TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
Specific "reasons" cause persons
• to be obsessive and compulsive
• and render them unable to relax
• and lead them to be driven to go and do and zoom (whether that involves religion; spirituality; employment; "personal relationships"; politicking; reforming; rescuing; seeking love; seeking mass approval and applause and admiration; trying to escape responsibilities; accumulating; finding caretakers; or controlling).
• We are looking at what causes "the reasons" to manifest
• and what must happen in order to be freed from their influence.
We are looking at what causes "the reasons" to manifest
and what must happen in order to be freed from their influence.
So, to continue:
Persons obsess, act compulsively, are unable to relax, are fanatical, are driven by subconscious motives, and do whatever authority figures tell them to do - unquestioningly - because of reason #31: they believe in "the other" (which they are taught from early on to fear and hate).
The causes of reasons #31? Once more:
PROGRAMMING, CONDITIONING, DOMESTICATION, ACCULTURATION, BRAINWASHING, AND INDOCTRINATION WHICH GENERATE UNQUESTIONING FAITH IN - AND BELIEF IN - DISTORTIONS AND DELUSIONS
"THE OTHER"
Recall Zeba Blay's pointer. She wrote about duality and "the other" when she shared her take on the presidential election outcome:
"And so, the so-called “unthinkable” has happened. Donald Trump, the racist, sexist, xenophobic candidate of the Republican alt-right, has been elected President of the United States. Across social media, white anti-Trumpers are expressing shock and disbelief, unable to recognize the America they thought they knew. Well, wake up. This is the America that people of color have always known. This is the America that has always existed." Such is what it has been like to be seen as "the other."
This was also offered recently:
Always - among the masses - the majority (trapped in their dualistic thinking patterns as they are) will accept unquestioningly the way that their religious and spiritual and political leaders define "the other," define "the enemy," and define "the ones who want to kill you, and will, if you do not attack those I say we should attack."
THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS' PERSPECTIVE
Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of "that great nature in which we rest . . . that Unity within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all . . . .
He said that "We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles."
By way of contrast, he pointed out, "there is a sense of the whole, including the universal to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE."
Many of the Transcendentalists spoke of "a unity beyond the multiplicity" (or, as stated here, beyond the perceived multiplicity)
MAHARAJ'S TAKE
Maharaj said: "You are not different from others."
Consider the pointers in these exchanges:
Questioner: "I have another question to ask: Some Yogis attain their goal, but it is of no use to others. They do not know, or are not able to share. Those who can share out what they have, initiate others. Where lies the difference?"
Maharaj: "There is no difference. Your approach is wrong. There are no others to help. A rich man, when he hands over his entire for-tune to his family, has not a coin left to give a beggar. So is the wise man stripped of all his powers and possessions. Nothing, literally nothing, can be said about him. He cannot help anybody, for he is everybody. He is the poor and also his poverty, the thief and also his thievery. How can he be said to help when he is not apart? Who thinks of himself as separate from the world, let him help the world."
Maharaj: "There is absolutely no difference between me and others, except in my knowing myself as I am. I am all. I know it for certain and you do not."
Q: "So we differ all the same."
Maharaj: "No, we do not. The difference is only in the mind and temporary. I was like you, you will be like me "
Q: "Can you touch the inner life of other people?"
Maharaj: "I am the people."
Maharaj: "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."
Next, persons also obsess, act compulsively, are unable to relax, are fanatical, are driven by subconscious motives, and do whatever authority figures tell them to do - unquestioningly - because of reason #32: the masses are capable of believing that they are awake when they are actually totally asleep.
The causes of reasons #31? Once more:
PROGRAMMING,
CONDITIONING, DOMESTICATION, ACCULTURATION, BRAINWASHING, AND
INDOCTRINATION WHICH GENERATE UNQUESTIONING FAITH IN - AND BELIEF IN -
DISTORTIONS AND DELUSIONS
Consider:
Q: "We may be sleep-walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there nothing you can do?"
Maharaj: "I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you, 'Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up'.”
Consider: "A good night's sleep" in the missed goal of so many. Sleep provides an interval in humankind's tendency to go and do and zoom.
That respite is valued and sought after for the rest it provides, for the interval or break or lull that it is, for the relief it gives. It offers a breathing space, a reprieve. It is natural for many; however, for far too many others, it is used as a delay, as a postponement, as an escape, and when persons reach a point where they want to escape reality rather than be in full, unadulterated contact with reality, sleep can become a tool that is used to avoid, evade, or dodge.
When that mindset manifests, then persons not only sleep when they are in bed but also sleep when they are talking, driving, working, shopping, ad infinitum.
As some are aware, many of my acquaintances work in the fields of counseling, therapy, psychology, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, etc.
They are reporting a huge increase in the number of cases where they are diagnosing dissociation and structural dissociation and other similar disorders. They are seeing more and more clients who are "unconnected" (from reality, from authenticity, and from self).
The clients are exhibiting a separation of what is normally a group of usually connected mental processes - such as "feeling and understanding" or such as "relating to the feelings which other persons are experiencing and then empathizing and caring" - and they are using that sense of separation as a defense mechanism.
Dissociation involves the separation of normally-related mental processes, resulting in one group functioning independently from the rest, leading in extreme cases to disorders such as Multiple Personality Disorder, the formation of alter-egos, and the assumption of various false identities.
On the web: "In psychology, dissociation is any of a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experience. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality rather than 'a loss of reality' as in psychosis."
Regarding detachment, this has also been noted:
"Detachment is often not as outwardly obvious as other psychiatric symptoms; people with this problem often have emotional systems that are in overdrive. They may have a hard time being a loving family member. They may avoid activities, places, and people associated with any traumatic events they have experienced. The dissociation can also lead to lack of attention and, hence, to memory problems and in extreme cases, amnesia."
The problems with trying to wake people up?
1. More do not want to be awakened.
2. Those walking and talking in their sleep have no idea that they are asleep.
3. Those living in the dream of the planet are certain that they are awake.
4. And the insane do not know that they are insane.
They do not know that they are retreating even as they are certain that they are moving forward, succeeding, accomplishing, convinced that they are "normal."
To that end, consider Mary's plight, for it illustrates the way that the early levels of dissociation and detachment disorders can "progress" to the point where persons become totally numb, totally desensitized, living as if anesthetized, or - as some describe it - "being dead in life." Is Mary's case extreme? Maybe, but nowadays, many among the masses are certainly moving through the relative existence as if similarly stunned, bewildered, or dismayed. Here is Mary's story:
Mary is institutionalized in a New York City Psychiatric Hospital. Born in the early 50's, she has been confined in what some call "a mental hospital" since the early 1970's.
The "manifestation of Mary" in the 1950's brought with it a perfectly normal brain; in fact, it was considered to be "above normal" in terms of IQ. Of course her brain was formed with the sections that are required to store and retrieve information . . . sections which - once filled - would be called "her mind."
But in the beginning, there was no mind to the degree that she had been taught nothing during the Child No-Knowing Stage. Oh yes, there were archetypal messages from day one, messages transmitted genetically via thousands of generations of those who would be deemed her "ancestors."
So, she would jump if someone created a loud noise near her face or ears; she would avoid bright lights if possible; she would rest rather than feel as if she were being driven to go and do and zoom.
Those who knew her would report that Mary was normal early on, but her environment was not. Much to the chagrin of those who hear this pointer, there is no sane environment in which children are "raised" nowadays; hence, the formation of personality early on. Personality is merely a tool that children use unconsciously to try to survive in the totally-dysfunctional families which are the abnormal norm nowadays.
(All families are dysfunctional? Really? Yes, really. It goes like this: if there is no dysfunctionalism, then there will be no personality. But is there anyone that has no personality, no assigned ego-states, no adopted roles? No; thus, there is the clear evidence of the all-pervasive dysfunctionalism in families which every child must try to deal with.)
Mary from the ages of 0-5 did pretty much what most pre-school girls do; from the ages of 6-12, she did pretty much what most elementary-age girls do; and from the ages of 13-18, she did pretty what most high-school age girls do.
And by the end of high school, she found herself reflecting on the boys and men she had met (and "The One" she did not meet).
She also reflected on the fact that she no longer had either parent in her life, both having left her years before. And she reflected on the fact that she had no other relatives or friends, either.
Any early and brief periods of joy gave way to adolescent shyness and insecurity and instability and angst and uncertainty and doubt and fear and unmet desires. And all of that was rooted in personality, of course.
Along the way, Mary experienced plenty of traumatic events, but fewer than some and more than only a few. Yet what she experienced during those years took a toll, and Mary reached a point where, by the age of twenty, the relative existence had already lost its appeal.
Personality issues and chemical imbalances and dietary deficiencies - all of which are experienced by all - took a greater than usual toll on Mary because she had not been totally desensitized, though she could well have been, understandably. By twenty, she had already felt more, hurt more, and suffered more than most would because most her age had already been lulled to sleep 24 / 7.
In Mary's case, it was the laughter that went first; then whatever slight touch of lightness that might seem to have been revealed by an occasional, tenuous smile was really nothing more than a false reflection from a heart that was growing increasingly dark.
She did consider suicide, but being the non-violent type, she did not choose to escape via that method, even though the relative existence no longer had any appeal at all.
With little evidence of the Addictive Personality Disorder, she did not use drugs or alcohol or shopping or work or sex or "love" or chaos or control to try to escape; instead, she merely retreated. See, now? That is what insanity is, among other things: a retreat. And to where did Mary retreat?
Because what she had been programmed to believe was "this world" (and because "this world" was a place of misery and suffering for her) she retreated to "another world," to one conceptualized within her mind. Eventually, it was via the mind itself that Mary left "this world" permanently to reside in "that world" for the remainder of the manifestation.
Again, it is always the case with non-Realized humans that the main problem does truly center in the mind, and as one Norwegian writer explains it, that movement from "here" to "there" allows people like Mary to go mentally to "a place where one can entrench oneself anew."
(Spiritual Giants do the same as Mary. They retreat from the realities of the relative. Seekers who claim to be "Fully Realized" and "abiding as THAT" while having discounted the Is-ness completely, do the same as Mary. And they are as unaware of what they are doing as Mary is. The difference between "the actually realized" vs. "the not-actually realized" is that those who claim that they are abiding only as THAT - instead of overlaying that Reality on the relative - are "entrenching" themselves there rather than engaging fully and sanely and logically in the relative even while functioning as the Original Nature of Awareness.)
Where once Mary had sought, earnestly sought, a sense of lightness, now she really did begin to experience a sensation of floating along, but not in the fashion of a leaf on the surface of moving water that simply goes with the flow.
No, her sense of floating was a result of being out of touch, and not just out of touch with Reality but out of touch with reality, with what was happening during the relative existence.
(Again, Spiritual Giants do the same as Mary; those who now claim to be only THAT do the same as Mary. Mentally moving into LaLa Land or FooFoo Land has nothing to do with "realizing.")
So this morning, like every morning for the last four decades or so, an attendant entered Mary's room and helped her rise from her bed. The attendant helped with her bath or shower or take a sponge bath, after which the attendant helped Mary dress. Then Mary was marched to a hallway and stood in the queue that leads to a Dutch door and a pharmacy.
All the while, Mary did not speak a single word.
There, the attendant raised Mary's arm and allowed the woman dispensing legal drugs to scan Mary's barcode information into the computer system. Mary was watched closely to be sure that she actually swallowed her meds. Then, she was led to the dining hall in the hospital.
There she was seated, and the attendant slid her barcode bracelet from her too-thin wrist and walked the serving line for Mary, gathering this and that breakfast food and placing it on a tray and then allowing Mary's barcode to be scanned at the end of the line.
Afterwards, Mary's tray was taken to the long table where she and her fellows were seated and she was fed a few bites of food.
She might have taken a sip of water or milk through a straw, but more often a small glass is held to her lips until she gives up her resistance and spreads open her lips and take a few drops of liquid.
Then, Mary rose with some assistance and walked with some assistance to one of the casements that allows her to look out on a not-especially-pretty section of New York City that can be seen from the upper floor window of the hospital.
A chair was slid over near her so she can sit if she so chooses. But she never so chooses. At this very moment, Mary is standing at that window and looking out, and that will continue until an attendant comes to her fifteen minutes before lunch is to be served.
So far, Mary's case might seem extreme to some visitors reading this post, and while there will be no argument here about that, the fact is that her state is not rare on planet earth. It is the typical human condition among the non-Realized around the globe.
The only difference is that "the system" found Mary and locked her away. Most in her condition are moving about the same streets you are on and are working in the same office or business where you work. And some of you are Mary.
Unlike Mary, however, most of the billions who are also sleepwalking through life and who are also insane to one degree or another are nevertheless roaming about freely because they have not been found out. They are almost as catatonic and almost as dissociated as Mary in their own non-realized, Ultimately Sick way, but they have not been entered into the system.
A few might find The Understanding via non-duality; for those few, sanity might be reinstated. For some, Advaita cannot provide the Ultimate Medicine now, but they might be ready for that treatment at some point in the future. But for most, no. Their condition will remain as it is, or worsen.
And they are the ones included in the hundreds of sets of "ten million" that Maharaj referred to who will never Realize and who will remain in ignorance or will remain insane.
They will walk about in their sleep but will appear to be awake.
They will strut across the stage of "The Theatre of the Lie" and will play the roles that they have been assigned or that they have assumed.
And, like Mary, they will not have the slightest clue that they are totally out of touch with reality and Reality.
To be continued tomorrow with more on Mary and how understanding her experience might help many realize, if they are ready.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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