FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Referring to a title that was given to him by his employer and that was later taken away from him by his employer, a “loss” that is still interrupting his happiness years later]: I must say, I am much better off, but, no matter how hard "I" try, I really can't get over losing my district title. I know it's vain and all that. Yesterday, I went to a meeting. A lady got my old title, a title that has now been upgraded by the company…a title I would have, maybe should have, had. Floyd, I've tried rationalization; I've tried to think about all you have said. While I know I am hung up on the status of the title, my mind simply can't let it go.
F.: Next, consider the self-delusion involved with “titling”: in that entire process of being anointed a title and then stripped of a title, You did not change, but “you” certainly did. The false “you” became arrogant in the beginning; in the middle, the complacent "you" became convinced that the title and all its benefits were simply due "you"; and the humiliated “you” became embarrassed in the end.
Look at the way "you" were being jerked around (and have suffered from emotional intoxication ever since) by valuing a title and by being driven by the accompanying sense of entitlement that always comes with it. Once a "king" or "queen," always a "king" or "queen," right? Note how titling and entitlement reinforce in "the mind" a false sense of continuity and the belief that ego-states (that is, "you") can last "forever."
All illusory titles are always subjected to one of the two additional illusions mentioned in yesterday’s post: either an upgrade (a word you even used in your e-mail) or a downgrade. The upgrading of an illusion is initially accompanied by happiness, elation, and mirth. The downgrading of an illusion is always accompanied by unhappiness, sorrow, or misery. It was only the false "you" (the not yet re-purified consciousness) that believed it had been upgraded and now believes that it was downgraded.
When the bogus title of “fiancé” / “fiancée” is upgraded to “husband” / “wife” by a man in a robe, then happiness, elation, and mirth will accompany the upgrade, initially. Next, complacency will eventually set in. When the bogus title of “husband” / “wife” is downgraded to divorcé / divorcée by a different man in a robe, then unhappiness, sorrow, or misery accompany the downgrade.
If you knew that Your true state is the same as My true state, then You would not be bound by these relativistic illusions of upgrading and downgrading that are constantly being orchestrated by men in robes or by persons in executive suites. You would neither be limited by titles nor feel “expanded” if titles come, nor feel “diminished” if titles go. You would be stable (that is, abiding as the limitless, unchanging, stable Absolute, aware of no titles, of no labels, of no ego-states.) You would be free, aware of nothing and nothingness.
You would not allow men or women in business suits and silk ties—or men in flowing robes or pointy hats or head scarves or shaved heads—to tell You what you are and what you are not. You would know What You Are, and You would know that they do not have a clue in regards to What You Are. And they need not, if only You understand.
And neither their special robes and special water and special buildings and special bells, nor all their special benches and special gavels and special laws, nor any of their special company ranks and corporate titles, could influence You to believe in an identity other than Your own or could have the power to control whether You feel happy and free or sad and imprisoned.
[Do you see why “the mind” must go? It makes mountains out of molehills and then you live in the shadows and darkness of the fictional valleys that the “mind” supposedly “creates.” The “mind” will make “something” out of “nothing,” similar to the way it functions when a mirage is seen by the eye and when the "mind" then falsely perceives the mirage to be something that it is not.
You have mistaken the snake for a rope and now you are in fear and anger and depression around an illusion...around a misconception. You saw a mirage and have since allowed a mirage to determine how you feel. As insane as it is to live in a co-dependent "relationship" with anyone, wouldn't the height of insanity be to live in a co-dependent "relationship" with a mirage? Only the light can remove such delusion, be it in regards to a snake-rope confusion in the darkness or in regards to a "you"-You confusion in the darkness.]
Nor would You allow men in boardrooms or offices to dictate what you think you are and what you think you are not, and You would experience no instability as You merely witnessed them as they proclaim or defame.
Nor would anyone aware of Who/What She/He Truly Is be pulled into a state of emotional intoxication if a sleepwalker proclaims at one point that “You are the man/woman of my dreams” but later asserts that “You are my greatest nightmare.” Nor would emotional intoxication be triggered if a bastardized speck of consciousness replaced "I love you" with "I hate you."
Look to your case, though: to the contrary of that peace which comes with Realization's position of neutrality, you admit that at the root of your experience of unhappiness and sorrow and misery is just "vanity at play." You admit that it is the “mind” which won’t “let it go.” A mirage, you believe, has you firmly in its grip and you are paralyzed by that self-delusion.
Imagine yourself in the desert, standing where a mirage had been seen earlier. See yourself flailing and spinning and swinging about as if trying to free yourself from a straight jacket. Imagine that the sleepwalking masses are watching and that a Pure Witness is watching. The masses are identifying with you, "feeling" your pain, but they can't help since they also feel trapped inside their own mirages: they're down; they're up; they're down again. All the while, the Witness is standing to the side and watching all of the nonsense, observing all of you flailing and rolling and spinning about in the delusion that something really exists and that something really has a hold on you.
You also make clear another part of the reason that you are not free: you have “tried rationalization.”
Rationalization is an ego-defense mechanism. Rather than accepting the Advaita teachings and allowing the "mind" and all ego-states to end, you are using a mental mechanism to defend an ego-state and to allow that fictional identity to be considered real. (Do you not see that you are trying to use the illusion of a "mind" to rid you of the effects of a mirage that is only taken to be real by that very "mind"? There's the rub which will guarantee that 95-99% of all warped or blocked consciousness will remain warped or blocked until it unmanifests.)
More about the use of that ego-defense mechanism called "rationalization" will be offered tomorrow. For now, you might consider: Freud’s daughter recorded her father’s pointers regarding anxiety, ego, and ego-defense mechanisms. Here are some of the main points she catalogued:
When anxiety occurs, the mind responds in two ways:
A. problem-solving efforts are increased and
B. ego-defense mechanisms are triggered.
[These are tactics which the Ego develops to help deal with the ID and the Super Ego, Freud taught.]
Further, all ego-defense mechanisms share two common properties:
1. They operate unconsciously
2. They distort, transform, or falsify reality
Along with “denial,” “repression,” “projection,” “displacement” and other mechanisms, the ego also uses “rationalization” in the "mind's" effort to convince itself and others that it is real, to convince itself that it is an upgrade, or to imagine that it has undergone a downgrade. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
For more information on books that address all of the seven levels of the “journey” offered via the Advaita Teachings or that discuss in detail each of the seven steps, visit:
http://floydhenderson.com/nothingness.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/consiousnessawareness.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/iamabsolute.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/theessence.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/whenidie.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/liberation.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/peaceofmind.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/spiritualsobriety.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/bullshit.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/twicestolen1.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/twicestolen2.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/spiritjourney.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/twelvestep.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/castinglight.htm
http://floydhenderson.com/boardofdirectors.htm
