TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
Next is another reason - another subconscious motive - which renders persons willing to enter onto a "path" and then end up staying on it, or willing to begin a "journey" which never reaches the destination but continue on that "journey" anyway, or willing to accept a treatment plan which they are told offers no cure for what ails them but stay with that ineffective plan anyway:
25. To please others.
a. The first "other" which many children try to please is one or both parents. From the beginning, children are typically raised by parents who want to make their own lives easier by teaching their children what they expect of them so the parents can thereafter be freed of having to deal with the children constantly and can get back to whatever it might be that the parents prefer to do.
While "time spent with children" studies have shown considerable increases in the last fifty years or so, the times are still low:
In 1965, mothers spent a daily average of 54 minutes on child care activities while moms in 2012 averaged almost twice that at 104 minutes per day. Fathers’ time with children nearly quadrupled: 1965 dads spent a daily average of just 16 minutes with their kids, while today’s fathers spend about 59 minutes a day caring for them. Among those in poverty, the times are obviously much less.
In the 50's, the most frequent words heard from our parents were "You kids get out of here. We'll call you when dinner is ready" or "All of you kids go outside and play until we call you."
Nowadays, much of that same attitude prevails, but it is being driven by some specific personality disorders which are becoming more and more prevalent: the Attachment Personality Disorder, the Dissociation Personality Disorder, the Escapism Personality Disorder, the Avoidant Personality Disorder and / or the Schizoid Avoidant Personality Disorder.
In addition to trying to meet parental expectations and receive an "attagirl" or an "attaboy" - further instilling duality-based thinking - there is the outright labeling of what is "good" and what is "bad" and how doing "good" can make one "a good child" and how doing "bad" can make a child "a bad person."
b. The next "other" which children will soon want to please is "the teacher." Some students in my elementary school classes had gold star stickers placed on a chart next to their names at the end of the day when their behavior was "good." A few other classmates joined me in receiving not a single gold star but instead in having our names added to the list of students who were in "The Goof Group" for the day and who would have to stay after school and work math problems for a half hour.
Many times I stayed alone in the punishment room because rebellious Type Fours only make up 1/2 of 1% of the earth's population whereas the Loyal to Authority Type Sixes and their mates make up a huge majority (50% and more being devoted to God, country, and authority figures including parents and teachers and "elders" and business owners and police and members of the armed forces.)
Programmed and conditioned to please people - or punished when not pleasing people (especially those in authority) - the course is set for most to be especially tuned in to what their relatives and friends and cultures deem to be "good" and deem to be "bad."
c. When children raised in that fashion reach adulthood, they are so subconsciously attached to getting rewards (acceptance) and avoiding punishment (abandonment) that they become susceptible to trying to please a mate.
Males of that ilk often submit to the psycho-surgical removal of spines, backbones, guts, testicles, gumption and courage, submitting themselves in any and every instance to the will of a mate. Similarly, I have seen far too many females of that ilk trying to please an angry, controlling, brutal mate by tolerating mental torture and even physical assaults.
Or what about the fellow who was abused by religious leaders as a child but who caves to a mate's demand that "he will attend church and will raise their children in the church if he wants to stay married to that mate"? Many persons - out of an ego-state's fear of coming to an end - will acquiesce, will forfeit authenticity, and will do things which they have no desire at all to do.
For them, there is still a child within who was conditioned to want rewards and to be seen as a "good boy" or as a "good girl" and who now is still a child manifested in an adult body.
There is not one iota of normalcy to things which have become commonplace nowadays, such as:
Normalizing societies where parents are encouraged to be "in absentia"; living in cultures where abnormal duality-based thinking and abnormal duality-based talking and abnormal duality-based behaviors are all normalized; submitting oneself entirely to the will of another / others; and abandoning one's self in the search for acceptance and praise.
In the 1960's in the U.S., an advocate for the use of LSD, Timothy Leary, offered this advice: "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
Today, no one has to offer the masses that invitation because the majority - while not necessarily using acid - are using other substances to assist them in their subconscious drive to avoid, escape, dissociate, dodge, evade, and elude.
Some have likely heard the story about the lad who carried a butterfly net into a meadow one spring morning and began racing about, wanting to catch more butterflies than anyone had ever caught before.
At the end of the day, after racing about for hours and hours, he had not caught a single butterfly. He finally collapsed and sat with his head between his legs - tired, dejected, disappointed, dissatisfied, disenchanted, saddened, frustrated, and exhausted by the lack of results of his hunt, his seeking, his searching. And it was at that moment, the moment - when he ended all of his going and doing and zooming and racing about and seeking - that this happened:
It is rare but it has been seen that some persons whose seeking allowed our paths to cross have "gotten it." A few have seen that their multitudinous "paths" and arduous "journeys" left them tired enough to hear and to grasp the message shared here.
They said that they were seeking "peace" and an ability "to live naturally" and "to relax and take it easy." (Of course, they had fooled themselves. They were actually seeking the reinforcement of a host of assumed ego-states and a better image in their community and among friends or relatives or leaders.)
Yet the philosophical or religious or spiritual doingness which they were engaged in generated such high levels of philosophical or religious or spiritual workaholism that a "Catch 22" had manifested: they were caught in the trap - in the conundrum - where the beliefs which had been passed on to them led them to seek and seek and seek but to never find that which they had been told to seek.
As with most humans, there was no time for peace because they were too busy searching for peace.
(Ever see a dog chasing its own tail? What's it going to do in that process except end up biting itself? Ever see a dog wasting its energy by chasing a car? Will it ever be able to actually catch a car? And then what would it do with it, if it could catch a car? More to the point, how like that dog the masses are, constantly going and doing and zooming about on this "path" or that "journey" but never finishing the chase and never giving up the chase entirely after finally seeing the silliness of it all. I had a dog that spent years chasing cars until he got much older and much more tired of the chase and . . . maybe even wiser? At that point, when he began passing his days lying down in the front yard and relaxing, his eyes sometimes shifted to one side or the other and then tracked the movement of passing cars, left to right or right to left, without ever lifting his head. It sure looked a lot like Pure Witnessing.)
One such formerly-fanatical seeker who came this way is called "Bill" who, at his peak, would have given me a real run for my money when it came to fanaticism and super-seeking and spiritual workaholism. As was the case here, Bill was finally freed of all of that.
He came to understand and appreciate the message shared on this blog in the past, a message offered by way of the lyrics of a song written by a Native American who sang about "winds of life are blowing across the reservation" and about his coming to the understanding that . . . "It's time to live."
This morning he shared some of the understandings which have come since we first meet:
Hey Floyd,
I am enjoying you new series. Seems right on. In the world that most create, guilt is preferred over the feeling of helplessness. At least if I am guilty of something, I can repent and thus, have some control. If I repent, my chosen but non-existent deity may feel kindly toward me and do what I want him / her / them to do, and that takes away my perceived hopelessness and helplessness. I have someone to pray to that way, someone who will part the heavens and enter and change the path of the storm to kill someone other than me. Thus religion makes perfect sense to one who desperately desires to control his world.
Thanks again for the series, Bro
bill
As mentioned yesterday, it is
(1) humankind's addiction to control
and
(2) humankind's addiction to power / Power in order to be able to control
which will keep people on a "path" even though neither their "path" nor any other path has ever truly given anyone control or power.
The invitation of the Nisarga Yoga offered here, and the invitation for today is, to allow a butterfly-chasing child to offer an understanding which is required for freedom and independence and relaxation to manifest.
The invitation rests in the example of a child who
(a) tired of going and doing and zooming and working his butt off to try to find that which he was seeking
but who came to understand that
(b) that which he was seeking is only available when all going and doing and zooming and working comes to an end.
What an irony. What a Catch-22. What a conundrum for the programmed and conditioned masses.
The Nisarga Yoga invites seekers to abandon the unnatural and the supernatural (i.e., the "spiritual") and to abide naturally, as modeled by the deer:
The deer that live around me work only as much as needed to provide the basics. They forage for a while each day, then play some or enjoy some sex occasionally, calmly move away from crazy, noisy humans, and then, as Maharaj said, "Relax in the cool blue shade."
Of course, that manner of living is just a suggestion for "super busy, really earnest seekers."
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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