Today's Considerations
The results of several recent surveys of therapists, counselors, and psychologists
who have been in practice for twenty-five years or more reveal that over the
last several decades, the frequency of clients showing up with major
personality disorders has increased significantly and that the severity of the mental
disorders which they are diagnosing has increased as well.
They are seeing narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies already
manifesting in children as young as 5 and 6 and 7 and 8, and adult clients are showing
up with severe levels of personality disorders and neuroses and psychoses including depression, anxiety,
narcissism, the borderline disorder, the addictive personality disorder, as
well as the bi-polar personality disorder.
They reported that the levels of narcissism in adults now is often so high that
what is called here “malignant narcissism” is manifesting and showing up alongside varying degrees of
the sociopathic and / or psychopathic personality disorders.
Those professionals are reporting that never in all their
years of practice have they seen such high degrees of narcissism and self-importance,
such high levels of ego-state assumption, and - therefore - such high levels
of the use of ego-defense mechanisms.
Edgar Wallace: “The trouble with you is that you have no
sense of unimportance.”
Maharaj: “Selfishness is the cause of suffering.”
One who studied with Maharaj: “It is not Self-Realisation
that is transmitted, but self-importance” (and “Self-Importance” as well?)
Consider the sources that have been the most influential over
the last 5000 years regarding the spread of ego-states and the use of ego-defense mechanisms and the manifestation of extreme levels of self-importance, namely, religion and spirituality and the self-identifications which
they foster and support and the assumption of a Self-Identity. Of course self-importance has
been running rampant among humans for thousands of years.
What’s more important to the 97% associated with one or
another of the organized religions or to those who deem themselves to be spiritual
and who think they are hooked up with a God or who have dreamed up their own concept of God or
even think they are God?
[The logical question at this point might be, "How can one be 'at one' with God or 'be God' if there is no
such thing as 'God' in the first place?" How can that be proved? All is energy / matter, and neither energy nor matter can
be created nor destroyed; therefore, all that is was never "created"; hence, no “Creator.” So where did the concept of God come from, besides being
dreamed up?
Maharaj: "First of all you identify something as being
good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of
the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray
to that God for something good to happen to you."]
Consider all of the religious workaholism and the spiritual
workaholism that has gone on for at least 5000 years by people who have worked
their tails off to please God; to know God; to find God; to be acceptable in God’s sight; to receive rewards now and to avoid punishment now from God; to
receive eternal rewards from God and to avoid eternal punishments from God; to
be at one with God; yada, yada, yada.
Surprise! “You have invented a God!” Damnation! All that workaholism for nothing. All that rigidity
for nothing. All that self-importance for nothing. All that role-playing for
nothing. All that posturing for nothing. All that pleasure-avoidance for nothing. All that God-involved fearing and desiring
for nothing! All that working to make a difference for nothing. Double
damnation!
Then consider all of the work that seekers are putting into the “SELF-Inquiry” process, even though Maharaj said: “You need not find the answer to ‘Who Am I?’ It is enough to know who you are not.”
[Consider one of the examples used earlier in this series, namely, that of
Dylann Roof - the man who walked into a black church in a community that has
long been a hotbed of anti-black prejudice and who singled out nine people in that
church to kill because they were black and because he wanted to trigger a race
war on a national scale and because he had been programmed and conditioned and domesticated and
acculturated in a community dominated by duality, by the belief that whites are
different from blacks and that whites are better than blacks. Consider:
For him to think that he had the right to decide who
lives and who dies? That’s some evidence of self-importance. And for him to
think that he had the ability to trigger a nationwide race war? Now that’s a major
degree of self-importance.
So it could be asked, "Could religion
/ spirituality have changed any of that?" Roof’s pastor described him as being "very religion
and a good Christian," so the answer is assuredly, “No.” Then ask, “Well, couldn’t
“Self-Inquiry” have changed that?” The answer is assuredly, “No.” Why?
Dylann Roof did not need a change in religions to change his
thoughts and words which led to his actions. Moreover, does anyone believe that working
with a guru to complete the Self-Inquiry process would have changed his
thoughts and words which led to his actions?
Suppose he and I had met and I had said to him before he gunned down nine blacks, “You know Dylann, you really and truly are at one with all, including blacks. If you shoot them, you are shooting yourself.” Would that have been the method to treat his Ultimate Sickness, or wouldn’t he most likely have shot me then and there and then gone on to shoot them?
What Dylann Roof
needed to understand was that he was no different from "them" - from "those others" - because of skin
color and that he was no better than them because of skin color. He needed to
understand why he believed that to be the case.
Specifically, he needed to be
de-programmed, un-conditioned, de-acculturated, etc. But what are the odds of
that ever happening with him or with the millions of others who have been raised
for decades in a milieu where the prevailing teaching and belief is that whites
are different from and better than blacks? About the same odds that Maharaj
gave of any sane realization happening with anybody who needs to be able to differentiate
between that which is true and that which is false, the latter being what is presently driving them. Maharaj's final
guesstimate in the regard? One in ten million.]
To the programming and
conditioning that come from the religious and spiritual and non-dual sources
discussed above, add in not only the domestication which comes in the home but also
the acculturation which happens in homes and schools and communities and the
brainwashing and indoctrination which also happen everywhere.
What is required to be free of the influence of the key
sources of duality – religion and / or spirituality and / or “the journey which
seekers are on” - all of which are influencing persons and determining their
thoughts and words and actions without any conscious awareness of that fact?
A totally new and totally different experience.
Maharaj: “I have no faith in anything which has ever been
told, not even what has been told by the Vedas. Only my own experience.”
But who (trapped in the belief that their religious institution
or spiritual program or guru is already providing all of the answers they will ever
need) will seek anything, much less a totally different experience?
Now, with 97% claiming an affiliation with one organized religion
or another (in most cases, the one which was thrust upon them by their parents)
and with millions more bragging that they "are not religious but are spiritual," what
chance is there for a new experience of their own? Practically nil.
Maharaj: “Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them.”
Yet who is likely to engage in such “tracing” when almost all humans - because of egotism
and arrogance and because of their blind-faith-based beliefs - are convinced that those beliefs and teachings have produced no misunderstandings
at all? Who is likely to have a new and different experience with such unfounded
confidence in, and dedication to, their belief systems, no matter how nonsensical and ignorant and insane their beliefs are?
Who is likely to be willing or even able to make a conscious
decision to declare: “I am willing to set aside everything I think I understand;
willing to admit that there is a possibility that what I have been told and
what I have read might not be true; willing to admit that there might be a
chance that, through no fault of my own, I have lost the ability to differentiate
true from false; willing to question everything in an objective and reasonable fashion
(which likely will require guidance for a while from someone else)” willing to become
educable; and willing to seek a totally new experience"?
Yet it can occasionally happen. That is the state of willingness which Andy Gugar, Jr. had
to reach in order to come here for a retreat the first time we met. In the
introduction to the four-book anthology entitled "The Advance Seekers' Set," Andy wrote:
“I had reached a point where I felt as if I were going to
pop right out of my skin from all of the suffering and misery and anxiety and
stress that had characterized my existence.
“For me, it had to get so bad that I became willing and
ready - ready to give up all of the ideas and beliefs that had served me not at
all and to seek the Truth that was obviously beyond all of the concepts I had
ever taken to be the truth.
“Eventually, I went to a retreat at Floyd's home and left three
days later having found that I was not only willing to give up all of those
concepts but had become willing to give up this fear-based "Andy" that
had been at the root of my problems.”
What is required to be free of the influence of the key
sources of duality – religion and / or spirituality and / or “the journey which
seekers are on” - all of which are generating a sense of self-importance (or “Self”-Importance)?
An understanding of this:
Maharaj: “There have been thousands of avatars and great
men, and important personalities. Has a single one of them been able to do
anything to change the natural course of events in the world?” Of course, his
answer was, “No.”
He asked: “Who is to take care of what? I know what has come
upon my original state, and there is nothing to take care of that. It is a
happening that has come and will take care of itself. And whatever has
happened, I have not been affected. So, again, 'WHO' is to take care of what? I
am not concerned with taking care of anything. The world has been in existence
for millions of years” but, again his query was, "has anyone ever been able to
do anything to change the natural course of events in the world?” Of course not.
So Maharaj made clear that no one has every made a difference as far as "changing the natural course of events in the world.” An understanding
of that pointer should shake loose some of any person's sense of self-importance, but the point will almost always be debated, argued, and rejected. What other "self-importance-interrupting" facts are available?
At its most basic level, Maharaj clarified that “the you” which
persons take themselves to be is actually nothing more than what he called “a
composite unity.” That three-part combination involves (1) a temporarily-manifested
elemental plant food body with its parts continuously coming together and coming apart; (2) the air which circulates into and out of the
space formed by those elements which are forever coming and going; and (3) the
conscious-energy which also circulates into and out of the space formed by
those elements. (Yes, the consciousness is also forever coming and going, so humans must
eat regularly in order to replenish the supply. Only the distortions of “memory”
result in a false sense of continuity.)
As for those who believe
that they are important enough and talented enough and intelligent enough to “make
a difference,” Maharaj’s advice was basically this:
Want to work to try to make a difference? Go ahead and give
it a shot, but understand that, in the long haul, you will not make a dent in
the ignorance-and-insanity-rooted problems of humanity. He understood that he
was not going to make a dent and he understood that those who came to loft were not going
to make a dent and he would have understood that I am not going to make a
dent and he would have understood that you will not make a dent.
Still want to give it a shot? Go ahead. Might as well, if
it can happen from the position of the impartial witnessing. Lay it out without attachment
to results and then have some fun with the process while dancing lightly. Whatever. But the key question remains:
If one wants to be about the business of giving people what
they need, then that begs the question, “WHO, what ego-state, believes that she or he
really knows what anyone needs?”
Consider:
In the Wild West in the nineteenth-century U.S., a man was
concerned that he had not recently heard from a neighbor who was also a cattle
rancher. He saddled up his horse and set out on a half-hour ride to check on
his friend.
As he approached the main house, he saw that the gate on the
horse corral was open and that the horses were gone. Then he saw that the fencing
had a huge gap in it and that the cows were also missing. He spurred his horse to hurry
toward the front door of the ranch house, and the door there was also open.
He walked inside unnoticed and saw his friend seated in a
chair in the living area, obviously preoccupied. He shouted, “Ernest, what the heck is going on!?”
Ernest looked up and said, "Oh, hi, Josh. You wouldn’t
believe me if I told you.”
Josh said, “Try me!”
Ernest began his tale: “Well, several months ago my son was
checking the fencing on the back range and came across a rattlesnake and his
horse reared up and threw him off and broke his leg.”
The neighbor said, “Oh my gosh, that’s really bad.”
The rancher replied: “No, that was good because of what
happened after that. One evening a couple of months ago, my son and I were
having dinner in the house and the ranch hands were all having their meals in
the bunkhouse. Suddenly, we heard yelling and screaming and shots fired, and
just as we stood up, some bandits kicked in the back door and the front door simultaneously and leveled their guns at us and told us to sit down and then
they tied me to my chair. Next thing I know, there’s dozens of them outside and they’re
stealing our cattle and our horses and taking all of our ranch hands with them
as work slaves."
“But your son’s broken leg was still a bad thing.”
“No, that turned out to be a good thing because they were
going to take him too, but when they saw his leg in a cast, they knew he couldn’t work for
them so they left him.”
“Well then, that a good thing alright.”
“No, that was a bad thing because of this: his leg healed and he formed a posse
and they tracked the marauders across the border and found our cattle and
horses.”
“Well that’s good.”
“No, that’s bad, because they walked into a trap and were
put to work by the thieves who had taken over a prospector’s gold mine.”
“Dad gum. That is bad.’
“No, that was good because some guards drank too much one night
and passed out and my son and the posse and the ranch hands were all able to escape
and took a lot of the gold with them.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“No, not really, because the ranch hands took off in one direction
and my son headed to the nearest large town. But he's always had a gambling problem,
so when he went into the saloon and got into a card game, he lost every bit of
the gold he had.”
“Oh man! Now that’s bad.”
“No, it’s good because he happened to meet another rancher living nearby
who felt sorry for him because of his loss, so he took my son in and while there my boy met the rancher’s gorgeous daughter and they
ended up getting married almost immediately. After that, my son came back here and he and his new bride moved in and we started
making plans to rebuild out herd.”
“Well now that’s good.”
“No, that turned out to be bad, because that woman was a gold-digger
and she met a rich man traveling through town and ran away with him. My son took
off after them and caught up with 'em a few towns over and he shot the guy and his bride. Now, my son’s in jail awaiting trial.”
“Okay, I'm not going to try to guess. This time, let me ask. I’m sorta thinking that's bad, but
I’m gonna stop guessing and let you tell me if I’m right.”
Ernest looked up slowly and turned his eyes to meet those of Josh and said, “Have you been listening to a damn thing I’m being saying? How
the hell could I possibly know if anything is actually good or bad!?”
Josh walked out in silence, mounted his horse, and rode off toward
home, a bit wiser when it comes to thinking anyone could possibly know what is
good or what is bad in the long run.
He got a little humility that day, realizing as he looked
back over the happenings in his own existence that, actually, he’d never had a
clue about what’s good or what’s bad. He saw that most of what he had spent days
or months or years anticipating and dreading ended up never happening, and he realized that all the things which had ended up being full-blown catastrophes - as far as his entire relative existence was concerned - he never saw any of those coming at all but instead had actually been totally
blindsided in every case.
What about you? Want to change the world? Think you can? Or might
your energy be better spent focusing on the issues rooted in"self" (in all of the false selves) and then clearing away the mental “stuff” which leads to misery and suffering and which - if discarded from the mind - can bring to an end most all pain and misery and suffering if one is finally freed from
the endless machinations of mind?
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.]
