TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
As many frequent visitors to the site know, I am certified in all fifty of the U.S. states to teach psychology courses on the senior high school level and on both the freshman and sophomore levels in college. Over the years, sharing some common background with counselors and therapists and psychologists who work on a daily basis with clients has led to friendships and regular visits with many of them.
Too, I have worked, and continue to work, with counselors in many countries around the globe who contract with me to complete a written analysis of their clients' personality inventory test results, including which personality disorders are showing up and to what degree; then, I provide a suggested treatment plan to use in order to address the personality disorders.
Some counselors are now integrating the non-dual teachings in cases where the results show that a client might be open to the message in order to be free of certain personality influences which are manifesting and controlling a client’s thoughts and words and actions in a less-than-wise manner.
Whether during the regular visits mentioned above or through the work being done with counselors who have contracted my services or with the thousands of seekers with whom I've shared pointers, there are impediments shared in common with all those clients in therapy and with all those seekers of a non-dual (or some other) Eastern understanding.
The commonality they share? (1) An inability to differentiate between the true and false, and (2) an inability to see and admit the actual nature of the way their lives have unfolded and the way that their thinking has been the driving force behind most of their problems.
Most persons in both groups are totally blind to the way that - throughout their entire lives - personality has driven their every thought and word and action; has generated chaos and instability; has led then to sabotage most of their relationships; and had led to financial and dating or marital decisions which have been disastrous, relatively speaking.
In most cases, their perspective is the 180-degree opposite of reality, of truth (as was the case in these actual exchanges):
“She left me!!”
“No, you ran her off like a Mack truck.”
“My brother-in-law stole my company blind.”
“No, you basically gave him that money by leaving him – a man you knew to be a complete crook and totally dishonest - to run your company while you took a seven-week vacation with his sister, and - more ignorant than that - you left him signed, blank checks to operate the company. You all but begged him, ‘Please. Take these signed checks and cash them for whatever amount you want and steal my money.’ Is the term you’ve used, namely ‘lowlife,’ applicable? Relatively speaking, yes. But were his actions all predictable and foreseeable? Yes. You could have prevented the problem before it ever happened if you’d closed down operations for a two-week vacation. Or, if you wanted to take a chance and let him run your crews, then at least no bills would have come due that could not have waited until your return for payment. See? No blank checks. No chance to clean out your bank account.”
“My husband is a total ass!”
“So why did you marry a total ass in the first place?”
“He wasn’t a total ass until after I married him.”
“Ahhhhh.”
“I can’t believe that he / she gave me an STD!”
“So what could you have done to prevent someone from giving you an STD? What is your part in having contracted an STD?”
None of the responses were intended to suggest that only one party was ignorant, selfish, wrong, insane, whatever. The goal of the guru is, according to Maharaj, is “to dispel ignorance in the hearts and minds of disciples."
He said: “I am only interested in ignorance and the freedom from ignorance.”
The goal of the guru when someone comes to report “a wrong” that someone else has done to her or to him is not to dispel ignorance in the hearts and minds of the seeker's friends, acquaintances, spouses, business partners, or enemies.” The goal is “to dispel ignorance in the hearts and minds of the disciple."
Those “others” may at some point seek to understand themselves and the ways in which they have been being driven by their false selves. The likelihood of that? Almost nil. But those "others" are not the concern of a disciple’s guru, and in the end, "others" must not be the concern of the disciple, either.”
Maharaj advised seekers to seek their own shortcomings and the cause of those personality defects, not to focus on the shortcomings of "others."
He also said:“Self-identifications are patently false and the cause of bondage.”
"What? 'Others' are not the cause of my bondage?"
"My bondage is not caused by a woman who does not want to live with me any longer?"
"My bondage is not caused by a relative who stole from me?"
"My bondage is not caused by a spouse who does not behave the way I want a spouse to behave?"
"My bondage is not caused by someone who was able to transmit an STD to me because I was so ignorant and insanely driven that I did not practice safe sex?"
"My bondage over the years has not been caused by a thousand ignorant things I did and has not been caused by a thousand people I interacted with insanely, all of which ended miserably for me?”
Years ago I made the acquaintance of a man who was legally blind. He navigated rather well with the red-tipped cane he used, but he still ran into things occasionally that hurt a knee or hurt his head or caused him to fall and injure himself. Yet there was always a logical and sane cause of his problems. But in the case of most who are supposedly sighted? What of them?
The fact: most all persons, sighted or not, are totally blind in this respect: they generate their own problems because they mistake appearance for reality. They cannot see clearly. They do not view all with a sound and accurate perspective.
Maharaj: “To take appearance for reality is the cause of all calamities.” Yet appearances are often manipulated in order for one to get what he or she wants.
“I am going to marry this good, religious woman because I never want to be abandoned and I know she’ll always honor her marriage vows and never leave me, no matter what.”
[See, some say that “Love is blind.” It is not. It is color blind, because it prevents persons from seeing the red flags that are being waved as warnings to “STAY AWAY!”]
Or, other examples apply as well:
“I want a seven-week vacation, so I'll look at my brother-in-law and not see an incompetent crook but will see a man who is capable of running my company efficiently and who is trustworthy enough to leave him in charge of a stack of signed, blank checks.”
or
“I want to be married, but the man I’m dating is showing in many ways that he can be an ass. But I think I’ll ignore his defects and accentuate the positive. Yeah. That’s the ticket!”
or
“The person I met in a bar tonight looks great. Surely there’s no sickness there. Surely no sexually transmittable disease could be in someone so hot. I want to have the full pleasure of unprotected sex, so full speed ahead.”
Again, this is the relevant pointer:
Being free of what Maharaj’s called the “heavy burden” of personality and its effects requires “going back, reversing” at least as far as “The Child No-Knowing State” which existed for the short time before ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination resulted in being trapped in ignorant and insane belief systems.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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