PART “EE”: REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”

Today's Considerations

Today, you’re invited to review the two examples offered recently and see exactly what might be revealed in terms of dualistic thinking vs. non-duality:

***One man killed his wife because she was separating from him.

***Another killed nine people in a church because they were black and he favored separation, talking often about “sparking a race war” and “wanting segregation reinstated.”

+++Some members of a group described the man who shot his wife as “a very spiritual person.”

+++Dylann Roof was described by his pastor as “a devout Christian who was baptized in the Lutheran faith, went to church camp, and worshiped regularly.”

***The nine people shot by Roof were also Christians.

***It was a pro-religious group calling itself “Aryan Nations,” whose messages of hate and white superiority have fueled violent crimes and domestic terrorism for decades, which applauded the actions of Dylann Roof.

(Only hours after Roof was arrested for shooting nine blacks at a Charleston, South Carolina church, Aryan Nations leader Morris Gulett – an ordained Church of Jesus Christ Christian Pastor - offered praise and urged others to follow Roof’s example: “We had better see much more of this type of activism if we ever expect to see our America return to it’s [sic] rightful place in the world and our children grow up in a clean safe healthy enviroment [sic],” Gulett wrote. Other racists individually have offered support or praise for Roof in comments posted on a forum hosted by “Stormfront.” “Stormfront was established by members of the anti-black, pro-Christian Ku Klux Klan and has been identified as the world’s largest hate site. As noted yesterday, the KKK was established at the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 to carry on the fight against segregation after the Southern confederacy surrendered and the “official” pro-slavery war ended.)

As another example of what is at the core of the fighting and killing in the two cases cited and in cases all around the globe each day, consider the levels of pontification; the calls for rebellion again the U.S. Government; the calls by state government officials for all to refuse to recognize the law passed last Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court; and the calls by some elected officials in the U.S. Government to ignore the law. Their objections were based on their “religious beliefs.” The issue: same-sex couples living in 75% of the fifty states in the U.S. could already marry, but those living in the remaining 25% could not. Friday, the Supreme Court gave the same rights to all.

What is the "non-dualist’s" take on all of that?

Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” anti-ignorance, anti-stupidity, and anti-insanity?

Would Maharaj, or any “non-dualist,” be pro-same-sex marriage or anti-same-sex-marriage?

Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” pro-spirituality or anti-spirituality?

Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” pro-religion or anti-religion?

Was it being anti-religious or anti-spirituality which led Maharaj to eventually turn his back on both?

Well, consider: was Thomas Edison anti-the-first-9999-incandescent-bulb-prototypes he used, or did he turn his back on them for the simple reason that they did not work?

To clarify, those pointed to with the term “Fully Realized” have reached the state endorsed by Maharaj, a state of “zero-concepts” and zero beliefs. Maharaj recommended being free of the mind completely and stated that he had no mind. If the last belief goes, so too does the mind go.

Maharaj: “We believe in so many things on hearsay. We believe in distant lands and people, in heavens and hells, in gods and goddesses, because we were told. Similarly, we were told about ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and so on. We never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs”

and

“Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”

Therefore, there is no one here that can be either pro-gay-marriage or anti-gay-marriage. It’s not an issue. No "Realized Advaitin" would care who marries, who does not marry, or who marries whom.

Contrary to the beliefs of some, there can also be no one here to be pro-religion or anti-religion. Religion involves dogma, and dogma is nothing more than a compilation of dreamed up concepts. Nothing about it is real, so nothing about it can be true. One might as well choose sides and be either pro-mirages or anti-mirages. All that the non-dualist has to say about it is, “I invite you to see all mirages as the mirages that they are. If you cannot do that, you are suffering from one or more of the traits of the Ultimate Sickness which Maharaj identified as 'ignorance, stupidity and insanity.' Yet if you do not want to differentiate between that which is a mirage and that which is real - or if you do not want to differentiate between the true and the false - so be it."

Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma wrote: “There are various religions and systems of philosophy which claim to endow human life with meaning. But they suffer from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical. Believers, however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems, in the same way as scientific theories are abandoned, when they are called in question by too much contradictory empirical data.” Was he anti-religion, or was he simply one that was capable of differentiating the false from the true?

So one pointed to with the term “non-dualist” or with the term “Fully Realized” is neither “pro” nor “anti” anything. To take a stance "for" or "against" anything would just involve more duality.

All that Maharaj did - or that any “truly Realized non-dual teacher" does - is what any caring, empathetic human would do: if one walking down the street sees a sinkhole and knows that other people are walking a step behind, a caring and empathetic one would stop and point out the sinkhole to those walking behind them so that those persons can also enjoy the same thing that the Realized enjoy at that moment, namely, not falling into a sinkhole.

Maharaj pointed out the mental sinkholes that people walk toward - or which they have already fallen into - and he offered a way to avoid sinkholes or to escape from the sinkholes which have already been fallen into.

Was he invested in the way that persons responded when he pointed to what he pointed to? No. Would he become upset and remain upset if persons ignored his pointing toward sinkholes? No. He was not “pro-one-response” and “anti-all-other-responses.”

He witnessed true and false, he pointed toward the truth, and then he went about his way as all other persons went about their way.  

How could he have been driven even remotely by an agenda or motive or intention when he admitted that, even including those who came to the loft, only 1 out of 100000 would ever realize, later amended to 1 out of 1,000,000 and then later amended to 1 out of 10,000,000?

Yet he did remain willing to share, no matter the odds. Same here. Pointers are offered, and then seekers are left to draw their own conclusions, or not.

So what in terms of non-duality can pointed out in the examples given? The process of receiving the Ultimate Medicine involves understanding the Ultimate Sickness and its roots and symptoms.

So in the examples above, insane actions were rooted in a desire not to separate in one case and in a desire to separate in another, whether the issue was not allowing a woman to separate if she wanted to do so; or whether the issue was wanting races to separate; or whether the issue was wanting people of the same sex to separate rather than marry. All of the examples involved duality-based thoughts and beliefs dealing with separation and who should or should not mix with whom.

So, in all cases, the illusion of “separate from” was at play.

In all cases, a sense of different-from-ment and a sense of better-than-ment were at play.

In all cases, people trapped in dualistic thinking patterns were being driven by beliefs – beliefs about right and wrong. As one non-dualist was heard to say, “The belief that something is wrong is the fire under the ass of humanity.”

Or “the bug up humanity’s ass.”

Or “the stick up humanity’s ass.”

So these types of dualistic thoughts and beliefs are now commonplace:

“It is wrong for you to want to leave me, though I am abusing drugs and you and our children.”

It is wrong for whites to have to co-exist alongside blacks.”

“It is wrong for two people of the same sex to love each other and marry.”

“It will be wrong if more white people don’t start killing black people.”

“It is wrong if people are not Christians.”

“It is wrong if white Christians do not kill black Christians.”

Do you see that this is not about blacks and whites; or about Christians and non-Christians; or about gays and straights; or about who can marry whom and who cannot; or about right and wrong; or about good and evil; or about Sunnis and Shias; or about “us vs. them"; or about any other dualistic pairings?

This is about “ignorance and stupidity and insanity,” about seeing “ignorance and stupidity and insanity,” and about turning:

Maharaj: “Turn within.” 

Stop looking without for the source of displeasure and misery and suffering. Look within. See all sinkholes. Turn. Then, develop a sense of empathy and the unicity to replace the false sense of separation that is taught via programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination.

Maharaj: “You have to turn away from the world and go within, until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond the conditioned, whether inner or outer.”

See, and then turn away from, the warped programming; from the bizarre conditioning; from all that your culture has taught; from all that your parents and friends and relatives and leaders have taught; from all of the brainwashing you‘ve been exposed to both inside and outside the home; and from all of the indoctrination which you have been exposed to.

Maharaj: “Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realise the full import of the only true statement you can make: 'I am'?”

Not “I am a Christian.” Not “I am a white.” Not “I am a black.” Not “I am right.” Not “You are wrong.” Not “I am a Super Husband and you must stay with me.” Not “I am a gay person.” Not “I am a straight person.” Not “I am the one who gets to decide who lives and who dies.” Not “I am a member of a super race.” Not “You are a member of an inferior race.”

Of course, all of that is just a suggestion, just an invitation, to be accepted . . . or not. 

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

[NOTE: The four most recent posts follow. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]

PART “DD”: REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”

Today's Considerations 

These points were shared yesterday: 

The “ignorance and stupidity and insanity” which Maharaj associated with the Ultimate Sickness - and the prevalence of assholism which is now an additional global complication generated by the Sickness – all develop after persons are exposed for generations to ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing.

I had talked to a man who had traumatized his young daughters in a way that will affect them for their entire existence by murdering his estranged wife in front of them. Talk about self-absorption. Talk about concerned only with self. Then I saw how that is magnified thousands of times a day all over the globe, to lesser or greater degrees.

I flashed back to how many of the five thousand teens I had worked with over the years were kind and how many were mean and how many had been traumatized by parents who were self-absorbed, negligent, narcissistic, unavailable, and who have passed along their own attachment disorders to another generation.

I saw how many parents were passing on a sense of inferiority to some of their children and how many were passing down a sense of superiority to their children.

I saw cases where parental domestication methods might not have included the overt teaching of hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality to their children but who were certainly involved in an act of omission by not un-teaching hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality after their children are routinely taught such concepts via acculturation. And I saw the effects of what is passed down by witnessing those who had been bullied at home and then came to school and bullied.

Most do not understand “empathy” because it is being wiped out on a global basis, another of the consequences of the Ultimate Sickness.

I saw the effects of generations of ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing which always lead to “ignorant and stupid and insane” actions.

Maharaj said that “the cause of all is all.” Agreed. Yet it seems clear that Maharaj would have also agreed that – among the many links in a long chain of causes which led to the recently-discussed action involving a man who murdered his wife in the presence of their two daughters – the “ignorance and stupidity and insanity” which always result from ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing could be included among the causal factors.

Continuing with the tradition here of offering concrete, contemporary examples of the results of the Ultimate Sickness to illustrate the truthfulness of non-dual pointers, consider the actions of another man who was also driven at least partly by conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing to commit murder:

On the evening of June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, a white 21-year-old male named Dylann Roof entered a church with a mostly black congregation and sat with some members for about an hour during a bible study session. Afterwards, Roof drew a gun and stated that he was going to shot everyone there.

Twenty-six-year-old Tywanza Sanders asked Roof why he was attacking churchgoers and he responded, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." When Roof aimed to shoot Sanders’ aunt, he dove in front of her and became the first to be shot. Roof shouted racial epithets as he shot the others.

One image from Roof's Facebook page shows him wearing a jacket decorated with two emblems that are popular among American white supremacists: the flags of the former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe now) and apartheid-era South Africa (which was being run by a white separatist minority government which was supported by U.S. President Ronald Reagan who fought all efforts by Nelson Mandela and others to establish a democracy).

Roof’s website includes a “manifesto” which includes a racist diatribe about "Blacks," "Jews," "Hispanics" and "East Asians” as well as photos showing an image of Roof posing with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag first used 150 years ago by a confederacy of Southern states who were trying to overthrown the U.S. Government in order to preserve the institution of slavery. (These are the same Southerners - playing the role of "The Greatest Patriots in the U.S." - who would go to war immediately with anyone displaying an ISIS flag which is flown by another confederacy that also wants to overthrown the U.S. Government).

The website of the Council of Conservative Citizens was cited by Roof as a source for his radicalization. The group's president, Earl Holt III, stated that the group's website "accurately and honestly report[s] black-on-white violent crime.”

The Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1988 in Atlanta, Georgia and then relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, is an American political organization which supports a variety of conservative causes as well as white nationalism and white separation and the concept of white supremacy. Its "Statement of Principles" says that they "oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind." 

Several members of the Board of Directors are former leaders of the segregationist Citizens' Councils of America which was commonly referred to as the White Citizens’ Council which was a network of white supremacist organizations first formed in 1954 in the United States and concentrated in the South. Their aim was to stop the implementation of a Supreme Court ruling authorizing school desegregation and to fight all efforts at integration and to halt the civil rights movement completely.

They have long been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but that has not stopped many right-wing, mostly Republican politicians on the national and state and local levels from aligning with them and taking contributions from the group from 1988 and right up to the present. Their supporters in the U.S. Government even worked to attain tax-exempt status for them, so the group has never had to pay the federal taxes which are due from any partisan group.

The group is still actively supporting "social conservative candidates," giving political donations to many of the 2016 Republican candidates for the office of President of the United States including, among others, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum (who has received financial support from the group for many years).

Contrary to the evidence provided by Roof’s oral and written statements regarding his racial motives for the killings, most in the right-wing media and most Republican candidates refused to recognize any racial element to the murders; many set forth the theory that the murders in a church were “just another instance of Christians being attacked by liberals and progressives in their on-going war against religion.”

So were Roof’s actions merely about “good vs. evil” (see the free eBook above under “Freebies” if interested in the discussion of that topic) or was it about conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing and about learned “ignorance and stupidity and insanity”? As far as the “good vs. evil” argument goes, consider the take from these two that shared many understandings in common:

Maharaj:
“Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."
Albert Einstein:
 “I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

Also relevant would be these two similar pointers they offered:

Maharaj:
"The problem with humanity is 'ignorance and stupidity and insanity'.”
Albert Einstein:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

In his manifesto, Roof wrote: “I was not raised in a racist home or environment.” Those who played the parent role in his life said that he was not raised to be a racist though he was indulged and “spoiled.”

Recall: I saw cases where parental domestication methods might not have included the overt teaching of hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality to their children but who were certainly involved in an act of omission by not un-teaching hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality after their children are routinely taught such concepts via acculturation.

Having been raised in the Deep South in another hotbed of racism and ignorance called “Louisiana” during the late 40’s and the 50’s and 60’s, there was a first-hand experience here with the way that racism becomes an intrinsic part of one’s mindset as a result of conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing even as overtly programming children to be racist might not be as obvious a factor as the other five contributors.

[How did I escape buying into the duality and hatred and ubiquitous messages about white supremacy which were taught to most by that culture? I had a father who was exposed early on by his Cherokee mother to her sense of the unicity; therefore, I had a father who had no sense of different-from-ment or better-than-ment and who was thereby rendered incapable of having any sense of racism. What the culture taught me, he un-taught me by both word and deed.]

While many of the “founders” who wrote the U.S. Constitution included in that document their lip service to “equality for all in the U.S.,” many of those founders owned slave and had no notion at all that slavery should be brought to an end; they included passages which said that a slave would count as 3/5's of a person; they wrote into law that woman could not vote; and they set up a government which mirrored the British system of government with a royalty, a house of commons, and a house of lords (or here, a president, a house of representatives, and a senate). Understand that both then and now, they all had a reputation for being virtuous; then, recall how Maharaj noted that neither virtue nor hypocrisy ever manifests without the other also being present.

Next, consider the effects of Roof's acculturation:

It was in this U.S. culture that a highly-popular President Reagan fought to block sanctions against South Africa’s violent, white separatist government.

It is in this U.S. culture where the confederate battle flag - which was used by those who tried to overthrown the U.S. government in order to preserve the institution of slavery - is still being flown by state governments, 150 years after that civil war ended.

It is in this U.S. culture where the confederate battle flag is being displayed by many state governments on their state-issued licenses plates and is being flown by individuals on their homes, on their cars, on their clothes, on their belts and boots and is being displayed on the walls inside their homes and in their college dorm rooms.

It is in this U.S. culture where the high school I attended displayed that flag at football pep rallies, all of which ended with the playing and singing of the song “Dixie” (which had been adopted as the de facto anthem of the states that joined into a confederacy to try to overthrown the U.S. Government during the American Civil War in order to preserve slavery).

It is in this U.S. culture where that flag has been adopted and used since 1865 by the anti-black, anti-government, pro-religion KKK organization as its symbol, so that flag has been used for 150 years as a symbol that is intended to support the intimidation and suppression of blacks and, yes, to support the burning of black churches and the hanging of blacks. (In the U.S., five black churches have burned in the past week alone, and evidence of arson has already been found in several.)

And it was that same flag which once flew over the South Carolina state capitol

and which Roof saw after it was moved to its own flagpole at the entrance to the state capitol where it flies to this day, next to a monument to those who fought for slavery and against the United States.

 

And as Roof burned the flag of the United States which is the symbol of the same United States which South Carolina and other Southern states tried to overthrow

he posed proudly with (1) the confederacy battle flag which is still being flown by governments and citizens all across the South; and in other parts of the U.S.; and by some Germans who now fly that confederate battle flag as their new symbol of white supremacy and hatred because the Nazi flag has been banned; and he posed proudly with (2) the flags of two white supremacist governments in Africa

Now, while those interested in the non-dual understanding around the globe might possibly care nothing about what has happened in U.S. history, and certainly no “non-dualists” care a whit about one flag or another, the historical context in which Roof was conditioned and domesticated and acculturated and indoctrinated and brainwashed might be relevant to all that would understand the unicity and who would discard all notions about being different from - and therefore better than – those considered to be “others.” So consider these two pointers:

Maharaj:
“When the sense of distinction and separation is absent, you may call it love”
(So what would the wise call it when a sense of distinction and separation are present?)

Albert Einstein:

“A human “experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security.”

And while there might be little interest in “such things relative,” the role of personality assumption might bear witnessing as these two share their take on "things personal":

Maharaj:
“The personality is only an obstacle.”
Albert Einstein:
Humankind might “find in that way peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”

And while those who want to end all discussion about the less obvious elements in a long line of causation which is at least partly rooted in the unconscious and subconscious motives and agendas of assumed and assigned personas, and while those who want to blame such instances as a man killing his wife and a man killing nine people in a Charleston church on “the misuse of free will by those who are evil,” those interested in the non-dual understanding might consider these two pointers:

Maharaj:
“Free will is non-existent. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage.”
Albert Einstein:
“I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer’s words, that ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,” accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper.”

And while those dismissive types who want to blame “evil” as the single cause of such actions as discussed here the last few days while ignoring the role that the mind played in those actions - warped minds which came about as a result of being warped by ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing - some might consider what these two pointers are trying to reveal:

Maharaj:
"Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking."
Albert Einstein:
“Human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free
but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.”

Personality. Learned ignorance. Stupidity. Insanity. Ignorant and stupid and insane programming. Ignorant and stupid and insane conditioning. Ignorant and stupid and insane domestication. Ignorant and stupid and insane acculturation. Ignorant and stupid and insane indoctrination. Ignorant and stupid and insane brainwashing. All nine of those are links in a long chain of causation. All nine contribute to the masses all around the globe being set up to be driven by their beliefs about different-from-ment and better-than-ment (which, in turn, result in disharmony and chaos and instability manifesting first within and which eventually lead to disharmony and chaos and instability manifesting without).

Consider (a) the link between the personality identifications which Roof had assumed and which had been assigned to him by his culture and (b) his actions. Then consider these two pointers regarding those false personal identifications:

Maharaj:
“The personal comes and goes . . . .”
Albert Einstein:
“I do not believe in immortality of the individual."

Yet how influential those temporary, false identifications can be, so how significant it would be (relatively speaking) if the results of those identifications - and if the results of ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing - were understood.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

[NOTE: The four most recent posts follow. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]

PART “CC”: REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”

Today's Considerations 

[Continued from yesterday]:

Some have asked how I ended up in a session with Mark and how I felt after the session. I ended up in the session because I was hired by the owner of the center who was trying to treat Mark’s addiction but who understood that drug and alcohol abuse have nothing to do with drugs and alcohol but have everything to do with a plethora of factors which require a holistic treatment plan. The owner understood that the role which personality plays in subconsciously determining and controlling a person's thoughts and words and actions is one part of a holistic treatment plan.

The owner also understood that Mark was like everyone else who came to the center and that none of them have, say, a drinking problem but that all of them have a host of thinking problems. 

(Most who enter treatment are told that on day one but then nothing is done to address the actual thinking problems because groups and centers for the most part are all being run by untrained, non-professionals who haven’t a clue about treating the mental problems of those who come their way. Instead, their approach is like the one Maharaj tried and abandoned because he saw it did not work, the approach which says, “Sure you have mental problems and sure you're insane, but if you become spiritual, God will heal all that.” And their evidence is? A few who stop drinking but all of whom remain as insane as ever without having a clue that such is their circumstance.)

So why was I hired to conduct that session? The owner knew that I had been working with people and couples and companies, administering a personality inventory test, completing an analysis of the results, and then conducting sessions to share the results and to discuss the ways that each personality type drives thoughts and words and actions.

The owner understood that the unconscious agendas of assigned and assumed personalities determine all thoughts and words and actions. Because I had told him when he hired me years earlier to work with all of his staff members on their “personality issues,” the owner knew what Maharaj had said about the Ultimate Sickness, that it is not only rooted in - but it also perpetuates - “ignorance, stupidity and insanity.”

He also knew and understood, because I had told him earlier, that Maharaj said that "the cause of all is all” and that the “ignorant and stupid and insane” actions which can be observed every day all around the globe are the result of a long line of persons being driven by “ignorance and stupidity and insanity.” 

The owner also understood, because I had shared it with him in the past, that Maharaj could have added to his list a fourth key factor which is at play in all of the global instances of separating and hating and fighting and killing and killing in the name of a God, namely, the oh-so-prevalent sickness of assholism which develops after the masses are exposed to generations of ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing.

To the question of how I felt after the session: 

On the drive home, the initial feeling which had to be processed was disgust. I had sat with a man who had terrorized a wife (who, like all programmed and conditioned humans, was also very sick); who had traumatized his young daughters in a way that will affect them for their entire existence; and who had murdered his estranged wife in front of those children. Talk about self-absorption. Talk about concerned only with self. So, yes, disgust. 

Then I saw how that is magnified thousands of times a day all over the globe, to lesser or greater degrees. I flashed back to how many of the five thousand teens I had worked with over the years were kind and how many were mean and how many had been traumatized by parents who were self-absorbed, negligent, narcissistic, unavailable, and who have passed along their own attachment disorders to another generation.

I saw how many parents were passing on a sense of inferiority to some of their children and how many more were passing down a sense of superiority to their children. I saw that many might not be overtly teaching hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality to their children but who were certainly involved in an act of omission by not un-teaching the hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality learned by their children who had been taught all of that via acculturation. And I saw the effects of what is being passed down as those who had been bullied at home then came to school and bullied.

So next, I felt drained, sad, cheerless, sorrowful, and heart-broken about humanity in general because of the widespread misery which they are contributing to and suffering from. [And even the feeling of such feelings has drawn criticism from some, those being the ones who do not understand that the so-called "Realized" all feel but do not emote. Maharaj was asked if he really even cared about the seekers who came his way. His reply: “More than you will ever know.” So the case is here. Most do not understand "empathy" because it is being wiped out on a global basis, another of the consequences of the Ultimate Sickness.]

But after I processed all of those feelings, I felt moved. I felt motivated more than ever to continue to share the non-dual message regarding the unicity and Real Love and the freedom and peace which can only come if one is relieved of the effects of generations of "ignorant and stupid and insane" programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing which always lead to “ignorant and stupid and insane” actions.

Shortly after reaching home, my phone rang with a call coming in from a man who had attended a retreat two months earlier. His wife, he informed me, had just told him that she was leaving him. He described how he watched as she drove away with his children. He said that he was trying to apply all that we had discussed to what he was feeling but that he was not doing well at all in that effort: 

"On one hand, I want to jump in the car and race after them and fight to keep my family together; on the other hand, I feel paralyzed and can't move. I'm overwhelmed with all sorts of feelings, or, more likely - as you'd say - emotions. Talk to me."

Having processed on the drive home from the center all of the feelings which had been generated during a session which I had been obliged to conduct because of a contractual agreement I had with the center where the man had been for a time (a session of a type which I would no longer conduct nowadays, job or no job) I was prepared to move on, so I said to the caller:

“I understand. Let me tell you about two encounters I had with two females and see if there might be something in the tale for you to understand and apply:

“I had spent the night in an Arizona lodge and was preparing to leave for two weeks of hiking in the nearby forest. I had been warned that bears were moving about with their cubs that time of year and could be quite dangerous. I headed out for the trailhead and . . . . "

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

[NOTE: The four most recent posts follow. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]

PART “BB”: REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”

Today's Considerations 

Continuing from yesterday:

Maharaj eventually saw that a few might, via “Self-Inquiry,” understand the Self as opposed to the self or selves and then overlay that realization on the relative existence and abide in a manner that is free of the influence of mirages, of false selves; yet he saw that most never reached that point, that most who assumed the new identity of  an ego-state called “The Self” or “The Supreme Self” as a new identity became obnoxious egomaniacs who had to be tossed out of his loft.

He also saw that personal identifications are eliminated via “self-inquiry” (including "Super Person” identities such as “God” and “He” and, yes, even “The Self” as opposed to “the self”).

Therefore, understanding all of that, he said that “it is enough to know who you are not” (namely, those false selves) and that one need know “Who You Are (namely, some “Supreme Self” or some other supposedly noble and elevated Identity / supposedly noble and elevated Self).

He also said, "There is no question of elevating to a higher level. Here it is only a question of understanding."

So what shifts can happen if the “self-inquiry” process is completed and one becomes freed of personality identifications, even if one never completes “Self-Inquiry”?

An example of one such shift which could have happened has been shared with some, a shift that could have prevented a fellow named “Mark” from taking his estranged wife and his daughters hostage and shooting his wife in the back when she climbed out of the bathroom window and tried to run away. Some recall that the owner of a treatment center where Mark’s addictions were being addressed (or not) asked that I speak with him not about “The Self” but about the many false selves which were at play as his wife was petitioning for a divorce and custody of the children and ownership of their house and monthly income, etc., including “The Super Husband,” “The Super Father,” “The Finance Man,” “The Lover,” “The Homeowner,” “The Family Man,” “The One Being Victimized,” etc., etc., etc.

I spoke with Mark as he was becoming increasing nervous about an upcoming taping for “The Dr. Phil Show,” scheduled for the next day. In addition to the dread of facing one of his two daughters that had watched him kill her mother, he was also anxious about the fact that he would soon be leaving the treatment center and was wondering if he was going to be able to handle life any better than he had in the past.

The owner of the center wanted Mark to understand, before he left treatment, the toll that being driven by personality had taken in his life and the toll that it could take in the future if he did not find a way to be freed from being driven by the hidden agendas of the various ego-states he had assumed. 

Again, the owner did not ask me to introduce Mark to the “Self-Inquiry” process but wanted me to take Mark beyond the personal inventory work he had completed (in order to find his “good” traits and his “bad” traits which were affecting him). At that point before Mark left the treatment center, the owner wanted him to move beyond the personal-inventory work and complete a “persona-inventory” – a "self"-and-"false-selves"-inventory – in order to find the ego-states which played a part in his committing an act of murder.

The sharing of the information surrounding that meeting with Mark would have remained private had Mark not gone through with the taping and made his story public in a series of shows, the first of which aired on 1 February 2007 with a segment entitled “A Difficult Reunion, Part 1” (available on the internet for those who might be interested).

When I shared with Mark that it may well be enough for him to find out who he is not, a look of confusion crossed his face. I introduced him to the means by which we are assigned and by which we assume scores of false identities as well as the way that those determine our every thought and every word and every action. I explained to him the insanity of accepting as real the many false identifications which can be assigned by a culture and shared how the belief in those personas will lead to insane actions when the hidden agendas of those ego-states feel – to use the terms he had been introduced to – “hurt, interfered with, or threatened.”

I tried to show him just how insane one can become when driven by the fears and desires of a mirage – of a false identity. A “husband” and “father” can turn the relative existence of a family into a nightmarish, hellish existence when a wife and children experience a man being negligent, unavailable, unreliable, and downright abusive . . . mentally, emotionally, and physically. Mark was shown the irony of role-playing when an assumed persona will believe that he is the one being mistreated and “hurt and interfered with and threatened” though the fact is that it is his perspective that is 180-degrees opposite of the truth: that he is the one being hurtful; that he is the one interfering with them and their peace and their sanity; and that he is the one being threatening.

I asked: "How insane is it to believe that a mirage can be 'hurt, interfered with, or threatened'?" Then, I shared the following example to illustrate the insanity generated by personality-based perspectives (which are all the exact opposite of reality and truth), asking him to do this:

Consider encounters I had with two females. One was a bear. One was a wife who was soon to be an ex-wife. I had spent the night at a lodge in Arizona and paid the owner the next morning for my lodging and for the right to park my car at the far end of his parking lot for the two weeks that I would be backpacking through the forest. For his fee, he also agreed to start the engine occasionally in order to keep the battery of the car charged.

He warned me to be aware that female brown bears were moving about with their cubs and that they were especially defensive – and offensive – that time of year. I was told that some bears had been seen moving through the chest-high grass in the multi-acre field across from the lodge and was advised to stay on the paved roads until I reached the trailhead. As I began walking away, feeling some sense of trepidation, I looked back and he waved the kind of wave one might give to a friend he knew he would never see alive again.

After two weeks, I left the forest and moved beyond the trailhead to the road leading back to the lodge. Goldilocks-like, I wanted a hot bath, a warm meal, and a soft bed. Totally exhausted, I did what I was told not to do and turned to the field with chest-high grass in order to take a diagonal shortcut back to the lodge rather than following the roads all the way around. 

About halfway through the fifteen-acre field, I heard a terrifying growl and say a mama bear stand up, sniff in several directions, and then aim her nose directly at me. Then, standing erect, she raised her front legs and paws into the air. From claws to toes, I guessed that she was about forty feet tall, but ten to twelve feet might have been more accurate.

Suddenly, she dropped down and began charging. I saw her back rising and falling over the tops of the grass, and I watched a three-foot section of the grass tumbling forward as she charged me. I flashed back to time spent with Tom Brown (“The Tracker”) in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey when he told me during one of our visits that if a bear ever charged me, the charge might be a warning only. 

If not, he suggested I fight with all my might, saying something along these lines: “Punch the bear in its sensitive nose; try to gouge its eyes; fight the fight of your life. The alternative is to roll into a ball and pray if you believe in praying.” Three overpowering instinctive options flashed through my consciousness and led to ill-serving confusion: Flight? Fight? Or freeze? Fall down into a ball, or fight for my life?

In nature, there is no more threatening posture than having so large a female charging at you, knowing that the typical human might run eight to ten miles per hour at a burst while a brown bear could run thirty to forty miles per hour during a charge. I flashed back to Tom’s words, then rolled into a ball but determined I would fight if the charge was not a warning but a real threat . . . a real attack.

My wait went on for months. Okay, maybe it actually went on for twenty seconds or so before I mustered the courage to raise my head to a level just over the top of the grass, but a slight bit of courage or not, there remained a sense of being drowned in a variety of emotions. To my great relief, I saw three trails being formed in the grass, one large and two small, as the mama bear and her cubs moved in a direction that was away from me - away from where I felt paralyzed, as if I might burst right out of my skin.

I fell back again on the grass and lay still except for my fast breathing while looking up at the sky. After ten minutes or so, the heart slowed, as did the respiratory rate. Finally, I knelled, looking again across the field to see if the coast was clear. I slowly stood and then reassessed my wants and needs: now, I wanted a hot bath, a warm meal, and a soft bed, but now I also needed a laundromat or a cleaners . . . big time.

With that female bear, I had just witnessed one of the most threatening postures in all of nature. The threat of being “destroyed” was real. The fear was natural. The anticipation of being hurt was natural. The sense of threat was natural.

Fast forward to the day which followed a most amazing night with my wife. (No details, but her actions seemed to say, “It’s not just ‘all good’ – it’s ‘all great’!”) In light of the previous night, there was quite the shock when she said the next day, “Oh, by the way, I’m leaving you.” As I stood outside the house watching her drive away, there came a near-overwhelming sense of being “hurt and interfered with and threatened,” of being harmed by a real attack, of a sense of being drowned in a variety of emotions, of  a sense of being “destroyed.” 

The overpowering, instinctive options took charge and led to ill-serving confusion: Flight? Fight? Or Freeze? Fall down into a ball, or fight for my life? (And that “life” which I was feeling driven to fight for was actually just “the life” of the role of “The Husband”).

At that point in the telling of story I was sharing with Mark, I paused to provide an opportunity, maybe, for the full impact of the message to "sink in." Then I asked, “Can you relate, Mark?” He answered only with an affirmative nod.

Then I said, “Consider the two reactions involving my encounters with those two females. The feelings were the same. The emotions were the same. The beliefs about being hurt and being interfered with and being threatened were the same. The confusion was the same. What was different was the warped perspective.

"In the first case, I was facing the most threatening posture in nature: an angry, protective female reared up and growled and extended her claws to the max and then charged me.

"In the second case, I was facing the least threatening posture in nature: a female was not charging me but was showing me her back, was moving away from me. So why did I feel paralyzed, as if I might burst right out of my skin? Why were the reactions in those two very different circumstances the exact, same reaction? They should not have been. Why were they not different?"

Then I gave him the answer: 

"Because of the warped perspective of a mind filled with a plethora of assigned and assumed personalities which were all feeling “hurt, interfered with, and threatened,” including “The Super Husband,” “The Super Father,” “The Finance Man,” “The Lover,” “The Homeowner,” “The Family Man,” “The One Being Victimized,” etc., etc., etc.

"That, Brother Mark, is what personality-inspired delusion can look like; that is what personality-inspired insanity can look like; that is what the results of the warped perspectives that come with body and mind and personality identifications can look like. To be freed from being driven by the hidden agendas of multiple personalities might be enough to change the entire remainder of one's relative existence.

"The effects of my encounter with the second female, the one that moved away from me, were limited in duration only because I understood "who" was feeling emotionally-intoxicated around that experience. Freedom and peace can come if we understand that we are not really being threatened or destroyed and that all that is happening is this: a role that we had been playing is coming to an end because the required, co-dependent player of the counterpart role is not going to be playing the role any longer.

"If the female lead of a Broadway play decides to leave, a new female lead is found to fill the role. The lead actor did not have to kill the actress who decided she wanted to leave and look for other roles to play. In other cases, a play might run for as long as it is still productive, but if it is no longer productive, then the run ends. The actors and actresses move on without being driven by insanity to try to kill each other or themselves. That's because they know they are just actors and actresses on a stage . . . that the play they are in is not what's real . . . that they are not being threatened, much less destroyed or killed. They have a clear perspective, knowing their roles do not define who they are."

Just as Maharaj predicted, Mark was stunned into silence.

I continued: "The real rub: most would be just like I was an hour after the first encounter with the bear: I had bathed, changed into clean clothes, and was enjoying a warm meal, smiling and laughing with the lodge owner.

"The greater rub: how long does it take for some men to get beyond their warped perspective when they experienced an encounter like the second one I just described? For most, not an hour, not a year, not a decade, not ever. You never got beyond your warped, personality-inspired distortion."

Mark sat bowed over with his elbows on his knees. After a long pause, he raised his head and stared at me. He could not say a word. That was as it should have been. I asked if, in closing, I might read a few lines for him to consider. He nodded again.

I opened my briefcase and took out a sheet of paper and read the lines typed on it:

"This is from a man they called 'Maharaj.' He said: 'Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear'"

and

“What begins and ends is mere appearance. The world can be said to appear, but not to be. The appearance may last very long on some scale of time, and very short on another, but ultimately it comes to the same. Whatever is time-bound is momentary and has no reality.”

"I appeared, in my imagination, to be 'A Husband,' 'A Father,' 'A Finance Man,' 'A Lover,' 'A Homeowner,' 'A Family Man,' 'The One Being Victimized,' etc., etc., etc. Awakening to truth, I understood I was none of those and I am none of those. I was free. I am free. I was at peace. I am at peace."

Then, I handed the paper to Mark with no expectations that the lines would be understood or allowed to affect the remainder of the manifestation. My part was done. The rest was up to him, or not.

In the loft, that was always the case. Here, that's always the case, too.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

[NOTE: The four most recent posts follow. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]