THERE ARE NO "SPIRITUAL" OR "HOLY" PLACES, Part Five

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Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

Furthermore, for those who have developed a preference for any non-nisargan yoga or who prefer Traditional Advaita Vedanta, Neo-Advaita, Neo-Vedanta, or Pseudo Advaita: here you will only find the use of the Direct Path Method of teaching along with the Nisarga (Natural) Yoga, all shared in simple, everyday English.

F.: Yesterday, these pointers were offered:

A. To understand if a system can "work" to free one completely, one must know what "freedom" means and must then know what the agenda is of the persons offering the system. The options for seekers are near countless.

B. Seekers might become attached to one of the thousands of systems available to try to find that which they cannot even really identify as "the one thing being sought." What use seeking if it is not realized that one is seeking the Ultimate Medicine that can be used to treat the Ultimate Sickness?

C. In almost every case, persons identify their meeting places as being special (that is, "unlike other places") and as being "holy" (that is, "different from") or as being "spiritual" places.

D. Why would anyone seek the Ultimate Medicine - which is not offered in any church, temple, synagogue, support group, step group, or any so-called "religious venue" or so-called "spiritual" venue" - if she / he has not been properly diagnosed and come to understand that all of the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness are being displayed?

What is being sought by everyone is the means for permanently eradicating the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, but most will never know what it is they are seeking so they will not find it.

With 97% claiming affiliation with an organized religion, most will allow their search to be directed by leaders deemed "holy" in places said to be "holy."

Add in the millions who are searching inside step and support groups where the leadership claims that they are "spiritual" and can make their members "spiritual."

Believing in and searching in so-called "holy" or "spiritual" places, persons will seek to be holy and / or spiritual, and once they are convinced that they are that, the searching will end and the constant reinforcement of their newly-assumed persona will begin (and seeking anything other than personality-reinforcement will not likely ever happen again during their lifetime).

Once they think they are "better," or "better than they were," the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness will continue but there will be no seeking of the Ultimate Medicine. It is not unlike the patient who is given a 10-day prescription for an antibiotic to clear up an infection, who begins to feel better after two days, who notices that the medicine does bother the stomach as an uncomfortable side effect, and who therefore discontinues taking the medicine.

The patient might have been relieved temporarily of some of the negative symptoms of the infection, but if the entire dosage is not taken, then the sickness will manifest again.

So what are the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness that are addressed only by the Ultimate Medicine (which, by the way, is not administered with the goal of making anyone holy or spiritual or better than or more knowledgeable or "a life-long, contributing member" of anything).

Robert Powell said that Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj provided "powerful antidotes to unawarenesses," that is, to the sickness that marks and mars the relative existence. This is shared in "The Ultimate Sickness, The Ultimate Medicine":

The Ultimate Sickness, like most sickness, is passed on when persons interact; it is contracted when a previously-well person is exposed to another person or persons who have the sickness, and the exposure always begins at an early age.

The sickness is passed on via the "germ" of programming and the "virus" of conditioning and the "contaminate" of acculturation and the "bacteria" of domestication.

The Ultimate Sickness is primarily a mental and emotional sickness that is contracted when exposed to the ignorance and insanity that has already spread throughout every culture on the planet. Exposure to the carriers also results in personality disorders that can only be addressed by the casting aside of all personality in order to continue to move along the four-stage, seven-step "path" to wellness.

Treatment for the Ultimate Sickness is complicated by the fact that most persons who contract the illness actually normalize the condition and its symptoms and, therefore, (a) seldom have a clue that they are as sick as they truly are and thus (b) seldom seek the Ultimate Medicine that can address the sickness and its symptoms.

How, then, is one to know if he or she has contracted the Ultimate Sickness? One must cross the path of a "healer" who suffered the illness, of one who found someone to administer the treatment in the proper stages and steps, of one that was eventually freed of the sickness and its symptoms, and of one that is now willing to administer the Ultimate Medicine to seekers who are now suffering the same symptoms and effects and who are wanting relief.

Therefore, consider some of the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness which include an inability to distinguish true from false and, therefore, the propensity to believe lies; to distort perceptions; to believe that images are real; to have no clue who you are; to talk in one's sleep; to work and drive and walk while asleep;

to accept as true, without questioning to even the slightest degree, the concepts and beliefs that are taught by authority figures and to believe the most unbelievable tales that those figures dream up; to accumulate the various forms of the sickness and then to pass them along to family members and friends and associates ... with pride in having done so; to accept with faith beliefs that have no basis in fact and that cannot possibly be proved; to be so delusional that "one" is believed to be "two" (or more);

to believe that learned ignorance is wisdom; to suffer willingly and repeatedly the consequences of what Maharaj called "learned ignorance"; to lose all ability to detect nonsense when it is heard;

to allow subconscious motivators (a.k.a., personality / personalities) to determine every thought and word and action while believing that one is consciously choosing to think what is thought, to say what is said, and to do what is done; to be asleep but to believe that one is awake;

to be self-destructive; to exhibit impaired judgment; to be unreasonable and illogical; to display unstable and inappropriate emotions (that is, being emotionally-intoxicated); to be religiously or spiritually intoxicated; to have hallucinations (such as believing that you can hear a supernatural being from another world and to believe that such a being is actually talking to you);

to believe that the not-special is special; to believe that absolutes can be applied to things relative; to be disorganized and confused while thinking that you are organized and thinking clearly; to develop extreme dependencies on people and groups and leaders and on powers that are supposedly living in unseen worlds; to be unable to cope; to be in a state of unwarranted fear; to constantly desire more and more of what is already making one sick;

to feel guilt and self-blame that have no basis in fact; to behave like a six-year old child for an entire manifestation, even during "the adult years"; to be preoccupied with "self" (with the false selves or false identities that are assumed and thought to be real); to play a role on a stage and believe the character is real;

to believe that a physical, plant food body can disintegrate, re-integrate, and last for eternity and can feel pain or ecstasy for eternity; and to suffer and then still believe that suffering is good; ad infinitum.

No system with the ultimate goal of building its membership rolls and filling its coffers will address the Ultimate Sickness. No such systems have even the slightest clue about what the Ultimate Medicine is, and among the few who do, most of them do not know how to properly administer the medicine.

So, is it any wonder that - among the few who do seek outside the typical venues - few of them will ever find? Is it any wonder that those who take a detour that stops at a dead end that is thought to be "a holy place" or "a spiritual place" merely stay there because that place does offer constant and repeated reinforcement for their supposedly "new and improved personas"?

Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)