Today's Considerations
What do all of the following have in common?
Anti-abortion activists
Far left-wing politicians
Far right-wing politicians
Politicians who claim to “want government to get out of the lives
of people” (specifically, out of the lives of their financial contributors) yet who believe at
the same time that the government should be able to determine what type sex a person can have
in the privacy of one's own bedroom and what type sex one should be outlawed
from having in her or his own bedroom and what a woman can and cannot do with her own body
Politicians who believe the government should be able to determine
what type people one has sex with, based on race and / or gender for example, as well as what orientation is okay and what orientation is not
People who go to church every day or who go to “confession” every
day
People who go to a mosque five times per day
People who behead those with differing religious beliefs
People who are Christian extremists
People who are Muslim extremists
People who are Jewish extremists
People who are Hindu extremists
People who are Buddhist extremists
People who are Sikh extremists
People who are extremists in any other religion or
cult
People who are spiritual extremists
People who go to one or more meetings every day, and intend
to do so forever
People who believe that all “bad guys” should be shot
People who believe that all gays should be shot
People who believe that anyone who decides to leave a
relationship with them should be shot
People who believe that “others” of a different race or of a
particular race should all be shot
People who believe that a woman who commits adultery should
be stoned to death
People who believe that anyone drawing a picture of their
religious leader should be shot
People who believe that anyone labeled by their leaders as “an enemy”
or “a threat” should be shot
People who rigidly adhere to food laws or rules set forth by religions
or by spiritual movements
People who seek to accumulate more knowledge than all “others,”
spending an entire existence reading and studying and becoming an expert at
some religion or spiritual program or philosophy or ideology
People who seek perfection
People who seek a positive public image in order to gain admiration
from the masses
People who think that they are holy (and even more holy than
“others” and actually very different from “others” and thus better than “others”)
and who wear special robes or special clothes and special hats and special hairdos (or no hair) to prove it
People who spend an entire lifetime focusing on their “Self”
or their “Special Self” or their “Supreme Self” or the “Self Beyond” or their “Supreme Soul”
or their “Supreme Spirit” or “Atman”
While (a) the specific agendas of the persons in the examples above are being determined by their various assumed
personalities and roles, which vary considerably; and while (b) their behaviors which are
determined by those agendas will vary considerably, what they all have in common without variation will include the following:
the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
emotional intoxication
fanaticism
an unwillingness to compromise
unbending and strict and severe and stern and even harsh personality
styles
monomania, that is, an exaggerated or obsessive
preoccupation with one thing and one thing only
rigidity, inflexibility, stiffness (just like soldiers marching or "standing at attention")
being uptight
a fixed sense of rightness
warped thinking, especially of the dualistic (black or
white) type
high degrees of being psychologically retentive / anal
high levels of stubbornness
a desire for control and for the power to be able to control
(which go hand-in-hand with fear and with arrogance)
a desire to know-it-all and to be seen as one who knows it
all
a tendency to be ill-humored and overly-serious
a preference for complication and complexity
ignorance and insanity (often manifesting side-by-side with some
degree of intelligence)
a plethora of fallacies in reasoning
unyielding belief systems
self-contradictory thoughts and words and actions
instability
What do those who have been restored to sanity have in
common?
Freedom from all of the above.
Next, as for "what to seek" and "how to seek it"?
Consider the irony and contradiction
if one believes that selflessness is the key attribute of Paramatman / Paramātmā,
where all personality, individuality,
and identification supposedly vanishes yet assumes, nevertheless, one sort of Selfness or
another as their “ultimate attribute” or identity?
It should be kept simple, not complicated.
Maharaj noted time and again that “this is all so simple.”
It can be if the process if reduced to a few steps or if one need but come to “know
who you are not, even if you never come to know ‘Who You Are’.”
As has been pointed out on this site for nearly a decade
- and as has been shared orally and in writing since 1989 - there are seven steps
on the “path” offered here, steps which can guide a seeker to transitioning beyond the various degrees of (assumed) separation
from both “reality” and from “Reality.”
And the most detrimental false sense of separation – both relatively
speaking and in terms of the non-dual understanding – involves identification. Body
identification, mind identification and personality identification are the
three types which the sages for ages have cited. Maharaj joined those that went
a step further, noting that any and all identifications are to be discarded (including the lofty or special or Supreme identities which many assume after they erroneously think or claim
that they have “Realized Fully”).
Was not it admitted that those who come here for retreats
are led to understand all seven steps – including the three beyond the Fourth
Step where all concepts and ideas and beliefs about identities are purged? Yes,
but understand: when that "full understanding" is shared here, it is done with an explanation regarding
what Maharaj considered the first leg of the “journey” which he saw as the “coming
in” stage;
with an explanation of the second leg of the “journey” which he
alluded to with such terms as the “going back” or “reversing to the source”
stage; and with an explanation of the third leg of the “journey” where one “comes
back in again” but comes back this time without being programmed and conditioned
and acculturated and domesticated and indoctrinated and brainwashed. Instead of staying "out there," they are guided to "come back in" and overlay Reality (i.e., sanity as well as clear and accurate seeing and
perceiving) on the relative existence.
See the difference in the entire seven-step “journey” which Maharaj taught for a time and the four-step "journey" which he said "would be enough": if all seven steps are completed here, it happens in
the same way that a therapist using the EMDR method with a trauma victim guides
a client to freedom. First, the therapist "digs down deep" and uncovers suppressed and
denied traumatic events from the past, "opens up" the client, “cuts” out
all of that darkness, and then "closes the client’s wounds" before
the client is allowed to leave the office.
Or it happens in the same way that a heart surgeon works with
a patient, opening her or him up, cutting out the parts that need to be removed,
and then closing the patient’s wounds before releasing the patient from the hospital.
So, if one is led through all of the steps to a discussion
of – and an understanding of - THAT or the Absolute or “things beyond the relative
AM-ness," they are not “left out there.” They are led back to the IS-ness and
encouraged to abide naturally and to be done with all of the unnatural / supernatural
/ lofty / spiritual stuff with which they were previously preoccupied.
So two options are available:
(1) find out all that you are not and be done with the
seeking at that point; or,
(2) come to understand not only the AM-ness and all that you are not but also the
THAT-ness (that is, both the “phenomenal” as well as the so-called “Noumenal”)
but do not remain “there” either in Foo Foo Land or “out there,” removed and
dissociated from the “realities” of the AM-ness. “Come back” and overlay
"Reality" on "reality" and thereafter abide sanely and naturally and spontaneously and wisely.
Either way, understand that, though Maharaj never listed the seven steps
in a 1-7 list, he did discuss all seven steps thoroughly over the years. Understand
that the first three steps are preparation for discarding all identities and
all concepts and beliefs and thereby returning to "the Child No-Knowing State" or “the
Child Ignorance Stage,” as some call it.
You are invited to understand also that the aim of any
discussion of the last three steps is merely to allow seekers to understand exactly
what cycles – and how it cycles – but to then “return” to the AM-ness and abide
wisely for the remainder of the manifestation.
In the next post: an explanation of the three legs of the “journey”
will be shared for those that might be interested in the rest of the story or the rest of the “path”
that Maharaj discussed during the earlier phases of his teachings.
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.]
