Today's Considerations
The one called “daughter” and “Ashley” returned last Sunday from a two-week honeymoon in Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. Her health was excellent throughout her travels, but last Tuesday she awoke with the pain and misery of a serious viral infection.
Of course she might have contracted the virus during the
last days in Budapest, but a news report noted this: “Scientists already know
that smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, seasonal influenza, a host of viruses,
and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) can be transmitted during
commercial flights. Now, in the first study to predict the number of H1N1 flu
infections that could occur during a flight, UCLA researchers found that
transmission during transatlantic travel can be fairly high.”
Understanding the cause of her sickness, however, was less relevant than
understanding that a special medicine was going to be required to cure her sickness. She understood that, to be restored to wellness, she did not need to
focus too much on the cause but that she did need to recognize the true nature of her illness and she did need to
visit a doctor who could provide the medicine needed:
specifically, in her case, a round of antibiotic,
taking two the first day and then one each day for the next four days. Yesterday,
the symptoms of the virus had subsided, but the side effects of the medication
were manifesting: stomach pain, mild headache, insomnia and restlessness, ringing in the ears,
etc.
Obviously, if she is free of the sickness and restored to
health, she will take no more of the medicine. She will be done. She will go
on with her life and enjoy it now that health is restored, freed from not only the misery-inducing effects of the virus but also freed from the side effects of the medicine.
She will not have to devote a lifetime to fearing the next virus that might
come along, and she will not take medicine for
a lifetime instead of for what should be a brief period and then being done with it.
That approach is not unlike the route which eventually came
to be offered by Maharaj, and is not unlike the route which eventually came to
be offered here. Consider the parallels with the Ultimate Sickness and the
Ultimate Medicine:
** Persons are made sick through no fault of their own (not
having asked for the bizarre programming, conditioning, etc. to which they have
all been subjected)
** Ashley needed some slight understanding of the cause of
her misery and suffering and pain, but only enough to realize that what she was
suffering from was not just going to go away on its own; realizing that she
could not cure her sickness on her own; realizing that she needed a specialized
medicine; realizing that, if she took the proper medicine, her suffering would
end; and realizing that if she did not, she would be miserable and would eventually
suffer dire consequences – relatively speaking – if her symptoms were not
addressed by use of the proper medicine.
** Once well, she will abide naturally and normally; she will not be driven by an Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
to take medication endlessly for what had once ailed her; she will simply go on with her life.
Originally, Maharaj focused on Self-Inquiry. Later, after
seeing that neither dogma-medicine, spiritual-medicine, or Self-Inquiry-medicine
was working to address the Ultimate Sickness long-term, he began recommending “self”-inquiry
only instead:
“It is enough to know what you are not”
and
“Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not
misunderstand.”
Thus the suggestion here is to begin with realizing what is making
you sick and realizing that it will not go away on its own; with realizing that misery and suffering and
consequences will be assured unless the proper Medicine is found and used; and with realizing that a specialized Ultimate Medicine is available to
address what ails you.
Then realize
what cannot possible work, what cannot possibly heal the Ultimately Sick mind, what
has a multi-thousand-year history of failure; then only might you become willing to try a different route;
a “non-mythical” route; a non-dogma route; and a non-Foo-Foo-Land, non-supernatural, non-spiritual
route; then, you might take a route which provides the proper Medicine for what really ails humankind.
To become both well and free, one need but take the limited dosage
which begins with stopping and pausing long enough to observes one’s selves at
play and then – seeing how silly it is to react to mirages and illusions – to
turn from them.
Then, once healed, you can move on with enjoying the
remainder of the manifestation without suffering the side effects of taking more medicine than is needed; without the side effects of restlessness and not being able to sit still and being driven to go and do and zoom to become "super well" or "the most well of all" by becoming a religious or spiritual or mythical workaholic;
without making a second (religious or spiritual or other-worldly)
job out of living; and then just living the remainder of your life normally instead, without
being attached obsessively to exercises and practices and all sorts of things that
are used to create and sustain a phony image of “The Super Religious One” or “The
Spiritual Giant.”
Just get well, "know who and what you are not," stop "misunderstanding," be freed of the side effects of taking too much of the Ultimate Medicine, abide
naturally and spontaneously, dance lightly for a change, and enjoy some joy along the rest of the way.
Of course that's just a suggestion.
Of course that's just a suggestion.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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