Saturday, April 22, 2006

HOW RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL ROLE-PLAYING FOSTERS DUALITY AND DISTORTION

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CLARIFICATIONS continued from yesterday in response to:
From a site visitor: "Humans are the only creatures who have descretion over their own actions. It is certainly better to exercise this descretion for various reasons including spiritual advancement. Having said that I agree that the advice givan by religious gurus are usually good only for the place, time and circumstances under which they are givan. Religion may abnormalize the normal (natural). But these advices if taken in the right context will help improve worldly living but also contribute to the spiritual advancement of the followers."

2. Humans would have discretion over their actions…
…if they were Realized and thus knew they aren’t humans,
…if they were free of the effects of personality,
…if they were free of assuming false identities as True Identity,
…if they were free of chemical imbalances in the physical body,
…if they were free of the mental and emotional disorders that plague the earth’s population,
…if they were free of the subconscious programming and conditioning that blindly drive their conduct,
…if they were free of the effects of enculturation,
…if they were free of anger and irritability and restlessness,
...if they were not convinced that they understand fully what they do not understand fully,
...if they did not mistake the dawn for high noon, and
…if they were free of the confused belief systems that Advaita suggests they reject so they can be free—once and for all—of the effects of all concepts and beliefs.

Unfortunately, humans suffer the misconception of believing that they are making choices when they are making no choices at all but are being subconsciously driven by all of the above and more. "Discretion" is thus nothing more than another concept. The non-Realized have none. Among the Realized, living merely happens naturally and spontaneously as long as the consciousness is manifested.

3. You are correct in that the advice given by any religious authority or spiritual guru can be relevant only for a particular circumstance, that circumstance being…finding where on the “path” a seeker is and then providing the pointers required for a shift to the next level, to accommodate what you call “spiritual advancement” until Full Realization happens.

4. “Better” implies duality (the pair being “better-worse”) and is therefore no different from other dualities such as “good-bad” and “right-wrong” and “moral-immoral.” “Advaita” does literally mean “not two,” and the “not two” is not limited to the singular use of “God and I are one,” a conceptual belief that ego-states find delightful. For self-identified “worshippers” to claim that (a) they are worshipping and that (b) they are that which they worship is to admit that they are actually worshipping themselves (their false selves).
The ultimate “goal” of Advaita is the removal of all concepts and all dualistic thinking and beliefs. Why? Because “a dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.” Yet even that condition is irrelevant beyond this manifestation. Realized, there is no “one” to proclaim any assurance that he/she has the level of knowledge (along with the ability to know all future effects) that would allow for knowing—absolutely—that “this” will truly prove to be better than “that,” both now and in the longer run. "Freedom" is freedom from all concepts and beliefs and judgments. Contrary to some conclusions being drawn, there is no “judgment” being made that “religion is good” or “religion is bad” or that “playing spiritual roles is better or worse than not playing spiritual roles.” Religious or spiritual roles are required at the third level to shift the protégé away from accepting the limited identity of a physical body and away from the influence of the corrupted consciousness called “the mind.” The pointer is simply that religious roles and spiritual roles are roles and are therefore false, merely steps on a “path” that persons can continue along…or not.

So now, the point has been made and illustrated: those stuck in the third level do believe they know what is “good” and “right” and “better” for themselves, for others and for the world. Only further movement along the “path” (which is not spiritual advancement but is advancement beyond the spiritual) can shift one beyond the belief in all of the accumulated knowledge which is nothing more than learned ignorance and into the Child Ignorance stage. That “state” is the purer state of consciousness that existed prior to programming, indoctrination, conditioning, enculturation and accumulation of all of persons' learned ignorance…including that information that persons take to be their spiritual or religious beliefs and knowledge.

5. Finally, thanks for sharing your thoughts. The path to Realization is for a very few, and fewer still on that "path" will find that "Nisarga Yoga" (or “Natural Yoga”) is the approach for them. Many prefer the “advices” you reference and the "help" they think they are getting (accumulating) from advices in defining such dualistic ideas as “better or worse,” “good or bad” or “right or wrong” for persons absorbed in that “worldly living” you mention. As for that illusory, pre-Realization triad of body-mind-personality called "floyd," when the last ego-state dissolved, there was no longer a floyd to help or to be helped, but many experiences can happen along the way until there is no “one” to experience anything and until the roles of "The Helper" and "The Helped" also disappear. It has been observed that once the re-purified consciousness realizes what It Is, then no WHO or WHO's remain. It has also been observed in past sessions with proteges at various levels that "wet charcoal" will read one message into pointers, "dry charcoal" will read a different message, and those at the "gunpowder" level might simply have all of their past concepts and beliefs explode into non-existence and find that they have shifted beyond the false identities of “Religious Person” or “Spiritual Giant.” Then, they will not react to anything or anyone, will not go through the remainder of the relative existence with a “stick-up-the-rear” attitude, will be able to truly relax and take it easy, will pass through this relative existence by being but not being any role that is doing, and will not have any false, assumed identity that believes it needs to defend or fight for anything. From there, the “journey” can continue.
Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]

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