Today's Considerations
Earlier, it was noted that Maharaj said many times that that
“this is all so simple.” Sometimes he said that when discussing “realization”;
sometimes, when discussing “enlightenment”; sometimes, when discussing “liberation.”
Yesterday, the actual and simple meaning of “liberation” as far as the non-dual
message is concerned was discussed. Today, the actual and simple meaning of “enlightenment”
will be discussed.
There is another term which, far too often, comes with connotations
and nuances which suggest that “enlightenment” should be viewed as something
that is lofty and soaring and grand and exalted and noble. So has anyone
recently ever (1) walked with someone to a doorway leading into a dark room at night
where nothing inside can be seen at all; (2) then flipped a switch which turns on a
light that allows them to see everything in the room, and (3) then said
with haughty pride, “So, now we can both see what we could not see before! Indeed,
I have just accomplished something that is lofty and soaring and grand and
exalted and noble! Are you not impressed with me?!!”
Some persons become so emotionally-intoxicated around the fact
that they now see something which was right before their very eyes all along - but
which they had not seen before - that they brag about it in groups; that they walk into supposedly spiritual or holy places with a newly-adopted swagger; or they even
burst out in song and sing about it:
I “was blind, but now I see!!” followed by "It’s a miracle!! It’s a
friggin’ miracle!! Praise be!! Praise me!!”
And damn anyone who rains on their parade by pointing out: “If
you were truly blind but are now sighted, that might indeed be a miracle, but you
weren’t blind.
You just had your eyes closed, so
to have not been able to see because
you had your eyes closed and
to now proclaim that you were blind and then
to open
your eyes and now claim that it is a miracle because you can see and
to believe that all of that is evidence of a wondrous,
phenomenal (or Noumenal) marvel which surely involves some kind of supernatural
intervention on your behalf, well, all of that is total nonsense.
The actual fact is this: none of that is evidence of a miracle at all. It is
evidence of ignorance, at best, and may even be evidence of full-blown insanity."
It would be no different from someone saying this:
“I guess I was about fourteen when I first put my finger in
a light socket and got knocked across the room onto my butt and took what
seemed like forever to recover. Once I was feeling better and returned home, I couldn’t resist, so I put my
finger in the same light socket again, was knocked across the room onto my butt
again, and took what seemed like forever to recover, again.
“And that was my pattern until I was forty-two years old: time and
time again, I stuck my finger in the same socket and suffering the same
consequences over and over. Then one day, I met a group of people who told me, “You
know, that’s crazy. If you were to stop being crazy, you would not stick your finger in
that socket ever again and you would not get knocked onto your butt ever again.
“And I said, ‘Damnation! Why didn’t I think of that?!’ And
today, I stand before you, a man whose miracle has come. I have gone one year
without sticking my finger in a light socket. It is a miracle indeed” to which
those in the room with him stood and applauded, nodding their heads in
agreement and applauding him for not doing something so ignorant and so stupid and so insane.
A “miracle?” Or “just waking up enough to look and to see
what was right before his eyes all along, to wake up enough to stop avoiding
looking at the truth that was right before his eyes all along?” Is it a miracle or an accomplishment if
one can suddenly see what could not be seen in a dark room as a result of simply turning
on the light in order to be able to see?
Earlier on this site, a tale shared by a man was passed along to site visitors. He
admitted that he had been just that ignorant and insane. He said that for thirty years he had abused
alcohol on a daily basis, had suffered the consequences on a daily basis, and had pulled others into his relative existence
and they had suffered the consequences of dealing with him as well; then, he said, he joined a group, stopped drinking for a year, and went to a celebration of that “accomplishment”
which had been organized by others in the group.
Years later when talking with me, he had come to see via the
humility which came via the non-dual understanding that behaving sanely and
naturally and in a non-destructive way and in a non-delusional way was not an “accomplishment”;
that trillions of life-forms on planet earth have done that for millions of years;
and that trillions of life-forms on planet earth are all doing the same, exact thing right
now: namely, all are abiding normally and naturally and not unnaturally and not
supernaturally (a.k.a, religiously or spiritually), with the exception of most humans.
Then he said that the most insane part of what happened
after that one-year celebration of sobriety was this: he flashed on the fact that for a year he was still doing crazy things, things that were just as crazy as what he had done when under the influence. He said he came to see that he had really bought into the notion that his drinking had caused his insanity rather
than the other way around. So he erroneously equated “not drunk” with being “not crazy.”
He said that he quickly ignored the "flash," and as a result it took years more of suffering and misery to inspire him to look outside the box which he had been put into and seek an effective means by which he could truly be restored to sanity. The means he found involved a holistic approach, not a single-treatment process, he said.
He said that he quickly ignored the "flash," and as a result it took years more of suffering and misery to inspire him to look outside the box which he had been put into and seek an effective means by which he could truly be restored to sanity. The means he found involved a holistic approach, not a single-treatment process, he said.
Then he began laughing and told me this:
“That night after the party celebrating a year of sobriety –
which I see now was only physical sobriety without any element of mental
sobriety or emotional sobriety and certainly without any element of spiritual
sobriety because I had become 'a spiritual giant' as you call it – I decided to
drop in on my grandmother. I had made her life hell for years, using her, manipulating
her, ‘borrowing’ money from her that I never intended to repay and which I never did repay. It hit me that if I would go to her and tell her what I had
accomplished and tell her that I was sorry (though still not arranging to return the money taken from her), then she might be so impressed that she would
give me a nice cash gift in honor of my 365 days of sobriety.
“I knocked on her door and when she saw it was me, a sour
look crossed her face. I wasn’t sure she was going to let me in, but she turned
and walked away and I followed her into her living room. She asked, in what I thought
to be a far-too-hostile tone, ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘I don’t want
anything grandmother except to tell you about a miracle that has happened. I
just came from a party where my friends and I celebrated the fact that I have gone
an entire year without getting drunk even once.’ I then leaned back, smiling,
proud, awaiting her congratulatory comments - and maybe a monetary reward also - after hearing my good news. Instead,
she inched forward to the edge of her chair, leaned forward, and - with narrowed eyes and clinched teeth and a pinched look
all across her face - she said, “And I have gone eighty-eight years without getting drunk even once. Now get
the hell out of here and don’t come back!’”
He paused, looked down at his hands, and then said, “I guess
that was as angry as I’d been in a year. Today, I see how easily she finally saw though
me and my shenanigans and how justified she was to react the way she did. I see
now how insane I remained for years while thinking I had actually been restored to sanity by
merely not drinking.”
I asked: “So you now understand that the only thing worse
than being the way you were drunk was being that same way not drunk?”
He: “Indeed.”
I: “And do you see that the craziest thing you did was not
done when drunk but was done when not yet drunk, namely, being driven while
not drunk to have another drink and trigger the whole scenario all over
again?”
He: “Indeed. I listened to a guy for years who started
everything he had to say by first giving an obsessive-compulsive accounting of
what he deemed to be an accomplishment. He’d say, ‘By the grace of God, I have
been sober for 17 years, 3 months, and 21 days.’ Then the next day he would say, ‘By
the grace of God, I have been sober for 17 years, 3 months, and 22 days.’ The
next day he would say, ‘By the grace of God, I have been sober for 17 years, 3
months, and 23 days.’ While I reported to the people there that I was finally
in a place of perfect peace, accepting all without reacting, I was obviously far from that state because I finally said
one day after hearing that fellow brag again about the longevity of his sobriety, ‘I think we’d be far more interested if you starting
logging the number of days that you’ve not been obnoxious and not been insane,
and at this point you better start with ‘zero’ if you are really going to be honest
and thorough.' I finally figured out that, whether drinking or not, almost all of us were still insane and still obnoxious and still far from being at peace."
Enlightenment is not something that is lofty and soaring and
grand and exalted and noble, any more than it is lofty and soaring and
grand and exalted and noble to turn on a light
switch in order to be able to see what otherwise cannot be seen in the darkness. It is
not an accomplishment to wake up while having a nightmare and to see that
you were only dreaming.
Nor is it an accomplishment to walk into a dimly-lit shed
and to think at first that a coiled rope is a snake but then, after opening the door
farther to allow more light in, to see that the supposed snake is just a
rope. It might be more of an accomplishment if one becomes able to see that deadly
snakes which were being mistaken for harmless ropes are indeed snakes, kinda
like seeing that a wolf in sheep’s clothing is not a sheep at all. Relatively speaking, that might be far more advantageous, would
it not?
Yet having one's false beliefs in that regard pointed out to them is seldom welcomed, either. As noted in the past, "The truth might eventually set you free, but it's probably just going to piss you off at first."
For example, last week, I stopped by the cleaners to pick up some shirts
that had been laundered. Ahead of me in line was a woman who looked around when
I entered and smiled a friendly smile. The woman behind the counter was in the
middle of a tirade, cursing her present spouse and concluding that “All men are
totally rotten.” The woman in line ahead of me turned, her face flushed red, made eye contact with me, and showed that she was embarrassed
for me. I signaled with a shake of my head that it was of no concern. The customer replied gently, “Well,
I don’t think that all of them are rotten are they?” The reply: “Humph! My experience shows that they all
are.”
Then the cashier looked around the customer’s shoulder at me
and said, “Oops." The reply from me: “Well, you may be right. We may all be rotten,
but there is one other possibility: it might be that some women end up
with one rotten man after another because those women have a broken picker.”
The woman ahead of me took her clothes from the hanging rod
next to the counter, turned, smiled, and winked at me on the way out of the store. As
for the clerk when I approached the counter and handed her my claim check? A
stare. Anger. Total silence. Followed by my being checked out in record time in
a totally quiet manner, which happens to be just the way I like it.
She was not enlightened by hearing her truth. She did not see the part
she had played in the way that her life had been unfolding. The "broken picker" suggestion did not
turn on any lights. She remained trapped in the darkness between her ears. So
it is. So it is for her. So it is for most.
Yet those who do open their eyes and finally see truth and
finally see that the lies that they have believed all along really were nothing
more than a bunch of lies . . . well those may have a chance to abide naturally and
sanely and wisely. But even if that is the case, they still have not "accomplished" anything that could rightfully
be deemed to be lofty and soaring and grand and exalted and noble.
To wake up in the morning is not an accomplishment. It is natural.
To abide sanely and wisely is not an accomplishment. It is just natural. It
works for the deer, it works for the birds, and it works for the fish. It would
also work for humans were they willing and able and ready, but note: neither
the deer nor the birds not the fish expect to be congratulated for doing what it is
merely normal and natural to do.
Moreover, the masses are not blind. Instead, the consciousness has been
blocked and does not allow clear seeing to happen, does not allow persons to be able
to differentiate the true from the false. In non-dual terms, “flipping the
switch to turn on the light so one can see” really refers to the simple process of removing
the blockages of ignorance and insanity which were set in place in the mind via
ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and
acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination and which now preempt any chance of seeing clearly.
Today, even at 11 AM, it is still very dark here because there
is some fogginess and because there are widespread cloud formations which are combining
to block out the light of the sun. When the fog and clouds clear away later
today – as the forecast suggests will happen – then the light will shine and
all will be seen more clearly. There’s no miracle involved. It is simply a
matter of enough light coming through to see. That has nothing to do with
"an accomplishment."
Also, trash in this area is collected on Mondays and
Thursdays, so all of the garbage has been set out this morning in order for it to
be picked up and hauled off. The refuse that had accumulated in the house since last Thursday has
been discarded. The inner environment here has been cleaned out, so it will be
far healthier. It would be insane to allow the accumulated garbage to remain
and to make a mess of the relative existence inside this house.
The same is true for all humans and their "house." Housing the consciousness
is an elemental plant food body. To allow the garbage which has accumulated to remain inside that space - specifically, in the part of the brain called "the mind" - would be insane. Yet getting rid of the garbage would not be a lofty
or soaring or grand or exalted or noble accomplishment. It would just the sane
thing to do.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE:
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