, forced exile, rape, banishment, theft, and violence.

"When we wonder why some neighborhoods look the way that they do, why there are no black folks or other people of color living there, or stand vexed by the inter-generational wealth gap in the United States, part of the answer lies in American Apartheid. Sundown towns were a key part of the Racial State’s apparatus and how it structured the day to day lives of all people.

"Racial terrorism was a tool of economic exploitation. Because many in White America are loathe to acknowledge the power of structures and institutions as they cling to the lie that is the myth of meritocracy, 'Niggerhead' is a reminder of lived history in the present. Yesterday wasn’t even yesterday; it created the present in terms of political, cultural, economic, and social engagement.

"While some Americans have a limited knowledge of the relationship between housing segregation and the maintenance of the colorline, fewer know about sundown towns and America’s history of ethnic cleansing. This history hides in plain sight. It lives on in debates over the racialized names of rivers, towns, mountains, and other public places. It is present when real estate agents refuse to show people of color homes in certain communities. It is the ether and lifeblood of whitopia."

And DeVaga notes that all of that is "America's history," not "the history of the South in the U.S." While the South in the U.S. has certainly had more than its fair share of bigots with their duality-based belief systems and their fondness for concepts about "racial and economic hierarchies, superiority, inferiority, better-than-ment, different from, separation, and exclusion," examples of such egotism, ignorance, learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity can be found nationwide and lives on today as much as it did during the past.

For example? A careful study of U.S. maps reveals that there are over 100 places in the U.S. that are still officially named "Niggerhead," and they are in all regions of the country - north, south, east and west.

In 1967 - with their strange version of a tip of the hat to sensitivity - the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the word "nigger" to "Negro" in 143 place names all across the U.S., not just in the South.

So while the South might still foster the most openly anti-African-American attitudes, the region has not cornered the market on the prejudice in the U.S. As recently as three months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that the maps of the state of New York still to this day list three locations that are named "Nigger Lake" and "Nigger Road" and "Nigger River."

DeVaga continues: "Ignorance of race and racism’s historic role in structuring life chances, and basic geographies such as where one lived, married, worked, and traveled, is especially common among the post-Civil Rights generation. This dynamic is especially true for [those] who would be aghast at the reality of [continuing] white supremacy as the norm for American history where their imagined multicultural moment is indeed an aberration.

"This could be a teachable moment where White Americans could choose to look in the mirror and see the collective ugliness looking back at them. Whiteness, for most people in America, and indeed the world, was the face of terror. It was ugly and not beautiful.

"Folks of all colors should know their shared history; instead, it is easier to look away, make up fun fictions, and tell yourself easy lies and platitudes about 'post-racial' America."

Yet the history of the U.S. that has been dominated by its duality-based egotism, ignorance, learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity is merely a microcosm of the history of the planet. This could also be a teachable moment where Whites all around the globe could look back at their history as well as their present and could choose to look in the mirror and see the collective ugliness looking back at them. Whiteness, for most people in the world, was - and still is at times - the face of terror. It has, indeed, been ugly and not beautiful for far too many.

Look at the lingering effects of White Invasion and Colonialism and Enslavement around the globe that accounted for the slaughter of hundreds of millions and the use and abuse of many millions more for evidence.

Yet the peoples of the planet of all colors also turn on each other. Consider the implications of the map below that shows where major conflicts, genocide, murder, and war are occurring at this moment:


Then note that, while the map illustrates the current, major conflicts that are occurring around the globe, it does not show other battles being waged by one nation against another nation and does not show all of the battles occurring within states;

nor does it show the conflicts being waged within cities, within neighborhoods, inside homes, in offices and in businesses, in traffic, and in crowded stores. It does not show the bullying that is now so pervasive in U.S. schools. It does not show the number of young people - many having barely entered their teen years - who are killing themselves because they are being harassed at school for being "different," for being of a member of a "minority," or for being gay.

As some are conducting studies to try to find out why the abuse of gays is on the rise in the U.S., they ignore the fact that the members of one of the two main political parties in the U.S. make daily appearances on newscasts to spout their anti-gay rhetoric that is the model for the school-age bullies.

As a heterosexual, there has never been one concern at all here about which heterosexual married which heterosexual, but the duality-based egotism, ignorance, learned ignorance, stupidity and insanity of homophobes can often focus on nothing else. The rhetoric of such hatemongers has the support of at least 50% of the population here who reveal in surveys that they believe who marries whom is their concern and their business.

With the duality-based "anti-anything-that-is-different-attitude" that is being fed by the media to a national audience on a daily basis by those who are among the most powerful politicians in the nation, what "study" is needed to try to understand how it is that arrogant and exclusionary thoughts that are expressed with arrogant and exclusionary words are generating arrogant and exclusionary and violent deeds?

Yet DeVaga offers this warning: "We must also be cautious and not paint with too broad a brush or suggest that Rick Perry is somehow unique in this regard. He is not alone in a willful denial of white supremacy and the Slaveocracy / Jim and Jane Crow / Confederacy’s hold on American popular imagination even into the 21st century."

Nor should the U.S. alone be painted with too broad a brush when sages for thousands of years have known that the causes of all misery and suffering on the planet are rooted in the dualistic thoughts and dualistic words and duality-based actions that will be guaranteed to continue to happen as long as persons are being driven by the blocked consciousness and their nonsense-filled minds and the false identities that they arrogantly assume and try to defend, first persuasively and - should that fail - then violently.

Tomorrow: Why that is the way it is, but why it need not be so. By way of example, "floyd's" story will be shared, a story that includes the fact that he was raised in a Sundown Town - in an all-white, lower class, economically-depressed community that was dominated by the members of three white gangs who made clear that blacks were not welcomed in the neighborhood and that the whites living there better cater to the gang members' wishes as well.

It was not easy taking a stand against those trapped in their hate-generating duality; it was not easy defending the blacks who came to work in the neighborhood during the day, who "followed the rules" and left before dark, but who were often harassed and beaten anyway. But the defense of those being abused came spontaneously, as it does to this day.

And the totally-honest Realized teacher will make clear to seekers that it will not be easy for them either, when they finally wake up and hear the beat of a different drummer and begin to march to that cadence rather than to the cadence that is being marched to by the egotistical and ignorant and sleepwalking and sleep-talking and insane masses.

Yet the Realized's unprompted and uncalculated and unplanned and spontaneous movement in the direction that is the opposite of that being followed by the programmed and conditioned and acculturated and domesticated masses has nothing to do with being "easy" or "hard."

It has everything to do with following the only path that can be followed when the unicity of non-duality is seen and when duality-based ignorance and insanity are automatically and instinctively and mindlessly and necessarily targeted as a result of the all-natural functioning that comes via the combination of Realization and the Nisarga Yoga understanding.

Where Real Love Is, then all acts of not-Real-Love and hatred and violence that are challenged will be challenged automatically. Maharaj warned against making claims about what one would do in this case and that case, noting that if the Realized should take action, the action will be totally spontaneous rather than pre-meditated. That is simply the way that Love functions, is simply the way that sanity functions, is simply the way that wisdom functions, and is simply the way that all which is natural functions.

Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

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