Today's Considerations
Maharaj: "Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare.”
When persons verbalize their desires, many say . . .
“I just want to be happy.”
“I just want my children to be happy.”
“I want peace of mind.”
“I want to be loved.”
In his song “Flying Without Wings,” Ruben Studdard wrote: “Everybody's
looking for that something / One thing that makes it all complete . . . .”
The lyrics suggest “that something” might be one’s children or a lover or
a special friendship or time spent with another, etc., all naming externals
which can supposedly make one happy and make one feel "complete"
According to Greek mythology, humans were originally
created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their
power, Zeus split them into two separate parts and scattered them around the planet, condemning them to spend the rest of their
lives in search of their "other halves" in order to once again "feel whole" and "feel complete" and stop feeling "split."
(Have you heard some "husbands" faking a sense of modesty by introducing "the wife" as “my better half”?)
Then there is psychological splitting:
“Splitting creates instability in relationships because one
person can be viewed as either personified virtue or personified vice at
different times, depending on whether they gratify the subject's needs or
frustrate them.”
(You can see why splitting is one of the ego-defense mechanisms
which is often used by those with the Borderline Personality Disorder: “I love you;
I hate you.” Share a roof with a borderline type and you’ll be guaranteed to spend every evening on the way
home wondering if the evening is going to be shared with “Mr. Hug” or with “Mr.
Slug,” with “Ms. Hug” or with “Ms. Slug.”)
So the concept and normalization of humans being engaged in “a lifetime of seeking” has been around for at least 2500 years or so.
While few will ever seek to find the answer to “Who / What am I, really?” or “Who
/ What am I not?” many will seek “that something” in their efforts to try to
feel “complete.” The belief that happiness or contentment is not an inside job
but is dependent on externals is a formula for misery and suffering in itself.
Were persons to truly understand their hidden agendas, then they might come to understand that it is not being happy or having happy children
or having peace of mind or being loved which they really want.
Subconsciously what they seek is a sense of wholeness, of
oneness, of the unicity, of the unity beyond the perceived multiplicity.
What most want (but will never realize that they want) is freedom
from what they were taught and learned which has led to their dual-mindedness which has, in turn, led to their sense of feeling split and to their states of unrest and
disharmony and discontentment with their constantly “feeling torn” or “pulled in opposite
directions.” (Remember “Dual-minded persons are unstable in all ways”?)
To be free of all of that requires a different perspective from
the one that is handed down to humans nowadays via programming, conditioning,
etc. When children are young, their BS detectors are in proper working order and
on high alert. As adults, they will have been robbed of a typical child's innate ability to differentiate between truth and BS.
(Ever heard the expression, “Out of the mouth of babes”? A
therapist was working recently with two parents and their eight-year-old daughter. The initial 55-minute session included a 25-minute discussion with all three, a
20-minute session with the child only, and then a 10-minute session with all three
again. As usual, the first 25 minutes
were spent with the parents talking non-stop, cataloguing everything that was
wrong with their daughter, explaining in detail “how crazy her behavior has become,” and setting forth exactly what the counselor
“needed to work on and fix when they drop their daughter off for her future sessions.” Then in the
private session with the child, the child was asked for her perspective on all that
had been said. Her reply: “They are right that I’m crazy. Now if you want to know why,
leave me out of all future sessions and work on them because they are totally insane and are passing that along to me. My only chance is that I don’t go totally
insane before I’m eighteen and can get the hell away from them." After a few
more sessions, the evidence revealed that the daughter’s perspective was the
accurate one.)
In the eBook entitled GOING CRAZY / GOING SANE
this is shared:
Call it "insanity." Call it "madness."
Call it the end result of a personality disorder whereby a person has
disintegrated from psychic health to a state of only average psychic health to a
state of complete psychic unhealthiness and total mental and emotional
degeneration and collapse." Call it "being so removed from reality
that one has lost the ability to know who or what you are." Call it
"being out of touch with both reality and Reality." Call it a "state
of living unnaturally or trying to live supernaturally / religiously /
spiritually rather than merely abiding naturally in the peace and quiet."
Call it "being so mentally and emotionally fragmented that one feels as if she / he is going to shatter into a millions pieces . . . not feeling whole or 'at one' but feeling splintered and split and broken and shattered and divided and falling apart." Call it "a state marked by anxiety, resentment, anger, despair, depression, misery, pain, suffering, desolation, gloom, dejection, and anguish." Call it "The Ultimate Sickness." Call it "Going Crazy." But no matter what you call it, it is a global epidemic and all will contract it at some point or another.
Of that, Maharaj said, "Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare. Yet there is hope, because the moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity. This is the function of the Guru - to make us see the madness of our daily living. Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware."
Call it "being so mentally and emotionally fragmented that one feels as if she / he is going to shatter into a millions pieces . . . not feeling whole or 'at one' but feeling splintered and split and broken and shattered and divided and falling apart." Call it "a state marked by anxiety, resentment, anger, despair, depression, misery, pain, suffering, desolation, gloom, dejection, and anguish." Call it "The Ultimate Sickness." Call it "Going Crazy." But no matter what you call it, it is a global epidemic and all will contract it at some point or another.
Of that, Maharaj said, "Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare. Yet there is hope, because the moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity. This is the function of the Guru - to make us see the madness of our daily living. Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware."
Egotism will cause persons to reject outright the message
offered in those words. For those not totally trapped in egotism, might those
words from Maharaj be seen to have been spot on?
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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