TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
THE FOUR STAGES AS TAUGHT HERE
Stage I: Programming to accumulate
Stage II: Accumulating
a. Discomfort / Emptiness inspiring even more accumulation
or
b. Discomfort / Emptiness inspiring seeking outside the popular venues
Stage III: Forest Dweller - the prerequisite and facilitator of the "inner journey"
Stage IV: De-Accumulation (via completion of the Four Stages and the Seven Steps to Realization, followed by abidance in the solitude of a relative existence that has been overlaid with the Absolute, then by abidance as the Nothingness, then by abidance, period, until the end of the manifestation).
In "Chapter Eleven" of THE ULTIMATE SICKNESS / THE ULTIMATE MEDICINE, the following is shared regarding the fourth stage:
Stage IV: The De-Accumulation / Actual "Journey" Stage
If persons are trying to complete a journey that they have never been on before, then a map or a guide or both are required; furthermore, if persons do not know where they are on the map, they will never know how to proceed to the next, exact location that will move them in the proper direction toward their final destination.
The Four Stages are explained here as a global map. It can be asked,
"Have you been programmed to accumulate (either roles or identities or things or places or people as friends or lovers or admirers or dependents or supporters?")
Have the efforts to accumulate taken a toll, either mentally or emotionally or physically or financially?
Have all of your accumulations or efforts or accomplishments or conquests or relationships left you unfulfilled?
Do you sense that there must be something that is yet missing because peace and contentment are not happening consistently?
Have you been searching for answers or for "something" via organized religion or spirituality-based programs or via reading the books written by the most "holy" or famous writers?
Have you attended lectures or talks or retreats conducted by internationally-known people who are always on the circuit or who are perpetually on book tours, promoting the latest ideas and concepts and teachings that have come to them since their last book?
Is it your experience that whatever you think you received at the time from any or all of that has eventually been seen to leave you longing for more?
Has it crossed your "mind" that maybe all of those popular people and venues and holy texts or popular books have not provided whatever it is that you are seeking?
Has it crossed your "mind" that they never will?
Has it crossed your "mind" that you may have become addicted to accumulating and to seeking and that you desire more rather than less or that you might not truly want to find the Truth or that you might be afraid of what you might find if you followed the "path" to its end...maybe even to "your" end?
Is it possible that you are so afraid of the unknown that you tolerate what is miserable but is known or familiar? Is it possible that acculturation has so warped the "mind" that imprisonment with company has more appeal then being alone but free?
Has it "hit you" yet that maybe you should stop seeking in the old places and seek in a new place?
Might that new place be within rather than without?
Have you considered the possibility that a search which has so far been focused on all sorts of outward sources—holy texts, famous books, famous authors, famous personalities, well-known religious or spiritual venues—might best give way to a search that focuses on an inward source?
If so . . .
then you might be ready to stop searching in the old places that keep using the old methods that did not work—or worked incompletely—to provide all that you are seeking. In fact, you might be ready to stop completely or to at least pause for a few moments and to relax for a spell and to wait for a new direction to be shown.
If so . . .
then you might be ready to move to the third stage, to the Forest Dweller Stage, where you turn from all that has not worked and then search in a different place with different means that may not be popular among the masses.
If you have reached that point, then you might be ready to abandon all and to question all that you have been told so far and to seek via a totally different means.
If so . . .
then the readiness might have manifested to move to the fourth stage and begin the seven-step "journey" that can move you from identification with the false to abidance as that which is authentic and real and natural.
If that is the case . . .
then you are ready to find the guide now that has the more detailed map, that knows the exact way that you came to be where you are - in the darkness - and that can show you the exact way to move back out of the darkness and out of the forest and into the light.
[In the next chapter: Suggestions for finding the guide for you and suggestions regarding the various means by which the exact, reverse steps to realization can be taken.]
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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