TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
Persons (the "non-realized") are also willing to enter onto a "path" and then end up staying on it, and willing to begin a "journey" which never reaches the destination but continue on that "journey" anyway, and are willing to accept a treatment plan which they are told offers no cure for what ails them but normalize that and stay with that ineffective plan, anyway, for this additional reason as well:
66. Because they think that they can go to holy places or to venues where spiritual topics are being discussed and find someone to love, or can go to holy places or to venues where spiritual topics are being discussed and make someone they are already in a relationship with start loving them again or love them more or find them acceptable or stay with them if they are having problems in the relationship and wanting to avoid abandonment.
A man from El Salvador named Ricardo had been working on a project at our house and he had anticipated finishing the job late on a Saturday. As it turned out, the job required a few more hours of work so he came back Sunday morning to finish and receive his payment.
I had finished dressing for church before my wife and daughter so I went outside to visit with Ricardo and to see what the revised completion time might be. He looked at me in a suit and tie and began laughing, asking, "So, you go to church today, eh?"
I replied, "Yes" but likely responded with a look on my face that matched the one I wore when teachers in my elementary and middle schools sent me to a principal who would soon being using a board to strike my buttocks in order to punish me for my wrongdoings and to motivate me to behave in the future.
Ricardo said, "Yeah, I go later today too, but I no mind because I get to look at a lot of hot senoritas. And that's the same reason you go too, huh?"
I said, "You're out of your mind," and he laughed uncontrollably. "No, Mr. Floyd. I right and you know it! Hahaha."
I did not tell him how wrong he was or admit that my reason for going was even less noble than his prurient motives. I was going to try to please someone else and to try to keep someone from following through on her threats to leave and take our daughter with her unless I became "a better person."
How many persons in spiritual and "self-help" programs are there for the same kind of ulterior motives, never understanding that they are indeed helping "a self" (or several false selves) to be taken as something real?
I was going because slowly, over at least a decade, it had been made clear time and again that my desire to keep a family together would require me to mirror another person's duplicitous values and distorted beliefs and to be willing to abandon all authenticity and go along to get along.
Contrary to all I had understood in the past, I ignored the truth that I had no ability to make a depressed person happy, that I had no ability to make someone with the Borderline Personality Disorder behave in a stable and steady and predictable manner, and that I had no ability to ever please one who had the Perfectionistic and God Complex Personality Disorders.
Early on, I had bought into an image which inspired delusion-based idealization rather than looking clearly and seeing the way things really were . . . the way someone really was. I recalled at that point Maharaj's words: "A man who is given a stone and assured that it is a priceless diamond will be mightily pleased until he realizes his mistake."
Then there came a clear reminder of what had been understood during previous years but had been forgotten, namely, that any problems I experience are going to be rooted in my personality issues, not in those of someone else.
Maharaj: " I am doing my part in trying to help people to know themselves as the only
cause of their own misery"
and
"Do as you please. You are free to leave your world for mine."
I looked further at the example Maharaj offered when he went through the same experience I was facing and saw that he, too, had caved in for years and that when he could no longer keep participating in a spouse's religious fanaticism and felt compelled to focus on non-duality alone instead, things in that relationship "went south" fast and then stayed there.
I also recalled his answer to those who kept pushing for him to remarry after her demise: "I have remarried. I am now married to freedom."
Thus, he taught: "Believe me, it is the satisfaction of desires that breeds misery. Freedom from desires is bliss."
Then these words of his rolled across the screen of consciousness: "Whatever pleases you, keeps you back." At that point, a quantity of suddenly-unblocked authenticity whispered from within, "Ain't that the damn truth," and I smiled.
Steady peace manifested when I returned once more to this understanding Maharaj offered: "When you know your true being, you have no problems. You may please your parents or not, marry or not, make a lot of money or not; it is all the same to you. Just act according to circumstances, yet in close touch with the facts, with the reality in
every situation."
See, conforming to the desires of others and playing the role of "The People Pleaser" is one of the most debilitating experiences on the planet. Rebelling for the sake of rebelling is also useless. But when the choice is between preserving authenticity vs. abandoning authenticity for the chance to get something desired, both the experience here and the witnessing from here make clear that little can generate as much misery and suffering as the willingness to live a lie. You will be displeased with your life, even if you are not conscious of your actual condition and not conscious of what the actual cause of that condition is.
Maharaj asked, "Why worry? What makes you come here is your being displeased with your life as you know it, the life of your body and mind. You may try to improve them, through controlling and bending them to an ideal, or you may cut the knot of self-identification altogether and look at your body and mind as something that happens without committing you in any way."
So why did Maharaj say that "Whatever pleases you, keeps you back"? The key to understanding that is to be able to find in each case the answer to the question, "WHO (what ego-state) thinks it is presently being pleased or wants to be pleased in 'the future'?"
When the fears and desires of assumed ego-states / false identities are blindly and unconsciously propelling persons through the relative existence, those persons will be guaranteed misery if they awake enough to see that they are asleep and have been fooled and are therefore living an existence that is as empty as a mirage in a desert. So it is with a mirage, and so it is with any and all other images as well.
Maharaj: "To me, dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery. Pleasure and pain have causes, while my state is my own, totally uncaused, independent, unassailable."
As for endless seeking and endless paths and endless journeys and no-cure treatment plans, Maharaj offered a consideration which is relevant:
"All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery."
To those who proclaim that "my seeking and searching and following a path and engaging in a lifelong journey is what makes me happy," Maharaj might ask, "Really?" followed by something like, "In that case, rock and roll. Have your experience."
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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