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 with Mary's story from yesterday:
Yesterday, in a facility in New York City, at about 11:45 A.M. CST, an assistant approached a woman named Mary who had been standing at a window for almost three hours. Mary had not used the chair that had placed within reach.
(There are many cases where people in Mary's condition can sit down and assume the most uncomfortable position imaginable and remain that way for hours. For Mary, that manifests as an ability to stand for hours at a window without moving.)
At 11:46 A.M., the attendant guided Mary to her place in the queue just down the hall from the Dutch door where a noontime dosage of psychotropic drugs would assure that Mary's narcosis-like state would continue unabated, as if she needed any assistance to remain in the condition that she was in when she was first institutionalized about four decades ago.
Her earlier breakfast routine was repeated as "her lunch routine," after which Mary returned to the window. Later, the Dutch door routine was repeated, after which "her lunch routine" morphed into "her dinner routine."
At the end of another turn at the window that had gone on for several hours, the lights of Manhattan had come on in the buildings across from Mary's hospital. All else was dark - for both the city and for Mary.
Just darkness . . . outside her window . . . and inside her body and mind and heart.
The assistant finally guided Mary down the hall and back to her room; assisted her into her bed clothes; led her to the bathroom and then to her bed; walked to the door; looked back once at Mary; turned off the lights; and closed the door most of the way while leaving a six-inch gap so that the night shift workers could pass by and be certain that Mary had not left her bed. As if they needed to check.
Some would say that Mary's case is one of the most pitiful they have heard. Yet consider: exceedingly reticent though she is, she is not - on the other hand - excessively verbose, talkative, long-winded, and rambling like most "non-realized persons" on the planet who cannot tolerate the silence and who use incessant talking as the main weapon employed in their constant assault on the quietness.
Moreover, though extremely and enormously and abnormally quiet, Mary is not forever talking in her sleep, interrupting others, nor disturbing the peace of all who are around her.
Specifically, she is not exhibiting any of the personality defects that manifest when one or more of the basic personality types (Types One through Type Nine) inspire in persons the following behaviors that Mary is not exhibiting. For example:
1. she is not exhibiting Type One traits and judging others and criticizing them and trying to reform them;
2. she is not exhibiting Type Two traits and forever helping others with a hidden, self-serving motive, trying to get others to love her in order to compensate for the love not received during childhood from her aloof and distant and detached and cold and unavailable parents;
3. she is not exhibiting Type Three traits and forever on stage, trying to get applause and admiration, working on creating and maintaining a public image of success;
4. she is not exhibiting Type Four traits and scanning the globe in an exhaustive "search for Self," and she is not assuming the persona of "The Super Seeker" at all;
5. she is not exhibiting Type Five traits and accumulating knowledge in order to share that in an effort to impress others with her intelligence and with her vast storehouse of information;
6. she is not exhibiting Type Six traits and being rigid or defensive;
7. she in not exhibiting Type Seven traits and engaging in behaviors that are rooted in an addictive personality;
8. she is not exhibiting Type Eight traits and trying to control others and treat people as inferiors, and she is not being domineering and aggressive and combative, and she is not "breaking relationships" at home or all around the globe in the way that Type Eights do;
and
9. she is not exhibiting Type Nine traits and being passive-aggressive.
Now there is no suggestion at all that one should allow her or his relative existence to follow the route that Mary's has taken, but the invitation is see that Mary has retreated into a state not unlike that of the masses where they are functioning under the auspices of a personality trance (which leaves billions of persons - to one degree or another - almost as "out of it" as Mary because their personality trances are unconsciously driving their thoughts and words and actions without their being able to choose to do - or not do - what they are doing, even as they are convinced that they are making choices).
See, a trance is a trance.
It makes no difference if one is in a trance like Mary's or if one is in a personality trance, which is the case with billions of persons on the planet.
A trance is a trance.
If one realizes that he / she is among the billions who are walking about in a trance because they are being driven subconsciously by the hidden agendas of their personalities that determine and control their every thought and word and action, then one can understand why the sages have long advised seekers to be rid of body and mind and personality identification.
In fact, the more salient point is to heed the invitation to care for the temporary-body-cum-consciousness but to be rid of the mind and personality / personalities completely, if one would be free of the trance that mind and personality generate.
The fact is, with billions living under the influence of the trances generated by their multiple personalities (see "Multiple Personality Disorder"), they have no more ability to make conscious choices than does Mary. Yet if they read about Mary, those billions might shake their heads, might "tsk-tsk-tsk," but then they will continue to abide in their own trance without relating to Mary at all.
The fact is, they are all Marys, but they do not know it.
Also, there is another parallel between Mary and the billions of "non-realized" persons on the planet who are also suffering from a variety of personality disorders which have developed into neuroses and psychoses. The other similarity is that - as with Mary - they have no awareness at all of their actual condition.
They have no clue that they are . . .
in the throes of the Ultimate Sickness;
that they too are in a trance;
that they too are trying to escape and avoid and lose conscious contact with reality;
that they too are trying to escape and avoid and lose conscious contact with reality;
that, by dissociating from reality and authenticity, they are talking in their sleep, walking in their sleep, and doing everything else they are doing while being totally asleep but thinking that they are awake;
that they too are alienated from self and from everything about their relative existence and from their true nature;
that they too are detached and unavailable and lost and distant and isolated and segregated and scattered and unstable and withdrawn and split and divorced and divorced from self and are totally estranged from self and from . . . all;
and
that they are as powerless as Mary is to make any conscious choices about anything.
It need not be so.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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