[Continued from 4 October 2005] Now, Jim, you are about to see why these posting have been given such space on the site: they are not just relevant for AA’s. They are relevant for 95% of the earth’s population who are trying to find “peace of mind” during this relative existence. Since 95% are addicted to something, these postings are relevant for almost all on the planet. To have been told that “You don’t have a drinking problem; you have a thinking problem” is pointing in the proper direction. For the rest to be told, “You don’t have an eating problem, a spending problem, a workaholism problem, a nicotine problem, a gambling problem (ad infinitum) but you do have a thinking problem” is pointing in the proper direction. The problem does indeed "center in the mind” for all persons. So, Jim, I’ll end by reviewing some Advaita-oriented pointers from your program’s book that are being misinterpreted or ignored by many and that are relevant for all persons/personas:
(1) The founders said that most of those who had a “spiritual experience” conceived of the Higher Power as an “inner resource.” Religious members talked of being “conscious" of a (male) “God,” but that God is merely their “conception” or someone else’s…just an idea conceived by humans.
(2) Now you can understand why on pp. 29-30 they wrote that agnosticism is “no great obstacle to a spiritual experience.” Agnostics, who doubt that a god even exists, can still know the “inner resource.” Religion, according to their point, requires a concept of a “God”; spirituality discounts an outer power/male god and has conscious contact with that inner resource.
(3) The physical manifestation called “Jim” was born with a brain but not with a mind. Your problem does not center in your brain. Your problem, the founders wrote, “centers in your mind.” That’s not a spiritual problem—it’s a “mind” problem. Sanity is not restored by asking to have it restored, and the founders never suggested that...if you understand what the real “Higher Power” is. Understand that and you’ll know that sanity is restored by use of that inner resource, not by asking an outer resource to restore your sanity. The brain operates naturally and self-constructively; the “mind” operates abnormally and self-destructively. You need not get rid of your brain. You need to get rid of your “mind.” People shoot themselves in the brain to try to stop the unbearable, constant movement of the contaminated consciousness that most call “a mind.” The miserable movement can be halted without a bullet to the brain and without endless effort simply by taking the seven steps I offer in the book you received as a gift. Furthermore, if the problem “centers in the mind,” wouldn’t spiritual intoxication and/or emotional intoxication actually clutter the mind even more? What if, like a cancer, the treatment for “the problem that centers in the mind” is not to massage it, expand it, and inject more and more into it? What if the real solution is to be rid of it completely? Your "mind" is a cancer. You are diseased (and dis-eased) by the seeming "dual-mindedness." Being controlled by an insane "mind" leaves persons feeling discontent. It would make anyone restless. You (the Real You) wants to reject that false mind and know the Atonement...the At-one-ment...the unicity. You feel split. You feel incongruous, looking one way on the outside and feeling a different way on the inside. Peace only comes with unicity, not with duality and not with multiplicity. You can be free of being driven by all the garbage they programmed into you that became the “mind” if you will only complete a seven-step journey back to reality.
(4) That “mind” is the repository of all the lies they told you and all the distorted behavior they modeled. To believe lies is insane; to accept supernatural explanations for naturally occurring events is insane; to behave self-destructively is insane; to be out of touch with reality (a.k.a., “The Great Reality”) is insane. Lies are used by the ignorant and arrogant who refuse to say, “I don’t know what the real, scientific explanation for that is” so they assign a supernatural explanation instead. To believe such fabricated nonsense is insane and leaves you out of touch with reality, with the real truth. Thus, to just stop drinking or gambling or over-eating is not the answer. The answer comes through use of the inner resource to restore you to sanity, to get you back in touch with reality, or stated otherwise, to get rid of all that waste which forms “the mind.” Insanity is evidenced by not even knowing “Who You Are” and by believing that your roles or personas actually identify who you are. Insanity is not even knowing how your food-body got here and thus believing a natural event had some supernatural element involved. Why are you encouraged to believe that “a Higher Power” (that inner resource) “can restore you to sanity?” Because only it can. Only it can free you of the prison of “the mind,” each bar of which is one of the pieces of learned ignorance they gave you that you are now assuming to be true or "normal" when it is not. Of course you reach a point where you “cannot differentiate true from false.”
What is that inner resource? It is the vestige of pure consciousness that remains, deeply buried beneath the waste called “your mind.” “Your mind” is the corrupted consciousness that is so marred with its belief in lies and superstitions and all of its knowledge, all that learned ignorance, that it leaves you insane…so insane that you don’t know Your Self and so insane that you believe the lies and dreams of the planet. That inner resource, that spark of awareness that is temporarily manifested and is pure consciousness, can restore you to sanity if you employ it to find the answers to these three key questions: “How did I come to believe that all these roles I’m playing are me?” and “How did this food-body get here?” and then “Who Am I, really?” To not be able to realize that your personas are false, to not know how you got here, and to not know Who You Truly Are is insane. Sanity is “the Great Reality.” Sanity is being in touch with reality and having conscious contact with reality...with Your True Self. “To Thine Own Self Be True” was your invitation on day one, but nothing since that day has been laid out as a clear-cut way to accomplish that. Let it become your single task. Find that True Self and all your tasks will end. Only then can you truly “relax and take it easy.”
Finally, I’ll offer some considerations to that end. Meditation is a time set aside not to reach a state in which "the mind” has no motion. Meditation is a time to take pointers into consideration. Here are some you might take into account, should you choose:
(A) Is it possible that you’ve been fed so many lies and had so many bizarre behaviors modeled for you that you need to stop and question everything that they told you up to this point? The program founders made clear that knowledge was not the solution. What do you know that is beyond all your texts and beyond all your knowledge? Isn’t “your” knowledge really “their” knowledge that you’ve just adopted as your own? If your/their knowledge cannot help, what is your clear-cut plan to be rid of all that knowledge which is contaminating the consciousness and resulting in “a mind”? What you have not realized is What You Truly Are because you have not yet learned to “differentiate true for false.” All of the false must be recognized in order to know THAT, then you shall know What I Am and any sense of separation shall end. And all debate shall end, too, as all concepts dissolve.
(B) You have been told that “self-knowledge” cannot help, but have you considered the possibility that SELF-knowledge during this relative existence might be worth understanding? How can You be True to Your Self if you don't even know what that is? Could your founders have been correct in saying that the real aid to turn to is an inner resource, not a conceptualization and not an outer resource? The outer resource is a conception, dreamed up by controlling men with agendas in order to try to get their selfish desires met or to try to eliminate their imagined fears. It never works more than momentarily. No wonder you have been trapped into doing your “spiritual disciplines and exercises” over and over and over: you know the effect never lasts, so you go back for more and more of what does not work long-term. You are working to get a limited reprieve. What is available is the one, true permanent “cure” for the problem that continues to center in "your mind." What is that inner resource? Is it working for you because it is pure, or do you have a chattering “mind”—that place where your problem centers because it has been contaminated with myths, lies, concepts, superstitions, ideas, emotions, and beliefs?
(C) Do you now see why the founders suggested you “cast aside” all your “ideas, emotions, and attitudes (beliefs)”? Why not follow that instruction? What ego-state wants to continue to follow a plan that is not providing a permanent solution? Why add to that collection of ideas and beliefs if you were told to be rid of them all?
Those might prove to be worthy topics for your next few meditation periods. That said, even those meditations will not given you the ultimate answer. Nothing I have said will give you the final answer. This much site space had been dedicated to your e-mail because millions worldwide are accepting new ego-states as false identities because those pointers from the founders are being ignored or misinterpreted. The fact is that only via completion of all “Seven-Steps to Reality” will the ultimate answer be found. A woman gave you a book with those seven steps. Your spiritual ego-state, which refused to read anything past the chapter that challenged that false identity (along with all of your other ego-states and false identities) must dissolve before you find the ultimate answer that you’re seeking. For those who find that, all seeking will end, emotional and spiritual intoxication can end, religious and spiritual workaholism can end, they can actually “relax and take it easy,” they can find the balance between being the “life of the party” and being the “wearisome and pontificating Spiritual Giant who has much knowledge,” and true AS IF living in the relative can begin. Once more, thanks for writing. Millions are stuck in Denver, believing they’ve arrived in New York. Maybe the discussion that evolved from your e-mail has cast some light on their roadmaps so they can see where they are and know how much farther they have to go. It’s not far at all, if they find the remaining stepping stones. If they realize they have not arrived, then they’ll understand the man who wondered, “Is this all there is?” and they’ll find their own answer if they complete the “journey.” [Note: Being familiar with the nature of the beast (the false ego-states) it is known that many might like to use this forum to continue to debate these issues, but no more discussion of this topic shall be offered on the site. Related queries will be answered, but only via e-mail and only with those whose correspondence indicates that they are seeking the means to transcend their limiting roles, not with those wanting to defend their false personas. My teacher gave short shrift in his latter days to those who want to fight to defend their ego-states. The same now happens here.] Please enter the silence of contemplation.
(1) The founders said that most of those who had a “spiritual experience” conceived of the Higher Power as an “inner resource.” Religious members talked of being “conscious" of a (male) “God,” but that God is merely their “conception” or someone else’s…just an idea conceived by humans.
(2) Now you can understand why on pp. 29-30 they wrote that agnosticism is “no great obstacle to a spiritual experience.” Agnostics, who doubt that a god even exists, can still know the “inner resource.” Religion, according to their point, requires a concept of a “God”; spirituality discounts an outer power/male god and has conscious contact with that inner resource.
(3) The physical manifestation called “Jim” was born with a brain but not with a mind. Your problem does not center in your brain. Your problem, the founders wrote, “centers in your mind.” That’s not a spiritual problem—it’s a “mind” problem. Sanity is not restored by asking to have it restored, and the founders never suggested that...if you understand what the real “Higher Power” is. Understand that and you’ll know that sanity is restored by use of that inner resource, not by asking an outer resource to restore your sanity. The brain operates naturally and self-constructively; the “mind” operates abnormally and self-destructively. You need not get rid of your brain. You need to get rid of your “mind.” People shoot themselves in the brain to try to stop the unbearable, constant movement of the contaminated consciousness that most call “a mind.” The miserable movement can be halted without a bullet to the brain and without endless effort simply by taking the seven steps I offer in the book you received as a gift. Furthermore, if the problem “centers in the mind,” wouldn’t spiritual intoxication and/or emotional intoxication actually clutter the mind even more? What if, like a cancer, the treatment for “the problem that centers in the mind” is not to massage it, expand it, and inject more and more into it? What if the real solution is to be rid of it completely? Your "mind" is a cancer. You are diseased (and dis-eased) by the seeming "dual-mindedness." Being controlled by an insane "mind" leaves persons feeling discontent. It would make anyone restless. You (the Real You) wants to reject that false mind and know the Atonement...the At-one-ment...the unicity. You feel split. You feel incongruous, looking one way on the outside and feeling a different way on the inside. Peace only comes with unicity, not with duality and not with multiplicity. You can be free of being driven by all the garbage they programmed into you that became the “mind” if you will only complete a seven-step journey back to reality.
(4) That “mind” is the repository of all the lies they told you and all the distorted behavior they modeled. To believe lies is insane; to accept supernatural explanations for naturally occurring events is insane; to behave self-destructively is insane; to be out of touch with reality (a.k.a., “The Great Reality”) is insane. Lies are used by the ignorant and arrogant who refuse to say, “I don’t know what the real, scientific explanation for that is” so they assign a supernatural explanation instead. To believe such fabricated nonsense is insane and leaves you out of touch with reality, with the real truth. Thus, to just stop drinking or gambling or over-eating is not the answer. The answer comes through use of the inner resource to restore you to sanity, to get you back in touch with reality, or stated otherwise, to get rid of all that waste which forms “the mind.” Insanity is evidenced by not even knowing “Who You Are” and by believing that your roles or personas actually identify who you are. Insanity is not even knowing how your food-body got here and thus believing a natural event had some supernatural element involved. Why are you encouraged to believe that “a Higher Power” (that inner resource) “can restore you to sanity?” Because only it can. Only it can free you of the prison of “the mind,” each bar of which is one of the pieces of learned ignorance they gave you that you are now assuming to be true or "normal" when it is not. Of course you reach a point where you “cannot differentiate true from false.”
What is that inner resource? It is the vestige of pure consciousness that remains, deeply buried beneath the waste called “your mind.” “Your mind” is the corrupted consciousness that is so marred with its belief in lies and superstitions and all of its knowledge, all that learned ignorance, that it leaves you insane…so insane that you don’t know Your Self and so insane that you believe the lies and dreams of the planet. That inner resource, that spark of awareness that is temporarily manifested and is pure consciousness, can restore you to sanity if you employ it to find the answers to these three key questions: “How did I come to believe that all these roles I’m playing are me?” and “How did this food-body get here?” and then “Who Am I, really?” To not be able to realize that your personas are false, to not know how you got here, and to not know Who You Truly Are is insane. Sanity is “the Great Reality.” Sanity is being in touch with reality and having conscious contact with reality...with Your True Self. “To Thine Own Self Be True” was your invitation on day one, but nothing since that day has been laid out as a clear-cut way to accomplish that. Let it become your single task. Find that True Self and all your tasks will end. Only then can you truly “relax and take it easy.”
Finally, I’ll offer some considerations to that end. Meditation is a time set aside not to reach a state in which "the mind” has no motion. Meditation is a time to take pointers into consideration. Here are some you might take into account, should you choose:
(A) Is it possible that you’ve been fed so many lies and had so many bizarre behaviors modeled for you that you need to stop and question everything that they told you up to this point? The program founders made clear that knowledge was not the solution. What do you know that is beyond all your texts and beyond all your knowledge? Isn’t “your” knowledge really “their” knowledge that you’ve just adopted as your own? If your/their knowledge cannot help, what is your clear-cut plan to be rid of all that knowledge which is contaminating the consciousness and resulting in “a mind”? What you have not realized is What You Truly Are because you have not yet learned to “differentiate true for false.” All of the false must be recognized in order to know THAT, then you shall know What I Am and any sense of separation shall end. And all debate shall end, too, as all concepts dissolve.
(B) You have been told that “self-knowledge” cannot help, but have you considered the possibility that SELF-knowledge during this relative existence might be worth understanding? How can You be True to Your Self if you don't even know what that is? Could your founders have been correct in saying that the real aid to turn to is an inner resource, not a conceptualization and not an outer resource? The outer resource is a conception, dreamed up by controlling men with agendas in order to try to get their selfish desires met or to try to eliminate their imagined fears. It never works more than momentarily. No wonder you have been trapped into doing your “spiritual disciplines and exercises” over and over and over: you know the effect never lasts, so you go back for more and more of what does not work long-term. You are working to get a limited reprieve. What is available is the one, true permanent “cure” for the problem that continues to center in "your mind." What is that inner resource? Is it working for you because it is pure, or do you have a chattering “mind”—that place where your problem centers because it has been contaminated with myths, lies, concepts, superstitions, ideas, emotions, and beliefs?
(C) Do you now see why the founders suggested you “cast aside” all your “ideas, emotions, and attitudes (beliefs)”? Why not follow that instruction? What ego-state wants to continue to follow a plan that is not providing a permanent solution? Why add to that collection of ideas and beliefs if you were told to be rid of them all?
Those might prove to be worthy topics for your next few meditation periods. That said, even those meditations will not given you the ultimate answer. Nothing I have said will give you the final answer. This much site space had been dedicated to your e-mail because millions worldwide are accepting new ego-states as false identities because those pointers from the founders are being ignored or misinterpreted. The fact is that only via completion of all “Seven-Steps to Reality” will the ultimate answer be found. A woman gave you a book with those seven steps. Your spiritual ego-state, which refused to read anything past the chapter that challenged that false identity (along with all of your other ego-states and false identities) must dissolve before you find the ultimate answer that you’re seeking. For those who find that, all seeking will end, emotional and spiritual intoxication can end, religious and spiritual workaholism can end, they can actually “relax and take it easy,” they can find the balance between being the “life of the party” and being the “wearisome and pontificating Spiritual Giant who has much knowledge,” and true AS IF living in the relative can begin. Once more, thanks for writing. Millions are stuck in Denver, believing they’ve arrived in New York. Maybe the discussion that evolved from your e-mail has cast some light on their roadmaps so they can see where they are and know how much farther they have to go. It’s not far at all, if they find the remaining stepping stones. If they realize they have not arrived, then they’ll understand the man who wondered, “Is this all there is?” and they’ll find their own answer if they complete the “journey.” [Note: Being familiar with the nature of the beast (the false ego-states) it is known that many might like to use this forum to continue to debate these issues, but no more discussion of this topic shall be offered on the site. Related queries will be answered, but only via e-mail and only with those whose correspondence indicates that they are seeking the means to transcend their limiting roles, not with those wanting to defend their false personas. My teacher gave short shrift in his latter days to those who want to fight to defend their ego-states. The same now happens here.] Please enter the silence of contemplation.
