TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
It was late 1965 and I had only just begun my freshman year at what is now known as ULM (or the University of Louisiana at Monroe) when an event occurred which is described in the chapter entitled “The Manifestation Ends” from the book WHAT A CHEROKEE GRANDMOTHER PASSED ON TO A GRANDSON:
I had been in college for a matter of weeks when one of the dorm proctors knocked on my door and told me I had a phone call downstairs in the office. I walked downstairs and into the office and over to the switchboard and lifted the receiver with a sense of doom and heard my dad crying. After my “Hello,” he said, “Floyd, she’s gone.” Her liver had finally stopped being able to do what livers do. I cried, too.
I walked up three flights of stairs and returned to my room. I reflected on the fact that her manifestation and mine had only overlapped for what now seemed like a short eighteen years. Then I recalled that I had likely spent more one-on-one time with her than anyone else, and I felt gratitude.
It was she who began sharing the non-dual understanding with me in the early 1950’s, and while little of it “registered” at the time, the seed was planted to understand the role that personality identifications play in the humanity-driven chaos of the planet.
It was late 1965, and India and Pakistan were engaged in heavy fighting (surprised?); the USSR launched Luna 7; The Supremes released “I Hear A Symphony,” but a Brit group called “The Beatles" had been fascinating everyone since the year before when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” swept the globe, followed by “Yesterday” which would top the charts in October of ‘65;
yes, it was late 1965, and a soap opera called “Days of Our Lives” premiered on television the month after “Yesterday” began playing on the radio; it was when the U.S. government sent 90,000 soldiers to a place called “Vietnam” which none of us had heard of until we buried the first four among our graduating Class of ’65 who had died there;
it was when, at the end of that year, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" premiered and would become an on-going holiday standard;
and it was when – by the end of the year – that Dr. John J. LaGaipa (marking time, hoping for a positive response to his application for employment with the CIA) had convinced me to seek to earn a minor in psychology and to become certified to teach psych courses at the freshman and college level in every university in the U.S.
It was in the fall of ’65 when I sat in the class of the only instructor I would ever meet who truly embodied all of the traits of “The Nutty Professor type” where Dr. Lagaipa would introduce me to the basics of psychology and would discuss the potential of personality identification to generate an abnormal existence, inspiring me to flash back to some of the pointers discussed with me some thirteen years earlier by a Cherokee medicine woman grandmother that grasped the non-dual understanding.
It would be years later when it was understood that there has long been a name (“non-duality”) for the understanding which would eventually bring light and peace; when the full freedom of the full understanding would release me from the ravages of the Ultimate Sickness and provide the complete understanding of the functionings (and "dysfunctionings") of personality;
when it became clear that a man called “Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj” was spot on when he predicted that “science will one day advance to the point that it will prove the validity of the non-dual teachings”;
and when I would find that science had (a) found a way to utilize the ancient enneagram teachings about personality in combination with the non-dual understanding in order to (b) allow persons to see - per the results of an enneagram-based personality inventory test - exactly how the nine basic personality types were determining their thoughts and words and actions;
and (c) to understand how that tool can be used by seekers to come to a deeper understanding of the way that personality has long been the most influential force on the planet in terms of generating chaos and disharmony and disunity and darkness; and how (d) freedom from personality can be attained by the combined use of non-dual teachings and the results of the enneagram personality inventory test and analysis which are offered through this site.
The wisdom of the enneagram (that is, the wisdom which can be attained via the use of the results of an enneagram test) are amazing to those that understand how to use those results effectively.
For example, it was yesterday when a man sent the enneagram test results of his teenage daughter who has been engaging in certain repetitive behaviors which are not in her best interests.
He is a wise man who understands the potential benefits of both psychological therapy and the non-dual teachings and who understands the point offered here over the years that “non-duality can be the Ultimate Medicine for the Ultimate Sickness but it cannot be the ultimate answer for every sickness.”
Aware of that, and aware that some illnesses might be rooted in the mind while others might be rooted in the elemental plant body while others might be rooted in both, he asked me to analyze the results he sent and to determine whether his daughter’s behavior was more psychological in its nature, or more physiological in it nature, or a combination of both.
Within a few hours, he received a report in his Gmail inbox providing the answer, well aware that some professionals could work with his daughter for the next twenty years and never come to as clear and as specific and as revealing a diagnosis as he would need in order to form an effective treatment plan and allow her to heal and then move forward.
He and I had both recognized that the particular behavior might have a genetic piece to it but that more often the behavior involves the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder. The real question remaining after understanding that fact was this: was the disorder rooted in the mind or in the body or in both, and to what exact degree.
The test results revealed that (A) she is experiencing some slight presence of anxiety which can be triggering a stress response but that (B) there is only a slightest chance that her behavior is being driven by a totally-mind-based version of OCD, therefore making clear that (C) the primary source of her OCD involves a chemical imbalance in the body (specifically involving a deficiency of certain alkali-metal group elements).
Rather than needing to be admitted to the psych ward of the nearest mental hospital, his daughter simply needs to add to her food plan certain small, daily doses of one particular all-natural, all-organic (rather than synthetic) supplement. If she does that, a major shift in behavior will likely be seen within a month and – if her case if like others witnessed here – her undesired behavior will likely end completely within ninety days.
The key related points, as discussed in the book Instability / Insanity: What the Advaita teachings Can (and Cannot Address)
are these:
(1) There have been cases where certain versions of the non-dual teachings have been observed to provide an effective treatment for addressing and eliminating the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness (identified by Maharaj as “ignorance, stupidity, and insanity”)
and
(2) There have been others cases where those symptoms have taken such a strong hold that a need for professional intervention is indicated (and sometimes even that will not prove to be effective).
In this series, the differences will be discussed.
Moreover, so few understand what Spinoza meant in the 1600’s when he said
“Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body’s power of action, increases, decreases, limits or extends the mind’s power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the mind’s power of action, also increases, decreases, limits or extends the body’s power of action”
or
what Maharaj meant thirty-seven years ago tomorrow when he said on 3 September 1979:
“Suppose I am not able to think, that my mind is not clear. What does it mean? It means my food essence is rather dull today. It is not getting into combustion in proper order; therefore, the thinking is also dull. This mind pertains to the food essences.”
Those, too, shall be discussed.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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