TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
Finally, persons (the "non-realized") are also willing to enter onto a "path" and then end up staying on it, and are willing to begin a "journey" which never reaches the destination but will nevertheless 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:
Somewhat related to reason #50's discussion of
humankind's preoccupation with their beliefs about being different from and better than
and
by the fact that children are taught from early on that there is a parent and / or other adults in positions of authority who are watching them and who are willing to reward them if they are "good" and punish them if they are "bad" (with especial focus being placed on the latter)
and
humankind's willingness to accept the parallel, nonsensical teaching that everyone is being watched by someone who lives in another world and who is documenting each instance when they are being "good" or "bad"
along with
humankind's susceptibility to being driven by arrogance which leads to a desire to be "the best" or to be associated with those deemed to be "the best,"
then
reason #68 below emerges to explain . . .
why humans are willing to spend an entire lifetime walking a "path" which they were put on as a child by adults who gave them no choice about what "path" they would follow for their entire relative existence; why humans will begin a "journey" which will never reach a destination during their lifetime if it promises to get them to some positive destination in another world after they die; and why adults are willing to follow a program for the remainder of their lifetime which tells that they have an illness which that program admits up front that it has no cure for.
How . . .
when children have a natural tendency for freedom and independence and for deciding with no adult input at all if they want to crawl left or go right or pull themselves up into a standing position or stay seated and play
and how . . .
when they have the courage to set out on their own and to explore and to walk a path of their own choosing
how is it . . .
that they can be stripped and robbed of their original, innate essence which initially generated that courage to walk their own path?
How is it that their natural tendencies can be squashed so completely in so short a time and then have stolen from them the only force which could have provided them as adults with the ability and autonomy required to experience a certain joie de vie throughout their entire existence?
when children have a natural tendency for freedom and independence and for deciding with no adult input at all if they want to crawl left or go right or pull themselves up into a standing position or stay seated and play
and how . . .
when they have the courage to set out on their own and to explore and to walk a path of their own choosing
how is it . . .
that they can be stripped and robbed of their original, innate essence which initially generated that courage to walk their own path?
How is it that their natural tendencies can be squashed so completely in so short a time and then have stolen from them the only force which could have provided them as adults with the ability and autonomy required to experience a certain joie de vie throughout their entire existence?
It happens like this and because of this:
From early on, adults try to mold children into their own image; try constantly to change children when they don't fit the mold; try to make them different from what they are; try to make them better than they are; try to make them "better today than they were yesterday" and actually hold that concept out as not only the expectation but a possibility as well;
will, as a desire to mold children into a mirror image of themselves, give compliments and gifts and rewards and "positive reinforcement" at times but will withhold all of those when children are "being bad" (except for the most indulgent who pour on the gifts without restraint). The result:
68. Children - except for rebellious Type Fours - will end up seeking, seeking to be seen as "good" and not "bad" in order to please parents, please Santa, and later, please the Supreme Parent / the Father / God in a hope that their problems during the AM-ness will be avoided, that continuous joy and uninterrupted bliss will mark their entire lives, and that after the manifestation of the IS-ness ends, then boundless rewards and endless joy and even greater bliss will manifest forever.
The conundrum: How are they to know with assurance, with so many varying standards existing around the globe, exactly how to differentiate between what is deemed to be "bad" and what is deemed to be "good" in order to assure that continuous joy and uninterrupted bliss will mark their entire lives and that - after the manifestation of the IS-ness - then boundless rewards and endless joy and even greater bliss will manifest forever?
For most, they will unquestioningly rely on what the early authorities in their surroundings told them, but the authorities in one place will define "good" in a totally different way from the authorities in other places.
Maharaj said: "Usually the bad and the good are a matter of convention and custom and are shunned or welcomed, according to how the words are used."
When the Western European tours I conducted years ago included a few nights in Nice, France, the West End Hotel was used for those on more modest budgets while the rest stayed at the Hotel Negresco Nice. From either facility, if one's room looked out across the Promenade des Anglais, one would see topless women lying on chaise lounges or on towels all along the beach.
Many of the women on the tours traveled from Houston, Texas where our headquarters were located. They could not go topless anywhere in that city without being arrested (unless they were working indoors at one of the licensed topless clubs). But in Nice, many of those same women went to the beach and sunbathed topless without interference.
By contrast, if a woman drives an hour and a half south from the house where this blog is being posted this morning and goes topless on the beach in Galveston, Texas, she'll likely be arrested, as many have been.
But, by further contrast, if she drives three hours to the west from here and visits a locale called "Hippie Hollow" on Lake Travis in Austin, she can spend the day there in total nudity without being harassed by law enforcement at all.
Topless? Nude? "Bad!" Topless? Nude? "No, good!" Duality. Duality. Duality.
And what goes for topless goes for damn near anything and everything that humans form a near-infinite number of opinions and beliefs about.
So how could what's "good" and what's "bad" ever be defined accurately or definitely? It cannot.
More significantly, do you see why Maharaj's life was so simple because no such questions could ever even come into consciousness? Again, he said: "Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."
What else did that "Maverick," that "Rebel," offer on the subject?
Maharaj: "Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is 'good'. As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace."
Some say that "good" and "bad" are "in the eye of the beholder," but the only "beholder" which would want to tell everyone what is absolutely good and what is absolutely bad is always some false personality identification, some phony but self-righteous ego-state.
Maharaj replied thusly to one visitor who would have been willing to play that role:
"Again the personal point of view! Why do you insist on polluting the impersonal with your ideas of sin and virtue? It just does not apply. The impersonal cannot be described in terms of good and bad. It is Being — Wisdom — Love — all absolute. Where is the scope for sin there? And 'virtue' is only the opposite of 'sin'."
On another occasion he said: "When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own ideas of what is good for others. A man who claims to know what is good for others is dangerous."
And a man who claims to know what is good for all is not only dangerous (relatively speaking) but is also narcissistic and likely sociopathic and psychopathic as well.
One who was trapped on an endless "path" and who was engaged in what was likely going to be an endless "journey" and who was also preoccupied with being "good" and not being "bad" said to Maharaj:
Questioner: "For the last two and a half years I am travelling, restless, seeking. I want to live a good life, a holy life. What am I to do?"
Maharaj, long being "A Bubble-Burster," replied:
"Go home, take charge of your father’s business, look after your parents in their old age. Marry the girl who is waiting for you. Be loyal, be simple, be humble. Hide your virtue. Live silently."
Some spend all of their adult-years living under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and some of those admit that years of pain and suffering and misery came with "living under the influence." Many humans would agree that is often the case.
Yet most fail to see that living under the influence of anything will eventually generate pain and suffering and misery. Maharaj lived under the influence of the religious fanaticism which was brought into his flat by his spouse (and which he, too, had brought in for a time).
To hear him reflect on what that existence was like before Sumatibai took mahasamadhi makes clear that his living under the influence of inanthenticity was marked by considerable pain and suffering and misery.
The experience here was similar.
It became clear
after years of cohabitating with "scoundrels" and "rogues" who were a mirror image of "floyd's" own scoundrel and rogue nature throughout the early adult years
that
those experiences were a freakin' cakewalk when compared to living under the influence of one who eventually replaced her rouge nature by self-identifying as a "saint" and who supposedly transformed into someone who was "particularly good" and who was "different from" and who was "much better than" and who would eventually self-anoint herself as "A Truly Holy One."
But what was most painful and miserable was living under the influence of "floyd" when he abandoned authenticity and played along with such games for a time.
Once realization came (which Maharaj defined as nothing more than being freed from believing "learned ignorance"), all seeking ended and living without being under the influence of anything began.
Having found, there was no longer a need to search along one "path" or another.
There was no need to be involved in an endless "journey."
And there was no need to continue to follow what was identified as a life-long treatment plan without any cure at all for what had been ailing me.
There is a cure for the Ultimate Sickness, but the readiness must first be present, and one must truly be ready to abide in a manner which is marked by total independence. The rub? For all of the lip service given to "being totally independent," it is actually the last thing that the non-realized masses really want.
So it is, but so it need for be for the one that is earnestly ready to be truly and completely free, NOW.
STARTING TOMORROW: A review of the reasons that persons will not be as free as realization could allow
and
IN SUBSEQUENT DAYS: How to be freed from being driven by those (often subconscious) reasons.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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