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 reason also (which is related to reason #50):
51. Because of an additional blight on humanity which is also linked to human arrogance, egotism, etc., namely a propensity for image-building and image-maintenance which is rooted in a preference for inauthenticity.
The nine basic personality types are the earliest drivers of all human thoughts and words and actions. Of those nine, one type is usually "the primary type."
Fifty percent of all humans are primary Type Sixes who connect with the Type Three, the inauthentic type concerned with image and form over substance. With that linkage, the masses are - for the most part - pre-wired to be pre-occupied with image, appearance, looks, and constant enhancement of their public persona(s).
Moreover, the Type Four (which has the greatest chance of becoming interested in authenticity) accounts for only 1/2 of 1% of the planet's population and only a few other types link to the Type Four.
So at least 5.625 billion persons are likely wired to favor image over the real, either consciously or subconsciously. Add in the Type Ones who work to project an image of perfection and Type Fives who work to project an image of being All-Knowing and the number of those who are being driven by a concern with phony images rises to 7.435 billion out of 7.5 billion people on the planet.
The 1-2 of 1% who might have a slight chance of developing an interest in authenticity represent a minuscule number in comparison to the whole, and Maharaj's estimate of how many of those and other personality types that will ever find authenticity was, by his final guesstimate, only 1 in 10,000,000.
Of course all of those numbers involve nothing more than mere guessing, but it should be clear by looking at those numbers, or it should be clear by way of objective witnessing, that humankind for the most part cares little about the real but cares a great deal about the not-real, about their images.
With 97% of the planet's population claiming to be religious and with millions more claiming to be spiritual, what better way to enhance one's image and to impress others and to get a near-endless supply of "attagirls" and "attaboys" than by flaunting how religious one is or how spiritual one is?
Be "The Popular Teen Heartthrob of the Moment" and you might impress millions; be a television or movie star and you might impress millions more; but none of that can compare to the positive feedback one can get if he or she can impress a large percentage of the billions of persons who are attached to religion and / or spirituality.
Then, relatedly, one can tap into the applause available by announcing that one has joined a religious or spiritual group and is now "in recovery," "giving up booze," or "finally, free after ending the use of drugs for decades."
That leads to the next reason:
52. Persons do nothing that does not have a perceived payoff, and when the masses want to cultivate a positive public image, then that image payoff comes by tapping into the largest audience possible.
Therefore, of course persons follow the no-end "path" their parents set them on; of course they stay involved with - and totally absorbed in - their "journey"; of course they try to get affirmation and praise from fellow group members by being "good," however that is defined by those in the groups or institutions which they join.
Image. Image. Image.
Images are modeled day in and day out from early on.
Parents behave one way behind closed doors and quite differently in public. Children see that and internalize the message.
Additionally, their cultures teach them what looks good and what is popular in terms of clothing, hair style, the cool way to walk, the cool way to talk, what cars look best, what kind of houses they should aspire to own someday, etc., etc., etc.
Persons also learn early on to use their image to manipulate others in order to get what they want or need. I awoke too late to the fact that a person I was involved with had a father who taught his girls to "use your looks to get men to pay your bills" and had a mother who taught them to "manipulate a man with love and you'll get everything you ever want."
When confronted about that advice, the response was, "Oh chill out. She meant manipulate in a good way." Ah. Right.
So deep is the sleep state which most are lulled into that they cannot even see how tuned in they are to developing and using image for the sake of being able to manipulate and control and exploit.
And what is the result of that image-making?
Again, Maharaj: "You have some experiences and you try to benefit from them, but remember that whatever is going to be of use to you ultimately is going to harm you. Wherever there is use, there is also dis-use in this world of duality. Whatever you like is going to create harm for you. Whatever you like most is, in the end, going to be most harmful for you.”
With the daughters mentioned above, the result was staying with men because they needed to rather than because they wanted to and using their bodies to keep those men happy in order to keep the funds flowing. Most can guess what the psychic toll of that behavior has been.
With some "stars," the results are often fatal.
One of the All-Time Great Kings of Image I first crossed paths with during my teen years was a singer named Elvis. His experience offers a spot-on example of today's pointers in action because few have ever manufactured so thoroughly a false image.
Site regulars know that I was a slum dog in those early years, living in an ignored pocket of poverty on the edge of Shreveport, Louisiana, but even I had heard of Elvis because my older cousin Gerald (pronounced with the typical East Texas / Northwest Louisiana accent as "Jer-ul") was dating a woman named MaryNell (pronounced "Mur-Nail") who was so enamored with a fellow named Elvis that she could not shut up about his pending visit to the city.
I had just turned 7 when Elvis was scheduled for his first radio broadcast on station KWKH from the Louisiana Hayride inside Shreveport, Louisiana's Municipal Auditorium on October 16, 1954.
"Elvis sightings" became the rage among his youthful fans. I first saw him entering Stan's Record shop on that trip. Later, I would see him one day when he was "out slumming" as he passed by in a convertible as some local radio personalities were taking him to a nearby boarding house to enhance his image as "one of the common people."
The price of room and board in that two-story house included meals for its residents as well as for patrons who came from the local community. The owners served home-style meals as crowds of men sat around large tables with red-checkered, rubberized coverings where diners passed around huge bowls of green beans and cream potatoes and platters of fried chicken and cornbread and where the wait staff made sure that the giant glasses of way-too-sweet tea with extra-large chunks of lemons floating about in them were always being topped off.
[I recall once when eating there years later as an adult that one of the boarders - dressed in a way-too-revealing and way-too-dirty undershirt without sleeves - poked me in the arm and said: "Pass them damn hulls." I gave a blank stare to the man I was having lunch with that day and he whispered, "He wants you to pass the green beans to him."]
Elvis was already cultivating the image which would attract millions of fans, from the oiled-up pompadour of a hairdo that many of us tried to imitate to the hip gyrations and thrustings which appalled the members of the religious community.
I would not see Elvis again until July of 1976 when several of us guys who socialized with each other and our wives on a regular basis were informed by the ladies that they had bought tickets for all of us to attend the concert when the singer they were now calling "The King" was scheduled to return to the city to perform inside the Hirsch Coliseum.
By then, the King's image was faltering. No one could know - but some close to him were predicting - that the King's remaining days were numbered. It would be a little more than a year after our last "in person sighting" of Elvis that he would be found unconscious on the floor of his bathroom.
By then, Elvis was in terrible health. His weight was estimated at 350 pounds and he was virtually non-functional at the end, being mostly bed-ridden and requiring near-full-time nursing care, often provided by his girlfriend at the time. The autopsy revealed that his heart and bowels were both twice their normal size. A toxicology report revealed the presence of ten separate prescription medications as well as the presence of codeine at ten times the prescribed dosage.
It would be learned that at the time Elvis was performing during the concert we attended and during the seven and a half months preceding his death, his doctor / pusher had written prescriptions for Elvis for at least 8,805 pills, tablets, vials, and injectables. Go back to a year before the performance we attended and include those twelve months in the total and the count rose to 19,012 pills, tablets, vials, and injectables.
Once more, Maharaj: "You have some experiences and you try to benefit from them, but remember that whatever is going to be of use to you ultimately is going to harm you. Wherever there is use, there is also dis-use in this world of duality. Whatever you like is going to create harm for you. Whatever you like most is, in the end, going to be most harmful for you.”
With humans who get what they think they have long wanted, they soon either abandon it, sabotage it, or try to escape from it. The non-realized are forever in a state of flux and chaos. As the non-dualist Jesus said, "Dual-minded persons are unstable in all ways." It is as if the masses are all suffering from the Borderline Personality Disorder:
"I love it; no wait, I hate it."
"I want it, but wait. Now that I've gotten it, I don't want it."
In public, Elvis always had to be "on." The early image development which was intended to inspire persons to look at him led eventually to a longing for people to stop looking at him and leave him the heck alone. What he wanted and got, he later did not want at all.
As with many "stars" and many others, he reached a point where he tired of the work that image maintenance required.
Yet, what Elvis never found was (1) the authenticity which he occasionally longed for nor (2) the ability to be at peace alone without being surrounded by an entourage. He had an ability to isolate, but he never found an ability to enjoy the solitude.
That's all in regards to the relative, of course, but the relative is all that persons will have. Post-manifestation, there is no "one" to have or not have anything.
It has been explained that when working with someone who claims to be "seeking earnestly" and who claims to be "truly ready," what needs to be heard is "I'm tired . . . really tired" expressed in one manner or another. For those whose manifestation is long enough, even the most ardent image makers will tire of the work required to maintain a phony image, but even that tiredness does not usually inspire them to seek authenticity before the manifestation ends.
Most will keep up their habit of tapping into whatever "worked" before, be it a "path" which is supposed to make them appear to be special, be it a "journey" which earns them respect and admiration, or be it involvement in some program which earns them praise.
Maharaj said: "Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only as far as they enrich or ennoble your own image of yourself."
Elvis became addicted to image making and image maintenance long before he became addicted to the drugs which he used to try to get a respite from the pressures of image making and image maintenance.
Maharaj: " I am not addicted to self-descriptions [such as ‘I am the Supreme’]. Those are of no use to me. I have the courage to be as nothing and to see 'the world' as it is: nothing. It sounds simple, just try it!"
Those who dream about being "this" or "that" must first be lulled into a state of unconscious since that is where dreams can occur."
Maharaj: "Some are addicted to trances, with their consciousness in abeyance."
Maharaj: "The man who seeks realization is not addicted to desires; he is a seeker who goes against desire, not with it."
Maharaj advised: "Give up your addictions," and that includes the addiction to image making and image maintenance.
Maharaj explained that what is actually to be sought is "neither the mirror nor the image in the mirror. It is . . . what is."
How to be free of the addiction to image making and image maintenance?
First it cannot happen if, as Maharaj said, you are "engrossed as you are in your puny image of yourself."
He said: "Your image of yourself is wrong," and to be free of the addiction to image making and image maintenance requires the heeding of these recommendations:
Maharaj: "Go beyond the mind"
and
"Go beyond the personality, with its addictions and obsessions."
If no longer being driven by the agendas of personalities and the agendas of the warped, fiction-filled mind, then how could there possibly be a need to continue along a "path," to continue with a "journey of seeking," or to continue with ineffective treatment plans which cannot offer a cure for the mind-and-personality-based Sickness which has nothing at all to do with "knowing too little dogma" or with "having a sick spirit"?
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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