From a site visitor: What can Realization do to help my unrest? I become furious (or depressed) when I see such diversity in the lifestyles of people across the globe. I want fairness and equanimity, but I see none. I look at this world and I see people in war torn nations fighting for their lives and I see other people putting all their energy into killing the innocent. I see people in prosperous nations like here in the U.S. who are fighting to get into stores to buy games and toys while other people are scrounging for a morsel to eat. I’d like to see some sense to this world, but I can’t. Can Advaita help me get free of this? Steven
F.: The point having been offered that there is no “one” to be helped, it might be that the non-attachment of Realization could provide freedom from the emotional intoxication that you seem to be experiencing. [That freedom will not preclude certain feelings from happening. So it is in this state of Am-ness, even among the Realized.]
But non-attachment would not appeal to you at this point because you are so far removed from being Fully Realized. Your e-mail reveals your current “condition,” and your current condition provides an opportunity to reinforce certain Advaitan pointers that have been offered in the past:
1. Persons/personas are identified with body, mind, and personality.
2. Most who have been on the “journey” long enough to forfeit total attachment to body and/or mind become fixated at the spiritual stage, having merely replaced their former personas with that newly-adopted persona. That assumption of a new persona assures they will be as trapped in personality as persons who have never even begun to travel the “path.”
3. Those trapped in that newer role believe that they have “arrived,” believe that they have completed the "journey," and thus mistake the dawn for the noon.
4. All persons trapped in personality will suffer restlessness, discontentment, irritability, or outright misery as a result of personality, no matter how “good” they think their newest role is.
Look to your own case, Steven, to find examples of each pointer. You are trapped in personality (pointer #1). The primary persona that is driving you is the one which is likely your dominant personality type, specifically “The Perfectionist.” That role attaches you to two other roles—the personality “wings” of “The Perfectionist”—so you evidence traits of “The Peacemaker” personality and “The Helper” personality. Not being free of the dominant personality, you are automatically and immediately trapped into two other roles. That leaves you with a “split personality” (multiple personas as identities) and that induces a sensation of being broken…not whole…not One.
You illustrate pointer #2 by your belief that you know what is wrong with “the world” and pointer #3 by the implication that you could come up with a better plan because you are on a higher plane and can see all that is wrong with “the world.”
Trapped as you are in your personas and fixed at step three of a seven-step “journey” to Realization, you illustrate pointer #4: not only are you “furious and/or depressed” for most of your waking hours, you are attached to your fury and depression. Why? Because you are attached to personality, and personality always generates misery. You have become “comfortable” with the uncomfortable, comfortable with the familiar—no matter how miserable the familiar is. Now, you’re trapped in those false identities and frustrated that you can’t make the world—can’t make people—do what you think they “should do.” Having added the ego-state of “The Would-Be Controller” to the list of the personalities you’ve adopted, of course your ego-states are experiencing fury and depression. Why?
You (“The Perfectionist”) become furious because you can’t change the world and make it as perfect as you would like. Ironically, you become furious that there is no universal peace, which your “Peacemaker” personality desires. You become frustrated because your “Helper” personality can’t really effect the change that those other two roles want. And after the adrenaline rush of that fury recedes for a period, you become depressed because “The Controller” desires power, doesn’t have it, and knows that he has failed again to find a way to make the world right. The misery is intensified by the fact that you have desires, by the fact that desires are rooted in (and reinforce) illusions, and by the fact that belief in illusions guarantees frustration.
Thus, another pointer is offered: see how belief in illusion generates belief in more illusions. Then, see how more illusions generate more misery. You look at a mirage (“the world”) and believe that it is real. You do not see that it is merely a (false) image in your mind. It is a reflection, an appearance, that you are taking to be real. You think that the world is the way you see it, but other persons who see an entirely different kind of world believe as wholeheartly that their perception is real and right. So who is "right"? That which is inconstant and variable is never the real.
F.: The point having been offered that there is no “one” to be helped, it might be that the non-attachment of Realization could provide freedom from the emotional intoxication that you seem to be experiencing. [That freedom will not preclude certain feelings from happening. So it is in this state of Am-ness, even among the Realized.]
But non-attachment would not appeal to you at this point because you are so far removed from being Fully Realized. Your e-mail reveals your current “condition,” and your current condition provides an opportunity to reinforce certain Advaitan pointers that have been offered in the past:
1. Persons/personas are identified with body, mind, and personality.
2. Most who have been on the “journey” long enough to forfeit total attachment to body and/or mind become fixated at the spiritual stage, having merely replaced their former personas with that newly-adopted persona. That assumption of a new persona assures they will be as trapped in personality as persons who have never even begun to travel the “path.”
3. Those trapped in that newer role believe that they have “arrived,” believe that they have completed the "journey," and thus mistake the dawn for the noon.
4. All persons trapped in personality will suffer restlessness, discontentment, irritability, or outright misery as a result of personality, no matter how “good” they think their newest role is.
Look to your own case, Steven, to find examples of each pointer. You are trapped in personality (pointer #1). The primary persona that is driving you is the one which is likely your dominant personality type, specifically “The Perfectionist.” That role attaches you to two other roles—the personality “wings” of “The Perfectionist”—so you evidence traits of “The Peacemaker” personality and “The Helper” personality. Not being free of the dominant personality, you are automatically and immediately trapped into two other roles. That leaves you with a “split personality” (multiple personas as identities) and that induces a sensation of being broken…not whole…not One.
You illustrate pointer #2 by your belief that you know what is wrong with “the world” and pointer #3 by the implication that you could come up with a better plan because you are on a higher plane and can see all that is wrong with “the world.”
Trapped as you are in your personas and fixed at step three of a seven-step “journey” to Realization, you illustrate pointer #4: not only are you “furious and/or depressed” for most of your waking hours, you are attached to your fury and depression. Why? Because you are attached to personality, and personality always generates misery. You have become “comfortable” with the uncomfortable, comfortable with the familiar—no matter how miserable the familiar is. Now, you’re trapped in those false identities and frustrated that you can’t make the world—can’t make people—do what you think they “should do.” Having added the ego-state of “The Would-Be Controller” to the list of the personalities you’ve adopted, of course your ego-states are experiencing fury and depression. Why?
You (“The Perfectionist”) become furious because you can’t change the world and make it as perfect as you would like. Ironically, you become furious that there is no universal peace, which your “Peacemaker” personality desires. You become frustrated because your “Helper” personality can’t really effect the change that those other two roles want. And after the adrenaline rush of that fury recedes for a period, you become depressed because “The Controller” desires power, doesn’t have it, and knows that he has failed again to find a way to make the world right. The misery is intensified by the fact that you have desires, by the fact that desires are rooted in (and reinforce) illusions, and by the fact that belief in illusions guarantees frustration.
Thus, another pointer is offered: see how belief in illusion generates belief in more illusions. Then, see how more illusions generate more misery. You look at a mirage (“the world”) and believe that it is real. You do not see that it is merely a (false) image in your mind. It is a reflection, an appearance, that you are taking to be real. You think that the world is the way you see it, but other persons who see an entirely different kind of world believe as wholeheartly that their perception is real and right. So who is "right"? That which is inconstant and variable is never the real.
Your illusory ego-states (and the egotism that accompanies ego-states) convince you that you know better than others about the way the world should be. You believe that the mirage before you can be improved, so you set out to improve it. When nothing can be done to change a mirage or improve a mirage, you become frustrated and furious and, eventually, depressed. Then, your ego-states of “The Perfectionist" and "The Peacemaker" and "The Helper" and "The Controller” inspire you to ignore truth and ignore fact and ignore failure and to start your efforts all over again. Attached to personality, you will also be attached to the accompanying misery and fury and depression that accompany personality.
The misery is now as much a part of your false identity as those roles. You might begin to be free of all those illusions and the subsequent misery if you look at your seminal illusion (“the world”) and see that it’s false. Begin by understanding that you are not in the world; rather, understand that the world which you hate is in you. Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]
