Today's Considerations
[Apologies to the regular visitors to this site. Between what
was diagnosed as “a mild heart attack” and nineteen days of dealing with a steady stream
of internet service reps with insufficient training for the job they have
been cast into as well as that all overlapping with two-and-a-half weeks of continuous computer
crashes and so-called “repairs,” posting have been less frequent than usual. To continue:]
Why else be rid of the mind above all else
that has been referenced in the
sages’ thousands of years of warnings about the body-mind-personality
triad? Because it
is the mind – post-programming, post-conditioning, etc. – which drives
body identification.
It is also the mind which accepts a multiplicity of ego-states /
personas /
personalities as identities. That is why, eventually, Maharaj shifted his
focus to the effects of the mind and why he recommended to seekers that
they be rid of it once and for all. Above all, it is the mind which is
at the core of the Ultimate Sickness and all of the "relative ills" of
humanity.
If
the mind goes, then wisdom comes, and if wisdom comes, so
too comes freedom and then peace. And that peace is not just limited to
“the
mindless one,” either. It spreads throughout the surrounding environment. Otherwise?
The presence of a mind does not only rob a mind-infected person of peace. It also robs the peace of all those dealing with a mind-infected person if that person wields influence or control over them. Then, a host of misery-generating issues will follow, such as:
The presence of a mind does not only rob a mind-infected person of peace. It also robs the peace of all those dealing with a mind-infected person if that person wields influence or control over them. Then, a host of misery-generating issues will follow, such as:
1. Egos, referring to the ego-states which are assumed as identities, acts which lead to the manifestation of egotism.
2. Egotism (used to defend ego-states.)
3. A sense of entitlement, which always accompanies egotism, and what a pain that brings because a sense of
entitlement results in total unavailability while demanding total availability from others, as in:
"My guru should be available to me at a moment’s notice”
or
“Floyd should make himself available to chat whenever I feel
like talking. Maharaj did.” Yeah, okay, but at least most who came his way gave him not only some
flowers but also a couple of bananas or mangoes or something he could use to
live on. (Please, no flowers. Most are lovely but totally inedible)
or
“You should be as OCD about my seeking as I am.” (One visitor here spoke
of having contracted and suffered for years from a major dose of "The India Syndrome,"
a mindset in which seekers lose themselves in the search for
meaning without really losing their belief in false selves or in a False
Self. Rather than being about losing a belief in false selves, that can
more often be
about escaping totally, being totally lost, absent, unavailable, and
dissociated.
Hardly a sane, in touch with reality, goal.)
If the mind goes, nonsense and ignorance and insanity go,
and if those all go, then – again – freedom and peace can come. To that end,
additional excerpts from the book “There’s No Such Thing As Peace of Mind” (There Is Only Peace If You Are Out Of Your Mind)
will be shared to explain how it is that the brain – which
was once “mankind’s best friend” – has now become “man’s worst enemy.”
So to continue with excerpts from the chapter “MIND”
and MEMORIES: When Nature’s 'Assets' Become Warped into 'Liabilities,' Part
Four.” This is offered there, the focus beginning with Maharaj’s
characterization of the mind as always being “deficient and distorted”:
The “deficient and distorted” part of the brain that Maharaj
referred to is, of course, that part which stores and accesses memories, so all
memories are deficient distortions. Nothing is as it appears to you, and
nothing that has ever appeared to you was really the way it was perceived. You
have been fooled because that which "they" gave you to use for
perceiving is an accumulation of foolishness.
Since
the “mind” includes the sum total
of all memories - of everything remembered - and because all memories
are distortions, then the “mind” is the
sum total of all distortions. Want to be free of distortions and to
Realize
truth? Be rid of the “mind.” Yet one cannot go beyond the “mind” when
constantly looking at the “mind” (that is, paying attention to
"thoughts"). In order to go beyond the mind, Maharaj said, you must
look away from the “mind” and its fictional contents. That means,
therefore,
that “minds” are nowadays so deficient and distorted that they should be
ignored.
If one has not Realized, then one cannot see things now the way
that they truly are, so it would have been totally impossible to have seen them
the way they truly were in the past; therefore, the invitation is to Realize,
to see that none of the memories - or things remembered - which persons cling to are accurate
(including memories about “happenings,” memories involving “persons,” and all
of the things you were taught to believe that are still stored “in your
memory”).
Next, understand the reason that there is talk about “Now.” (By the way, there is no “power of now” since there is
no power. Power is just a concept to which persons become addicted). Some say: “If time too
is a concept, why even speak of now?" Because this is to be understood before setting all else aside: anything supposedly recalled
from the “past” is a memory, and it has been established that memories are
distortions, so there is no past and there are no accurate memories. In fact,
your entire world is in you . . . in your "mind," so how could that
which is merely in your "mind" and which you think is "the world" truly be as it is being erroneously perceived / misperceived?
The most that the I-AMness can ever lay claim to, therefore, is
now, but if Realization has not happened, even perceptions regarding
"now" are distortions. (Eventually, even that speck of now time
measurement will become meaningless, if you Realize.) If Realized—and thereby
freed of all (false) memories—no action now would be triggered by a memory of
something past. That in itself would be another level of freedom. For example:
MEMORY-DRIVEN DISTORTION LEADING TO EMOTIONAL INTOXICATION:
“I am upset because we are no longer together and I don’t
have the love now that I had back then.”
CLEAR PERCEPTION NOW AS A RESULT OF NOT BELIEVING IN A
DISTORTED, ILLUSORY MEMORY:
“What I thought I had back then was not even close to True
Love.”
For those referred to as “the Realized,” only the now is
happening and even that is fleeting. The more significant point is this: focus
on “the now” only as long as it takes to allow all illusions about “the past”
to dissolve. “They” spent so much time building the walls of your prison with
“their” concepts. Then, you took over the task by taking memories of
wrongly-perceived events and persons to be real and thereby increased the
content of your “mind.”
In that process, you have spent far too much time
adding to the walls and strengthening your prison. Focus any effort only on
breaking the wall which your “mind” has built and which blocks clear
witnessing. Bring in the wrecking crew. You and your teacher together can form that
wrecking crew. It is time to demolish those walls.
See that, because of programming and conditioning and acculturation and hidden agendas, what nature had intended to be an asset
(memory / “mind”) has become a liability as persons began to desire to control
other persons, began to desire power in order to control others and to control
events, and then began to store misperceptions and misconceptions in the brain.
Earlier this was mentioned: See that the distorted memories
being stored today are not being used for survival but are driving conduct that
is detrimental to survival. A body that nature intended to be guided by a brain
is now being guided more often by a “mind,” and whereas the brain is “wired”
for self-constructive behavior, the “mind” is now “wired” for self-destructive
behavior because of the vast pool of learned ignorance that is being passed on
to, and accepted as truth by, billions of persons.
Another factor which drives the "mind" to
inspire destructive or self-destructive conduct is the accumulation of the
distorted memories of which the "mind" is now composed.
Maharaj: “Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law
of cause and effect is also a way of thinking.”
(Therefore,
so much for the belief in the
concept of “good-and-bad-karma-as-cause,” another belief which robs
person of peace, of the ability to understand the functioning of the
totality, and to understand why events happen in the relative because
of the laws of nature rather than "The Laws of a God" or "The Laws of Some
Nebulous, so-called 'Universe'."
Who
or what would be serving as a “Universal
Bookkeeper” and constantly maintaining a two-column ledger of you and
what you are doing; and what 7+ billion other persons are doing; and
keeping those records
up-to-date-to-the-second; and then regularly dispensing rewards or
punishments, constantly engaged in acts of recompense and retribution
and constantly re-balancing every person's two-column
reckonings when the entries in one column become greater than the
entries of the other? What horse-poop-like nonsense.
And who would want to have any dealings at all with Someone
of Something who is that anal and punitive and OCD? See? Just more reward and punishment
duality, rooted in the same nonsense that inspired the dreaming up of so many punishing and destroyer
gods or goddesses as well as the dreaming up of the currently-popular “One and True and Only Punishing and
Destroyer God.”
Want peace? Understand that it is the mind that is robbing
you of that. Flush the mind by discarding all of its beliefs. Then only can
freedom from the ignorance and insanity stored therein set the stage for peace to come.
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.]