TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
So, the challenges with properly treating the Ultimate Sickness include the following:
1. Most persons have no clue that there is an Ultimate Sickness, much less that they have a full-blown case of that Sickness.
2. Of those who do, many think they have been cured although they have only completed the first three rounds of the seven rounds of the "mental antibiotic treatments" which they need.
[Maharaj spoke of those who delusionally believe that "they are standing in the full light of the noonday sun when, in fact, they are only in the dull light of the dawn." Here, the point is offered that most stop at the third of seven steps on the "path" which leads from identification with the body to "full realization." It is at the third step when persons who deem themselves to "now be on the right path" have cast aside their former "bad" roles and have assumed "new and improved good roles," such as "The Super Seeker," "The Super Religious One," and "The Spiritual Giant."]
3. Of those who know there is such a thing as the Ultimate Sickness and that some in the Far East have long discussed an "Ultimate Medicine" to treat it, there has been no consensus of which version of it is most effective. (Maharaj had to try three versions before hitting on one which focuses on the real roots of the Sickness.)
Might it be the Traditional Method of Teaching Non-Duality? Or the Direct Path Method? Or The Neo-Advaita Method? Or the Neo-Vedanta Method? Or the Pseudo Advaita Method? Or a combination of those? Or one of those in combination with this or that yoga added in?
Or one of the bastardized versions of the Medicine dreamed up by the "Big Name Teachers" Maharaj warned seekers to stay away from because those persons have commercialized and popularized a bogus form of the teachings by adding in all sorts of the type of nonsense which attracts those who are trapped in what Maharaj called "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity" in order to make their talks sound more appealing to the still-sleepwalking masses?
4. Most persons - "seekers" or not - have no awareness at all about how truly sick their minds are. That which one is taught early on becomes one's "norm," so a child growing up in an environment dominated by the key symptoms of the Sickness which Maharaj identified as "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity" can go through an entire relative existence without ever questioning what was passed down to them in their ignorance-stupidity-and-insanity-dominated environments. It will all appear to be quite normal to them.
5. Misdiagnosis is commonplace. The Ultimate Sickness can look like many other sicknesses, and sometimes the case is that one is suffering from another illness without knowing it.
Consider:
Those familiar with the Enneagram and the Enneagram Personality Inventory used here with some seekers are aware of the fact that - of the nine basic personality types identified and measured by that method - each type is prone to developing certain personality disorders as psychic disintegration occurs and as persons move from suffering personality disorders to suffering various levels of neuroses or psychoses.
For example, while any of the nine types can develop an Addictive Personality Disorder, it is Type Seven who has a propensity to do so. Over the decades, many seekers have come this way who were convinced that their problem-generating thoughts and words and actions were being caused by an Addictive Personality Disorder.
They entered a group or a program which claimed to be able to treat alcoholism, for example, and they were told, "If you came through those doors, you're an alcoholic . . . no one enters these rooms by mistake" (as if that is a valid diagnostic tool.) The fact. Millions have entered those rooms by mistake. What can cause that blunder?
Consider four more of the nine basic personality types which all persons exhibit to one degree or another and note what those four can generate:
A Type Four can be driven to isolate and escape, just the same as one with the Addictive Personality Disorder.
A Type Five can be driven by avoidance or schizoid-avoidance, just the same as one with the Addictive Personality Disorder.
A Type Six can be driven by dependency, just the same as one with the Addictive Personality Disorder.
A Type Nine can be driven by avoidance, schizoid-avoidance, dissociation and a huge sense of entitlement, just the same as one with the Addictive Personality Disorder.
HUMANKIND'S PROBLEMS ARE ALL CENTERED IN THE MIND
The Ultimate Sickness, Maharaj came to see, is not a too-little-dogma sickness and is not a sickness rooted in a "spiritual malady" but is a psychological sickness, so it is easy to misdiagnose one psychological sickness for another.
Of the thousands of personality inventories completed here over the years, many persons among those who taking the test had been told that their main problem was their Addictive Personality Disorder. They came here saying, "There's got to be more than this" or "After decades, something is still missing."
They had spent ten and fifteen and twenty years or more being treated for an Addictive Personality Disorder when they did not have an Addictive Personality. Moreover, the commonplace treatment plans for the Addictive Personality have (a) little efficacy at all and (b) no effect at all on disorders which inspire escapism, isolation, avoidance, entitlement, and dissociation.
Those misguided persons have spent years and even decades in a program where they were convinced that they were standing in the full light of the noonday sun but were actually only in the dull light of dawn, at best. In some cases, they thought that they were living each day fixated at 12 o'clock noon when, actually, they were fixated at 12 o'clock midnight.
Those in such darkness cannot see the truth about themselves or the place where they are seeking treatment. Those in such darkness cannot see that the treatment plan is not working while believing that it is: "I am so much better than I was." Really? You might seek a second opinion about your actual condition, one that comes from beyond those proud persons who are taking credit for being the ones who brought about a miracle in your life . . . or maybe even a whole course of miracles.)
And how blind would one have to be to continue to settle for a particular doctor's treatment plan even though it has not healed the patient after years and even decades - especially when that doctor says up front that "I cannot cure you but I can provide you with a daily reprieve"?
(Reprieves are for people in prison, who have no freedom. To be given a "partial reprieve" from prison each day is no reprieve at all. One is either pregnant or not pregnant. One is either free or not free.)
Who would settle for that? A person accustomed to settling for less; a person who was abused and who has now normalized misery and suffering and self-abuse; a person willing to accept less than full (mental) health; a person who will forgo actual contentment for now appearing to be "so very good"; a person who is not demanding that he or she be given a treatment plan which will provide the ability to stand one day and to walk away from constant treatment and to enjoy a normal, all-natural, relative existence.
6. Finally, while the Ultimate Sickness is a mental Sickness, it is possible that one's mind has disintegrated to a level of psychic unhealthiness which the Ultimate Medicine cannot address. (Thus this current part of the series which is providing certain considerations which might allow some to distinguish between the psychological conditions which the non-dual offerings can address vs. the mental states which the teachings cannot address.)
TOMORROW: A closer look at "Instability and Insanity Induced By Personality Disorders" and when the non-dual understanding might lead to freedom from instability and insanity and when it is not likely to be able to do so.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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