Monday, March 07, 2016

MAHARAJ: “Lightment” vs. Enlightenment, Part “K”

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Today's Considerations


Were the results of returning to "The Child Ignorance Stage" or "The Child No-Knowing State” to be understood, some might determine that following the “reverse path” as recommended by Maharaj would be a “no-brainer.” (Regular visitors to this site understand it would be a “no-minder.”) 

Yet he noted how few would ever do so, first predicting that only 1 in 100,000 would “get it,” later modifying his guesstimate to 1 in 1,000,000, and eventually predicting that only 1 in 10,000,000 will ever take the steps required to be free of body and mind and personality identifications; free of learned ignorance; and free of the insanity imposed upon them by parents, teachers, politicians, religious leaders, spiritual leaders, and their entire culture in general.

Yesterday, one of the reasons that humans have no desire to follow the “path” Maharaj recommended was alluded to in this pointer:

1. Reaching the fourth of the seven steps from (a) identification with the false "I" to understanding (b) the Absolute is a step towards de-accumulation, not towards accumulation.

To believe that persons might suddenly find de-accumulation appealing after having been conditioned to accumulate is to believe that Pavlov’s dogs would suddenly stop salivating at the sound of a bell after having been conditioned to do so.

2. Another reason that most will never follow “the path” Maharaj described is because that would require “seeking,” and those who think they already know it all will seek nothing. With 97% of the planet’s population claiming a religious affiliation, and with their having been programmed, conditioned, etc. to believe with unquestioning blind faith that "all of the answers can be found in our 'holy texts',” most persons are unlikely to ever become motivated to look outside their religious or spiritual venues for any understanding. Actually, the third step playing of religious and spiritual roles is usually a requirement along the way, but even Eastern / non-dual seekers usually fixate at that third step and play those “good” identities to the end of the manifestation.

3. Next, even non-dual seekers, using what is offered via the five basic methods of teaching non-duality, will not find a method which also incorporates the Nisarga Yoga as Maharaj did when he used that yoga with the Direct Path Method of Teaching. (During his later teaching days, he pretty much ignored the direct path method and taught that yoga only.) So, most will never find a natural means of abidance which allows them to transition beyond their unnatural (religious) or their supernatural (spiritual) modes of living. That leads to the fourth reason:

4. Humans hate natural laws. Why? Because of ignorance. Those trapped in learned ignorance have never understood natural causes. The religious side effects of not understanding "the law of natural cause" truly took hold of the minds of humans many thousands of years ago when a self-appointed religious leader explained why the crops were dying: "It is happening because rain is not falling. Now, you must understand why it is not falling and what we can do about it."  

The explanation for the cause did not include a discussion of varying weather patterns; did not include an explanation of El Niño and La Niña systems forming in what is now called “the Pacific”; nor did any weather-related discussions explain why hurricanes form off the western coast of Africa and cross what is not called “the Atlantic”; and they did not include details about polar vortexes.

Instead, the explanation included only a religious, magical-thinking, supernatural explanation: “It is not raining because the God of Rain is angry. What calms down an angry male? Sex, of course, so as God’s representative on earth, I shall take a virgin into the holiest chamber of our temple, shall have sex with her, and then shall bring her nude body outside and use her in a communion service so that we will be closer to God by making a sacrifice to him. To that end, I shall cut out her beating heart and eat her body and drink her blood and then pass it through the crowd so you can all do the same.”

In addition to offering a totally-bogus explanation for the cause of droughts, bogus and ignorant explanations were also offered for floods and fires and cold fronts and warm fronts and defeats in wars over water and territory. To this day, supernatural explanations for the causes of natural events and human-caused events are still being offered and are still being taken as fact by the masses who are trapped in their religious and spiritual beliefs.

Thus, humans are not at all comfortable with natural laws, with living in harmony with Nature, with preserving the planet’s overall environment as well as local environments, or with abiding naturally rather than trying to live in some supernatural / magical / spiritual manner.

Contrary to understanding natural laws and the sanity of abiding naturally, humans have long sought to suspend the laws of nature and even sought to override them with dreamed up supernatural / religious / spiritual laws; furthermore, they have not only been taught that but have also been encouraged to try to do that by their religious and spiritual leaders who teach that they control the course of natural happening. The result? 

Rampant arrogance and narcissism and conceit and a sense of self-importance and haughtiness which are engendered in persons who believe that they have the power (and access to an other-worldly Power or Powers) and can, therefore, control and even suspend the laws of nature with prayer, with entreaties to one god or goddess or another or to the “One True God.”

To that end, they believe that “a loved one” can be free from the consequences of a terminal illness; that the course of hurricanes can be redirected to avoid them and hit others; that they can bring victory to our troops; that they can protect their children from all harm; that their unhealthy relationship can be made healthy; that persons incapable of love can be made to love; that mental illness can be cured by prayer and that, relatedly, addictive behavior can be cured or controlled by requesting the intervention of a Power; ad infinitum.

Maharaj made clear that the last time that you were not being driven by ignorant and insane thoughts was during "The Child Ignorance” or "The Child No-Knowing” phase of your relative existence when you were “knowledge”-free and therefore free of the effects of learned ignorance; when you were free of the belief in any and all false identities (including the "good" or "Special" or "Supreme" or "Infinite ones adopted); when you had not yet been driven insane by having modeled for you the neurotic and psychotic tendencies of the adults around you; when you had no-mind and were therefore abiding in the “zero-concept” state that Maharaj recommended you return to; and when you were abiding as Your Original (all-natural) Nature rather than as “an unnatural nature” or as “a supernatural / spiritual nature.”

5. And what might well be a primary reason that humans do not seek change is because they hate change. At the root of that: the primary drive of the consciousness is for continuity, "eternal life," and uninterrupted existence. Because false identities are a part of the play of consciousness, persons also want their ego-states to have continuity, “eternal life," and uninterrupted existence as well.

“Husband” wants to be husband forever, even when in certain cases his desire to continue to play that role provides evidence of the fact that he is being driven by totally-insane thoughts and beliefs. Examples are always offered after certain pointers, so here you go:

A man recently shared that he is working three jobs because his wife ran up $250,000 in debt, mostly buying clothes. After her father paid off that debt for them, she ran up another $250,000, and her employer agreed to pay that off for her. (After I asked the obvious question, he answered angrily, “Of course her boss did not expect anything in return! They are just friends, you ass!”)

As that friendship with the boss seemingly progressed, the wife cut off all sexual relations with the husband. She has since run up another $100,000 in debt, which the husband has agreed to pay off; meanwhile, she has told him she hates his guts; she has moved out (and her boss’s car can be seen at her home many mornings); and she wants a divorce. His mindset, even after all of that? “I have got to figure out a way to get her back.”

He hated the second response more than the first: “Really? Once I was cured of colon cancer, I never wanted to get my polyps back, so I actually cannot relate to the way you’re thinking. And even if I could, I would not agree to join you as you try to formulate a strategy by which you can get back the cancer that has been growing on your life.”

Which brings us to reason #6:

6. Denial. Ignorance cannot spot ignorance. It denies it. Insanity cannot spot insanity except on the rarest of occasions, and hanging on to that awareness is usually short-lived if it does happen momentarily. Usually, it denies it. An ego-state's unlimited desire for continuity engages the mind even as it disengages the brain.

In another example, an intervention was organized for a woman who said that “She did not have post-partum depression because she worships regularly and counsels regularly with her pastor, and I had no right to share with her family that she confessed to fantasying often about putting her son in a stroller and taking him to a busy intersection and pushing him in front of a bus or truck.” See? Denial.

Another man shared with me that he had told his wife the night before that he wanted to toss her off the third floor balcony of their apartment. Two days later, he said, “You know, Floyd, she really is a good woman.” How distorted in his thinking? He stole money from his mother’s bank account which he had access to, but told her three months later, “I’m proud of the fact that I am self-sufficient.”

Next, visitors to this site from South America, Europe, and the Far East are asking, “Floyd, what the heck is the deal with [Republican Presidential front-runner Donald] Trump?” There is no deal with Trump, just as there was no deal with Hitler or Mussolini. There is a deal with huge segments of the U.S. population who are trapped in astonishingly high levels of ignorance and insanity and are supporting him, just as astonishingly high levels of ignorance and insanity were commonplace among the German masses in the 1930’s and 1940’s and just all there were astonishingly high levels of ignorance and insanity in Italy during that same period.

The reason that Maharaj abandoned the first two versions of the Ultimate Medicine which he used and then settled on a third psychological / non-dual compounded version of the Ultimate Medicine to address the curse of humanity – the Ultimate Sickness – was because he came to see that the problems of humankind are not rooted in having too little dogma and are not rooted in a “spiritual malady”;

instead, he came to understand that the problems of humanity are rooted in widespread ignorance and insanity and that the so-called “path to realization" is nothing more than "a path to being freed of ignorance" and a path back to being in touch with reality as was the case when the existence was not encumbered with the burden of having had a mind filled chock full of nonsense and magical thinking and warped perspectives which inspire the normalization of heaviness as opposed to Lightment / lightness.

The consideration is this:

Is the goal to play the role of “The Enlightened One”? Or is the goal to stop taking oneself so seriously and to lighten up?

To be continued.

Please enter into the silence of contemplation.

[NOTE: The four most recent posts follow. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]

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