TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
Specific "reasons" cause persons
• to be obsessive and compulsive
• and render them unable to relax
• and lead them to be driven to go and do and zoom (whether that involves religion; spirituality; employment; "personal relationships"; politicking; reforming; rescuing; seeking love; seeking mass approval and applause and admiration; trying to escape responsibilities; accumulating; finding caretakers; or controlling).
• We are looking at what causes "the reasons" to manifest
• and what must happen in order to be freed from their influence.
We are looking at what causes "the reasons" to manifest
and what must happen in order to be freed from their influence.
So, to continue:
Persons obsess, act compulsively, are unable to relax, are fanatical, are driven by subconscious motives, and do whatever authority figures tell them to do - unquestioningly - because of reason #62: human's have a primary addiction to control and a secondary addiction to power / a Power / Powers in order to be able to control.
The causes behind reason #62?
PERSONALITY IDENTIFICATION, THE ADDICTIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER, FEARS and DESIRES
Certain self-proclaimed addictionologists - playing the role of "The Experts on Addiction" - have spoken for nearly 85 years about a "two-part condition in which those who become addicted to alcohol, for example, have (1) a physical allergy and (2) a mental obsession (a.k.a., an obsessive mind or "The Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder").
In the case with alcohol, the evidence seems to support that decades-old theory, as long as it is understood that the physical allergy involves a sugar allergy combined with an under-functioning pancreas.
What the evidence does not support is the amending of the original two-part theory by certain religious types who were also alcoholics. They suggested that the two-part theory should actually include a third part identifying the "real cause" of alcoholism as "a sick spirit" or "being spiritually-unfit" or having "a spiritual malady" and that if one "gets right with God," then God will take care of the first two-parts.
A $22,000,000 study - including groups in most major countries on several continents all around the globe - analyzed the results among twelve-step programs which
(A) accept that "three-part cause" explanation and try to use that belief in their treatment of alcoholism
and which
(B) use a God-centered approach
revealed that only a fraction of those programs were actually "successful."
The actual failure of that approach became obvious when it was revealed that claims about "success" proved to be suspect when it was seen that . . .
only 2% to 5% of those who tried that approach were still sober
and that
their sobriety did not last for the rest of their lives but only lasted for five years on average.
Two to five percent remained sober for five years, yet the groups spoke of a "success rate"? Treating brain tumors with aspirin and triggering "the placebo effect" would likely produce better results.
Next, many of the things which persons become addicted to have nothing to do with a physical allergy being triggered but instead involve mental and emotional personality disorders which often disintegrate into serious neuroses and psychoses and which drive their thoughts and words and behaviors, including addictions to power, to "Higher Powers," and to a god or gods and goddesses;
to shopping; video games or video porn or television; politics; reforming; helping and saving and rescuing; work; gambling; surgery or other medical treatments and / or body enhancement via exercise or surgical procedures; chaos and / or adrenaline; sugar; eating, binging and purging; applause and admiration and fame; carbohydrates; people (a.k.a., dependency and co-dependency);
to coffee; drama and histrionics; energy drinks and endorphins; emotional intoxication; accumulating and / or hoarding; marriage; religion, spirituality; programs, adventures; cell phones; sexting; sadism and / or masochism; self-help books, seminars, retreats, etc.; to self-mutilation, ad infinitum.
Next, nowadays, most of the typical explanations about addiction focus on certain of those objects of addiction listed above but ignore the fact that almost every human is addicted, namely, addicted to a desire to control to one degree or another;
furthermore, almost all are addicted to power (be it economic, political, physical, whatever) as well as to some "other-worldly Power or gods or goddesses or 'the Universe'" or whatever their dreamed-up concept is of Something or Someone that will allow them to control what happens to them and to those they "care about" or depend on.
Maharaj: "First of all you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray to that God for something good to happen to you."
As for tapping into some power or Power or some Super-Powerful Being which can supposedly be accessed via religions / sky cults or spiritual programs or philosophies or ideologies or belief systems or supposedly holy books, Maharaj made clear that all of those involve Powers which have merely been "invented" by humans.
He clarified:
"Whatever spiritual things you aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion. All this is happening in the objective world. All is dishonesty. There is no truth in this fraud"
and
“Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false"
and
“When the birth is disproved, the great noble meaning of spirituality and the meaning of this world—everything—is disproved.”
Meanwhile, millions offer this piece of advice to alcoholics: "Just don't drink."
An MD of Internal Medicine or a GI specialist / gastroenterologist might just as well tell a patient with chronic diarrhea, "Well, just don't shit" because that advice would be as equally ineffective as telling an alcoholic "Well, just don't drink" or telling anyone with an addiction to "Just stop being addictive."
Neither the Addictive Personality Disorder nor any other personality disorder can simply be willed away, wished away, or prayed away.
Additionally, almost all of the present-day treatment plans for humanity's addictions focus on symptoms rather than cause, and that is also the case with treatment plans which involve religion, spirituality, self-help programs, etc.
All addictions and all attachment to power and Power or Powers involve personality disorders, and personality disorders are aggravated by - not treated by - religion, spirituality, self-help programs, etc. Nor is the Ultimate Sickness treated by those, either.
What is called for is a viable version of the Ultimate Medicine, and that is why Maharaj recommended that seekers heed not the pointers which he offered in his early talks but heed the pointers offered in his later talks (which made clear that the Ultimate Medicine has nothing to do with religion or spirituality and has everything to do with the actual roots of the Sickness, namely, the mental and psychological issues which are rooted in ignorance and insanity).
And it is those mind problems, not too-little dogma and not too-little spirituality, which are the bane of humanity and the blight on the relative existence as experienced by the "non-realized" (that is, by the ignorance-and-insanity-driven masses).
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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