F.: Recently, a woman wrote to discuss her husband’s ego-states that she finds "disgusting and intolerable." After visiting the site, she claimed that she “finally realized that she had been putting up with his phony roles and watching him fooling everybody for twenty years and was sick of it.” (That was far from the “realization” being offered, but so it is.) She is currently making deposits into a secret account in order to build up a cash reserve so she can leave him “within a year or so.” The e-mailed response asked her, “And what roles will you be playing between now and when you finally leave?” Her answer: “The dutiful wife. We all have physical needs, so it’ll be easy to keep the charade going until I’m in a position to leave him.” The e-mailed response to that: “Yet you suggest that the justification for leaving him is that he’s playing phony roles and fooling everybody? What of your phony roles and your fooling him?” She has not been heard from since. So few can distinguish between the reflection and the real, and few can stand the heat of self-awareness when the glare of the light shines back on them and the lies they are living. Seeing that which is being projected onto others is a fool-proof tool for finding one’s own personal traits, yet persons always fail to see in themselves what they hate in others, and they always fail to distinguish the real from the false.
Count Marcello of Venice, Italy spoke of the “Venice Effect” to discuss how often the real is mistaken for a reflection and how often a reflection is mistaken for the real. He said, "Sunlight on a canal is reflected up through a window onto the ceiling, then from the ceiling onto a vase, and from the vase onto a glass. Which is the real sunlight? Which is the real and which is the reflection? What is true and what is not true? That is the Venice Effect." Actually, it is the “Persona Effect.” Persons (the non-Realized) cannot differentiate the true from the false and cannot see that their own personas are merely masks. They take the play to be the real. They think they have seen the light but are mistaking the dawn for high noon.
Just as a phony woman can hate a husband for being phony, players can despise players even as they continue their own play-acting. How chaotic role-playing is. What a physical and mental toll the dishonesty of playing roles and maintaining facades takes on humans. How debilitating it is to try to maintain an “outside appearance of peace” that is actually in direct opposition to the “inside condition of chaos.” How effectively the play-acting separates personas from the real…from ever finding the answer to the question, “Who Am I, really?” Are you seeing that no freedom can happen as long as the mind-games of role-playing continue? Are you seeing that freedom, in the early stages of the “journey” to Realization, is as much about freedom from the influences of the “mind” as anything else? Are you seeing that enlightenment begins by making an honest assessment of self instead of an assessment of “others”? When the false self (or selves) are seen and the True Self is known, then awareness of the Oneness happens, a sense of At-one-ment occurs, no “others” are imagined, and no longer will there be anyone to get “sick” about the roles that “others” are playing. No one would look at Pavlov’s dogs as they salivated over the sound of a bell rather than over the smell of meat and say they were “sick” of the ways those dogs are behaving. No one who understands the way that conditioning drives insane behavior would find their unnatural conduct to be "disgusting" or "intolerable." In fact, the understanding opens the door to true tolerance. Becoming aware of the conditioning that has driven you all of your life makes you aware of the conditioning that is driving all persons on the planet. You understand. You no longer judge. You do not find a spouse or anyone else to be "disgusting" or "intolerable." You are not bothered in the least when you witness “others” who are powerless…who have lost all ability to choose…who are blindly driven by programming and conditioning. You merely witness it all. To “know ThySelf” requires knowing your self first. The lies about self must be seen before any chance of seeing the truth about Self can happen.
In the 26 May posting, the pointer was offered that the decision to discard the ideas and concepts and beliefs of others becomes simple “because it will be no different from trying to decide whether to keep your neighbor’s garbage (or your parents’ garbage or the garbage collected by men 5000 years ago) or to throw it all away. Realization is about being in touch with reality (that is, being sane). Isn’t it clear, now, that it is insane to collect and keep and value the garbage of others? Isn’t it clear that it is sane to discard all garbage? Yet the weakness among persons is that they give great value to the garbage, to the beliefs, the concepts, the ideas of ignorant men of the past that are held in such esteem today. Yet for those in touch with reality to even a small degree, it is clear that sanity happens when you are out of your “mind” and when you are free of being controlled by their warped “minds.” Freedom is being free of all of their garbage (which you now take to be your own garbage). Freedom is about being free of all of their ideas and concepts and dualistic thinking. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
Count Marcello of Venice, Italy spoke of the “Venice Effect” to discuss how often the real is mistaken for a reflection and how often a reflection is mistaken for the real. He said, "Sunlight on a canal is reflected up through a window onto the ceiling, then from the ceiling onto a vase, and from the vase onto a glass. Which is the real sunlight? Which is the real and which is the reflection? What is true and what is not true? That is the Venice Effect." Actually, it is the “Persona Effect.” Persons (the non-Realized) cannot differentiate the true from the false and cannot see that their own personas are merely masks. They take the play to be the real. They think they have seen the light but are mistaking the dawn for high noon.
Just as a phony woman can hate a husband for being phony, players can despise players even as they continue their own play-acting. How chaotic role-playing is. What a physical and mental toll the dishonesty of playing roles and maintaining facades takes on humans. How debilitating it is to try to maintain an “outside appearance of peace” that is actually in direct opposition to the “inside condition of chaos.” How effectively the play-acting separates personas from the real…from ever finding the answer to the question, “Who Am I, really?” Are you seeing that no freedom can happen as long as the mind-games of role-playing continue? Are you seeing that freedom, in the early stages of the “journey” to Realization, is as much about freedom from the influences of the “mind” as anything else? Are you seeing that enlightenment begins by making an honest assessment of self instead of an assessment of “others”? When the false self (or selves) are seen and the True Self is known, then awareness of the Oneness happens, a sense of At-one-ment occurs, no “others” are imagined, and no longer will there be anyone to get “sick” about the roles that “others” are playing. No one would look at Pavlov’s dogs as they salivated over the sound of a bell rather than over the smell of meat and say they were “sick” of the ways those dogs are behaving. No one who understands the way that conditioning drives insane behavior would find their unnatural conduct to be "disgusting" or "intolerable." In fact, the understanding opens the door to true tolerance. Becoming aware of the conditioning that has driven you all of your life makes you aware of the conditioning that is driving all persons on the planet. You understand. You no longer judge. You do not find a spouse or anyone else to be "disgusting" or "intolerable." You are not bothered in the least when you witness “others” who are powerless…who have lost all ability to choose…who are blindly driven by programming and conditioning. You merely witness it all. To “know ThySelf” requires knowing your self first. The lies about self must be seen before any chance of seeing the truth about Self can happen.
In the 26 May posting, the pointer was offered that the decision to discard the ideas and concepts and beliefs of others becomes simple “because it will be no different from trying to decide whether to keep your neighbor’s garbage (or your parents’ garbage or the garbage collected by men 5000 years ago) or to throw it all away. Realization is about being in touch with reality (that is, being sane). Isn’t it clear, now, that it is insane to collect and keep and value the garbage of others? Isn’t it clear that it is sane to discard all garbage? Yet the weakness among persons is that they give great value to the garbage, to the beliefs, the concepts, the ideas of ignorant men of the past that are held in such esteem today. Yet for those in touch with reality to even a small degree, it is clear that sanity happens when you are out of your “mind” and when you are free of being controlled by their warped “minds.” Freedom is being free of all of their garbage (which you now take to be your own garbage). Freedom is about being free of all of their ideas and concepts and dualistic thinking. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
