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.
So, to continue:
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 23: persons want Power, and they believe that the other-worldly Powers or Power they've hooked up with is not only All-Powerful but is Omnipresent, that is, (a) able to do anything for them and is (b) always present and reliable and willing to do for them, if only they ______. (Fill in the blank with the hundreds and thousands of things that persons have dreamed up and reported that gods or goddesses or The One True God wants in order for them / Him to be pleased and, therefore, willing to grant the wishes being asked for on a daily basis to the tune of billions and billions of requests per hour);
Thus, the causes of reason #23 are:
BODY IDENTIFICATION and ITS ACCOMPANYING DISTORTIONS AND DELUSIONS and PERSONALITY IDENTIFICATION and ACCULTURATION
With awareness comes an understanding of the unicity; with the consciousness only comes a dualistic sense of self vs. "the other"; and with the consciousness enabling the manifestation to believe in not only a sense of self but also in a sense of "the other" comes fear.
Adult humans, using their 1400 gram-size brain with a mind included, can engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics about what should be feared and what should not:
FOREIGN TERRORISTS? Yes. Definitely.
A MATE THAT ONE IS LIVING WITH OR MARRIED TO? Surely not.
Were all 1400 grams used in a rational, logical, due diligence manner, the answers to those questions would be the exact opposite.
But what of the house sparrow with its 1 gram-sized brain? Why does it fly away when I'm on a walk and approach on a trail that passes beneath the limb on which the bird is perched. Why does it fly away from me as I near? Reason? Logic? Intelligence? No. It flies away because of a key trait of the manifested consciousness, be it manifested in a space called "a human" or in a space called "a house sparrow." That trait:
the desire of consciousness for longevity and continuity.
Like cheerleaders setting persons up to make Greek chorus-like responses, they can shout at a typical group of humans and ask:
"How long do you wanna live?" and the shout back will be "Forever!"
"How long do you wanna be conscious?" and the shout back will be "Continuously! Without interruption or end! In perpetuity! Forever!"
And how can persons supposedly live forever and have their desires met? They believe that can only happen if they hook up with some Power. (And by the way, their conceptualized Power will be a projection of self, so its body will look like oneself physically and will behave like oneself and will exhibit one's exact traits in all ways).
Because my daughter and son-in-law both spent their formative years around friends and neighbors and schoolmates with a variety of skin colors which would touch many points on a color spectrum, my granddaughter is now being exposed to the same.
Pictures show her playing with the offspring of friends from South and Central America with varying shades of brown skin; from the Far East with shades of yellowish skin; from Romania with slightly darker skin; with African roots and various tones of black skin; and with a granddad whose skin can turn reddish as a result of a Cherokee grandmother's genetic influence.
My granddaughter has not yet heard any disparaging remarks about "the other" or about the wishes of many persons to separate persons by skin color.
There is no body identification yet, so there is no nonsensical belief about being different from and therefore better than others based on physical traits.
In the U.S., all of that body identification and discord generated by skin color preferences and rankings will be heard soon enough though in a culture in which the notion of white supremacy has been at its very core since the original invasion of this land; since the skin-color-based slaughter which followed; since the enslavement of persons based on skin color; and since the refusal of education based on skin color along with the disparagement of persons who have not been given equal access to education for not being well educated.
And all of that prejudice manifests regarding Power as well: in the predominantly-white, predominantly-racially-prejudiced neighborhood where I lived, the picture of Jesus hanging on several walls throughout the Southern Baptist Church where I was taken for programming and conditioning were like this one:
The historical Yeshu'a (Jesus) was a Middle East male who - like his male friends and neighbors and family members - likely had dark hair, dark eyes, a dark beard, and less than bright-white skin. But in Southern churches in the late 40's and early 50's, that kind of Jesus could not be worthy of being worshiped by white Southerners in the U.S. Only the version shown above was supposedly acceptable and deserving, though it was based in nothing more than psychological projection and anthropomorphism.
In fact, were Jesus alive nowadays and roaming about in the same area where he lived two thousand years ago, if some had their way, he would not be able to visit the members of his flock in the U.S. because he would be banned as a result of racial profiling based on his body appearance.
In the church I attended as a child, the Anglo-Saxons' projected their personal traits onto their "personal Savior" and their "personal God" because they were only willing to worship an Aryan-looking Savior who was light-skinned and blue eyed and who had the loveliest strawberry blonde locks imaginable.
Their anthropomorphism drove them to ascribe their own body attributes to both their savior and their imaginary deity. Such is the result of body identification and identifying with some other-worldly Power: "He is like me, and I am just like Him . . . godly. Moreover, I am a good God-fearing persons."
The result of such body identification? Distortions; delusions; a dualistic sense of separation and different-from-ment and better-than-ment; fear of, or disdain for, "the other"; an upgrading of one's self-traits; a downgrading of all "others" without those same traits; and the projection of one's self-traits onto all deemed, as a result of egotism, to be "good" or "great."
Next, the desire for Power is also rooted in the fear which is generated by personality identification.
Every persona assigned or assumed by humans brings with it its own basic fear and basic desire.
"The Husband" desires that "His Wife" will continue to play the co-dependent counterpart role which his false role requires for him to continue to "exist" in his mind, and if she makes some noises which suggests she might be planning to stop playing her Wife-role, then fear will manifest (followed by anger because an imaginary threat to an imaginary mirage will be imagined to be an actual threat to an actual self).
Maharaj: " Desire not, fear not."
Questioner: "In what way do I disturb peace?"
Maharaj: "By being a slave to your desires and fears."
Maharaj: "Pleasure and pain lost their sway over me. I was free from desire and fear."
Thus, personality identification - along with body identification - also generates fear, and fear generates a desire for power and also for a Power who will intervene in one's behalf at a moment's notice, at the drop of a prayer.
What are some of the relevant idioms which point persons away from their delusion-and-distortion-based beliefs regarding fears, desires, power, and Power?
"If wishes were fishes, we'd all swim in riches"
and
"If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride."
Or, as Carlin put it:
The desire for power and the desire for a Power - both rooted in fear and desire - will trap persons on a "path" to nowhere even as they are convinced that they are going somewhere, even as they are convinced that they are going somewhere special, and even as they are convinced that, ultimately, they are going Somewhere Very Special.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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