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 #66: "non-realized persons" think that they can go to holy places or into religious buildings or into venues where spiritual topics are being discussed and find someone to love, or can go to holy places or into religious buildings or into venues where spiritual topics are being discussed and make someone they are already in a relationship with start loving them again or love them more or find them acceptable or stay with them if they are having problems in the relationship and wanting to avoid abandonment.
The causes behind reason #66?
PERSONALITY ASSUMPTION, IGNORANCE and IGNORANT PROGRAMMING, IMBECILIC CONDITIONING, UNENLIGHTENED DOMESTICATION, ILLITERATE ACCULTURATION, MORONIC BRAINWASHING AND WITLESS INDOCTRINATION
The link between (a) perceived or desired payoffs and (b) motives and motivation and the way that those are set up and reinforced via conditioning and other mind games has been discussed.
Want to drive a dog crazy? Condition it to salivate not when it smells food but when it hears a bell.
Such is the power of conditioning and other mind games:
They can drive living things insane. "Mad dog" can become an actual condition via conditioning, and most humans can - and do - behave just like mad dogs.
The prerequisite for being driven by perceived or desired payoffs is . . . personality assumption. All fears and all desires are rooted in the hidden agendas of assigned or assumed personalities. Every false identity has a basic fear and a basic desire.
Let "The Husband" sense that "The Wife" may be thinking about leaving him or is preparing to run off with another man or woman and the basic fear that "The Husband" role might be coming to an end can generate such fear that a fight response can manifest and generate a belief is that he (rather than a phony role) is being threatened, literally.
That fear, combined with a desire for the continuity of that role, can drive one to strike out to defend that identity, and that is why 59% of all women killed annually in the U.S. are killed during "a breakup."
Moreover, the desire to be loved can lead one to assume a religious role to attract or please someone already assuming a religious role; can lead one to assume a spiritual role to attract or please someone already assuming a spiritual role; and can lead one to assume a super seeker role to attract or please someone already assuming a super seeker role.
This is shared online:
A deal with the devil, or a compact or pact with the devil, is a cultural motif best exemplified by the legend of Faust and the figure of Mephistopheles but is also elemental to many Christian folktales.
For example, according to traditional Christian belief about "witchcraft," the pact is supposedly between a person and Satan or some lesser demon. The person offers his or her "soul" to be collected later in exchange for favors now which might include youth, knowledge, wealth, fame, love, or power.
That can be used as a legitimate metaphor as long as this is understood:
In the texts of the Abrahamic religions (see yesterday's post), "Satan" refers to one who brings evil and temptation; however, the word "satan" in the original Hebrew was not a noun naming something or someone but was a verb which meant "to obstruct or to oppose." Many would later used the word to refer to "the enemy" which was variously identified as "false pride" or "ego" or "egotism."
It was not until the first Council of Nicea that "satan" the verb was personified into Satan the noun and said to "the Evil One who is constantly about the task of tempting humans to do 'bad' things and was thereby the causer of all things evil (as in, 'The devil made me do it'."
Eventually, therefore, the term was associated with the religious dualism which is at the core of Abrahamic dogma and with the religious dualism that is at the core of so many religions and religious beliefs.
As far as non-duality is concerned, the metaphor is only legitimate if used to point to "the enemy" of humankind and peace and freedom and clarity, namely, personality-based pride and arrogance and egotism and distortion.
Maharaj came to understood that "the enemy" of peace and freedom and clarity (that is, the symptoms which come with the Ultimate Sickness) had nothing to do with knowing too little dogma or with having a spiritual malady but had everything to do with the typically perverted and ignorance-filled and insane human mind.
To seek out religious or spiritual roles for a payoff, he saw, is insane. Once more, he said: "To love and worship a god is also ignorance. My home is beyond all notions, however 'sublime'."
Yet many who are fanatically subsumed with religion or spirituality are not really motivated by the love of a god or the desire to worship a god but are motivated instead by (1) their personal and selfish and relative desires for love of another person or by (2) a desired payoff such as approval or love or respect or applause or admiration or esteem or high regard or awe or veneration or by (3) a desire for the supposed perks that come if one assumes and plays an "admirable" role such as "The Super Religious One" or "The Spiritual Giant" or "the Super Seeker" or "The Infinite Self" or "The Supreme Self."
Maharaj said of those types: "Maybe you are deceiving yourself. Maybe
you are giving expression to your real desires and the ones you approve
of are kept on the surface for the sake of respectability."
He said: "Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature."
When those desires referenced above are the motivating factors for a person, then of course they will stay on a path that facilitates such payoffs, or engage in a journey that facilitates such payoffs, or stay in a program which hands out "attagirls" and "attaboys" to newer members who are deemed to be "good" because they are mimicking and parroting the older members in thought and word and deed.
"Be authentic" is never the advice offered on any of those paths or journeys or in such programs; instead, the message stated or implied is always "Be phony. Be us. Imitate us. Impersonate us. Ape us. Copy us. Assume the roles of 'The Impersonator,' 'The Impressionist,' 'The "Imitator,' 'The Copycat,' and 'The Mimic'."
Their actual message? "To appear to be doing the deal is sufficient. Just as long as you suit up and show up and master the image - the appearance - of being as good and as godly and as religious or as spiritual as we are, then afterwards you may dissemble and hedge and evade and stall and dither all you want.
Dying inside? Who isn't? But just put on a happy face and trudge on."
The non-dual invitation is the exact opposite of that mindset. But the invitation is not to "focus on being authentic." The focus is to cast aside all that has been taught and learned which block authenticity from happening spontaneously and automatically.
Maharaj said, "When you discern and let go all that is unreal, what remains is real."
Jean Paul Sartre pointed out that "if you seek authenticity for authenticity's sake you are no longer authentic."
No deer in this neighborhood awakes in the morning and pledges, "Today, I shall present as authentic." No, that is the approach of those Maharaj referred to as "The Big Name Teachers." That is the approach of "The Super Guru." That is the approach of "The Spiritual Giant."
Maharaj said to those playing that role, "Compared to you, I am a spiritual pygmy."
Next, if you hear someone expressing pride in his level of realization or claiming that enlightenment brought power to him or her or claiming to have ascended into a state of higher consciousness and if you then believe the claims that they are making, then it is time for you to put your BS Detector in the shop and have it repaired.
Maharaj: "It serves to break down mental pride. We must realize how poor and powerless we are. As long as we delude ourselves by what we imagine ourselves to be, to know, to have, and to do, we are in a sad plight indeed. Only in complete self-negation is there a chance to discover our real being."
A visitor to the loft, wanting to know how to "get" what Maharaj was offering asked: "How do I get at it?"
Maharaj replied: "You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you
give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own."
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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