TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
THE RATIONALE FOR UNDERSTANDING "THE REASONS" AND BEING FREED FROM THEIR INFLUENCE, PART FOUR
When any given series comes to an end, there is seldom any "planning ahead" to decide what the next series will discuss. Occasionally visitors might be given a few days' notice of what the next series might deal with because the topic came into consciousness while driving along a highway or while listening to a song; otherwise, when one series ends, the typical morning routine here continues without missing a beat:
First, morning ablutions happen, then the body moves to the kitchen where the expresso machine (pressurized-steam type, not the drip type) is filled with a blending of one-half of Cafe du Monde's caffeinated coffee with chicory and one-half of their decaf with chicory version. That will be loaded into the machine.
As that percolates and steams and as the high pressure is given time to force through the strainer the flavor of the ground beans into a cup below, the body is put through a regimen of stretches which include a myofascial treatment of the chest and neck muscles, then the arms, the waist, the back, and the legs which are stretched in multiple directions. There is nothing "yogic" or "divine" or "spiritual" about the stretching. It's just friggin' stretching.
My daughter recently sent a video clip of my granddaughter awakening one morning and stretching this way and that and then lying back and relaxing and smiling up at her mom.
Presently, that infant knows nothing about a God or the Noumenal or about how to assign deep, spiritual meaning to her act of stretching. Her morning routine, as is the case here, involves simple, no-meaning, non-spiritual stretching.
No greater or deeper significance is assigned to stretching. It's just a natural act.
Watch a dog wake up, or a deer, or a cat, or anything else and you'll see the same: there will be stretching for the sake of stretching without any spiritual or holy or divine or mystical or mythical or saintly or devout significance assigned. See? All -natural, not unnatural and not supernatural.
Once the steaming of the coffee grounds is complete, there is added to the espresso a small scoop of brown Turbinado cane sugar and a portion of the half-and-half required to complete the making of a cafe breve.
Once prepared, a cup of the coffee is carried into the home office and the cup is placed on an electric warmer plate which was a gift from my daughter, given after she became aware of my A.M. routine. A few sips of the nectar of the beans are taken, and then I sit back and close my eyes and relax.
With no effort at all, usually within a matter of minutes, a topic will arise spontaneously. There is no plan. There is no knowing at the outset if a series will contain five parts or ten entries or fifty posts. It all just flows naturally and spontaneously and automatically until it stops flowing.
Sometimes a post is inspired by something witnessed or overheard during the last 24-48 hours, something that is calling for an end to distortion and delusion and for the beginning of clear seeing; something that is calling for an end to a sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment; something that is calling for an end to hatred and for the commencement of an understanding of the unicity and Real Love.
But always, no matter what the specifics, the deal is about seeing the latest evidence of humankind's ignorance and insanity and offering examples of that evidence and then following that with pointers which provide a means by which persons can be freed from being mentally-imprisoned by ignorance and insanity;
but the deal is always about freedom, including freedom from attachment to the unnatural and to the supposedly supernatural / supposedly heavenly / supposedly other-worldly / supposedly divine "stuff" which traps the masses in ignorance and insanity; so the deal is about being able to enjoy abiding naturally and freely if all of that "stuff" is discarded.
No endless chain of "goals." No endless "way." No no-end "path." No no-end "journey." No need for totally ineffective meetings and incessant, self-absorbed talking and talking and talking which only reinforces the high levels of self-absorption of those who need above all else to be free of their high levels of self-absorption. So, no need for endless blah, blah, blah, either.
And that is what this series is about: ultimately, it is about waking up to see that one is being falsely imprisoned, not as a result of having been wrongly convicted of a crime but as a result of imagining that one is actually imprisoned when the imprisonment is really all in the mind.
In an article entitled "What’s in the Way of Your Freedom?" Mary Morrissey used the same example used here in the past, explaining how easily elephants can be made captive. Of people in India and Thailand and circuses, she wrote:
"First, they tie a thick rope around the leg of a baby elephant and stake it in the ground to tether the animal. While the elephant struggles and pulls to free itself, the rope and stake are strong enough to keep the small animal bound. Finally, the baby elephant will succumb and submit to its captivity.
"As the elephant grows in size and strength, one might think that the farmer would need a larger stake and rope to hold the animal, but this is not the case. Once the elephant gives up thinking it can escape, the size of the rope and stake no longer matter. In fact, they can even get smaller because as soon as the elephant feels the slightest tug of restraint, it gives up.
"Consequently, when the elephant becomes an adult, all the farmers need to do is pull out a few river reeds, weave the reeds into small ropes, and use them to tie the two-ton elephant to whatever he wants. Imagine: a simple river-reed rope to restrain an elephant!
"People are also like that. Just as the elephant has been conditioned to believe in its limitations, we humans have been conditioned. Without even recognizing it, mankind engages in 'river reed thinking'.”
Douwe Tiemersma said, "Again and again, Maharaj draws our attention to this basic fact in order to make us realize our ‘I am-ness’ and thus get rid of all self-made prisons."
Maharaj advised: "Study the prison you have built around yourself."
He said: "Within the prison of your 'world' appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into it."
Even more clarifying is this pointer from Maharaj: "The moment I create an institution, I become its prisoner."
What institutions are you associated or affiliated with - and associated or affiliated with not because you consciously chose to be associated or affiliated with them but because an authority figure in your life led you to that association or affiliation? Would you take a moment to list all of your associations or affiliations because, if you are willing, you will then have a list of all that is presently imprisoning you without your even realizing that you are being imprisoned. Only if that is understood first can you then walk out of prison and be free.
Maharaj: "Everyone creates 'a world' for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by one’s ignorance. All we have to do is to deny reality to our prison."
(Of course in most cases, humans do not program and condition themselves. That was done initially by those who were in positions of authority over them and who implanted in their minds particular concepts of a 'world' and the sense of imprisonment.
What role, then, does "everyone" play in creating that world of imprisonment? Once those earlier authoritarian influencers are gone, then, yes, persons take up where their earliest programmers and conditioners left off: "You created in my mind a dreamed up prison which has led to untold misery and suffering. Now you're gone? No problem. I'll take it from here.")
Maharaj: "The main point to grasp is that you have projected onto yourself a world of your own imagination, based on memories, on desires and fears, and that you have
imprisoned yourself in it. Break the spell and be free"
and
"You have put so much energy into building a prison for yourself. Now, spend as much on demolishing it. In fact, demolition is easy, for the false dissolves when it is discovered."
Maharaj: "To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation, is the dawn of wisdom."
Time and again these related pointers have been shared here:
John Milton said in the 1600’s: "The mind . . . in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”
and
Richard Lovelace said, also in the 1600’s, “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” What does? The mind, he said.
Maharaj said in the 1980’s: " . . . The mind obscures and distorts"
and
"It is the mind that creates illusion"
and
"There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance. Restlessness itself is mind."
This was asked a year ago, and it is asked again today: "How can one constrained or imprisoned ever enjoy a true sense of lightness?" One cannot.
Maharaj would eventually shift from (a) suggesting that religion or spirituality can dispel the sense of being constrained or imprisoned to (b) pointing out that it is the mind and its content - and the psychological problems which are generated by the content of the mind - which cause persons to become constrained and imprisoned. He said that it the task of the teacher to free seekers from their learned ignorance. (Not to teach them more dogma? No. Not to give them more and more spiritual exercises to do? No.)
What greater ignorance is there than to lie in a bunk and imagine that one is surrounded by bars which cannot be penetrated when, in fact, the bunk is in the middle an open field, surrounded by all sorts of fauna that are all moving about freely.
The fact: each of the bars which form the conceptualized prison in which the masses are trapped is a concept or an idea (a.k.a., a belief) which forms the mental prison in which most live.
The invitation here has always been: "Join 'the realized' in their freedom which is a result of living naturally rather than being trapped in the burden of living unnaturally or trying to live supernaturally."
This is shared in a book available on this site which deals with the "Nothingness":
"Whether your identity is of a phenomenal nature or a noumenal nature in your ‘mind,’ your preoccupation with it is evidence of the fact that you hold in esteem either that which you currently believe you are, or that Special SOMETHING which you think you shall be forever, or both. In fact, when a ‘state’ of zero concepts is reached, it is understood that there is no ‘identity’ at all. It is also realized from that ‘state’ that there is nothing deserving any esteem at all, contrary to the tendency among the 'non-realized' to demand that they be shown ‘all of the honor which they think they deserve’."
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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