FROM A SITE VISITOR: Do you think that the realized should be able to tolerate any kind of environment or any kind of people? It sounds like you are saying that. I’ve been reading your writings for several months and lately, there are people I spent a lot of time with before but now I’m not spending time with them at all. I’m not realized, but even if I were, I feel certain that there are some people I just wouldn’t want to be around. Art
F.: The non-Realized often “stay” around persons because of desires and fears or perceived needs (such as, “I need a very high lifestyle but I am not willing to work for it and pay for it myself”) or an egotistical sense of entitlement (e.g., “I am so special that I deserve to be taken care of by someone else”).
Driven by their hidden agendas, persons generate ego-states with attachments, which are always accompanied by co-dependency. Why? “Husband” cannot exist without “Wife,” and vice versa; “Employee” cannot exist without “Employer,” and vice versa; “Taker” cannot exist without “Giver,” and vice versa; "The Rescued" cannot exist without "The Rescuer," and vice versa.
After the assumption of false identities with agendas, attachments, and co-dependencies, the non-Realized tolerate misery in order for their perceived needs and desires to be met or in order for their fears to be allayed. All the while, their level of denial allows them to convince themselves that they are happy or “comfortable” in spite of not being free. That is, of course, impossible.
The non-Realized do not gravitate toward peace, silence, and reality. Many among the non-Realized seek out those that they can use (speaking, of course, in the most basic, relative sense). Their misery is then generated when the ones they use assume a sense of “ownership” in the absence of the users’ lack of “earnership.” If you take “their” money and earn none of your own, that might seem “comfortable” for a time (as Case “A” claims) but the observable misery that manifests long-term provides evidence to the contrary.
Thus, the non-Realized do not move toward peace and quiet and agenda-less, attachment-free living. They seek out ways and means by which they can sustain their ego-states and that actually reinforce their dependencies and co-dependencies. The result is mental and emotional imprisonment, as illustrated in case study “C.”
Today’s post studies a man who has distorted his desire to gain power and his desire to have someone meet his financial and sexual needs into what he terms “love.” Because of his agendas (most of which are even hidden from him) he is “staying” even though he has been placed in the role of “The Child” and is claiming that he is “in love with” the woman playing “The Parent.”
Case “C”: Regarding the desire to gain power and to have someone meet financial and sexual needs and then labeling that “love”
Case “C” is a man who has generated a more-than-typical share of relative existence problems and consequences: heavy substance abuse; incarceration; parole; an inability to find decent housing; charming a recently-divorced woman who received a large settlement; moving into a house she owns; and now living the lie of appearing to be a “grand success” in her upscale neighborhood.
At home, he has been told to “cover up his past” among the neighbors and he deals with daily reminders that it is she who owns the house he lives in. Recently, a long-time acquaintance gave him a job, overpaying him $1000 per week out of “friendship.” He was informed by his female benefactor that all of his checks must be direct deposited into her account and that he will receive a weekly allowance (“$50 a week should cover whatever you need. In turn, you get to live in a beautiful home, with me”).
Before, he had felt economically powerless, unable to buy anything on credit and unable to find decent housing. Now, he is able to ride the coattail of her financial “power” as long as they stay together. His sexual “needs” and lifestyle desires are being met, but at the cost of his harmony (and his entire paycheck).
Claiming he is “more than comfortable” and is actually “joyous” and “in love,” he is nevertheless prone to fits and outbursts and raging as a result of the tension of having to hide his past, as a result of playing phony roles in the neighborhood, and as a result of assuming “The Child” ego-state to her “Parent” role. With his current income, he could now live well on his own, but he could not live in a mansion in an upscale neighborhood.
The phoniness of playing “The Successful Businessman” who also appears to be “The Wealthy Homeowner” (while living like “The Child” indoors) is taking a relative toll as he lives a lie while putting on hold earlier efforts to answer, “Who am I, really”?
He slipped for just a moment and admitted that sometimes he “had felt freer a year ago when he was living alone in a tiny apartment in a low-rent area of town,” but he immediately reverted to reciting his lines from the script of the roles being played in “The Drama of the Lie”: “But I’ve found the woman of my dreams, I love her and her children, we’re in a great neighborhood and a beautiful home, so it’s all good.” Meanwhile, she has twice postponed their scheduled marriage.
He has not yet realized that dreams can easily become nightmares when phony role-playing blinds persons to the fact that whatever provides pleasure will someday provide pain. He has not realized how loosely persons toss about the word “love” in order to justify and even “sanctify” their self-centered actions that have nothing to do with love.
Is it any wonder that Maharaj said,
“The world is nothing but the picture of your own ‘I’ consciousness”
and
“All is dishonesty”
and
“There is no truth in this fraud”
and
“Only that false ‘I’ is attached. Everything is just happening, and the false ‘I’ is taking the credit for doing things.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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