TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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So, what's it all about? That is, what is the non-dual understanding about and why should anyone even consider the possibility of seeking that understanding?
1. Putting an end to not being able to differentiate between dream and reality, between true and false, and thereby be free of blindness and distortion.
Why put an end to that? Let's turn to a recent event to answer the question:
Stephen Paddock accumulated an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons modified to function like automatic-fire machine guns in order to increase the "effective" fire rate of 120 rounds to a rate of around 700 rounds per minute.
Last week, he booked a room overlooking a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, knocked out two windows in his room on the 32nd floor, and opened fire on the crowd of people below, firing with only brief pauses for around ten minutes, killing nearly 60 people and injuring over 500.
Even after that, his girlfriend Marilou Danley described him as "kind" and "caring." (Really? So was he being "kind" and "caring" when he allowed workers at a Starbucks hear him tell you, "You don’t need my casino card for this. I’m paying for your drink, just like I’m paying for you." See? Blindness. Distortion.)
Mass murder Ted Bundy was described the same way by many women.
And mates and spouses who abuse and kill their mates and spouses were originally seen in the same light (or in the same absence of light, to be more accurate). Blindness. Distortion.
While many see warning signs along the way, those abused or killed were unable to see clearly, unable to see the warning signs. Billions and trillions of persons in the history of human "relationships" have either been fooled or fooled themselves because they were blinded by their own hidden agendas, by their willingness to spin the truth if they saw it or - more often - by having seen the truth at all about the persons whom they wanted to hook up with or marry.
Here, it is said that the maxim that "love is blind" is not accurate. A more accurate way to put it is to say: "So-called love is color blind, because people who think they are 'in love' cannot see red flags even when they are waved before their very eyes a thousand times." Blindness. Color blindness. Distortion.
Bill O’Reilly, a conservative pundit who was fired by Fox News earlier this year following multiple allegations of sexual harassment, said of Paddock's act, “This is the price of freedom. The Second Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons.” Many who oppose every kind of gun control law nodded their heads in agreement. Blindness. Distortion.
As for loons, the president- in a payback to the National Rifle Association gun lobby who helped elect him - had earlier signed an order which made it easier for those who potentially have a mental health condition to buy a gun anyway. Blindness. Distortion.
Consider the traits of the Ultimate Sickness which Maharaj identified as "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity."
Would one be able to spot the ignorance and stupidity and insanity of someone responding to the rampant obesity in the U.S. by defending over-eating and saying, "This is the price of being able to enjoy really tasty foods which are always the foods that are most loaded with flavor-giving fat. Accept it. Stop trying to educate people to eat wisely."
Would one be able to spot the ignorance and stupidity and insanity of someone defending the fact that many children are unsupervised and play in the street where speeding cars are passing by arguing that, "This is the price of a child's freedom to have a good time. Who wants to play only in the yard all day?"
What else is this non-dual deal all about?
2. Related to #1, putting an end to being fooled, whether by oneself or by others.
One fact about a dream is that, in a dream, one can dream that he or she is waking up, getting up, getting ready to go to work, talking to others, etc. Yet even as all of that is being dreamed, the persons doing the dreaming are still totally asleep.
Of those trapped in what he called their "kindergarten-level spirituality," Maharaj said:
"They are functioning under the delusion that they are standing in the full light of the noonday
sun when, in fact, they are actually only standing in the dull light of dawn."
Thus, on one level, this non-dual deal is about bringing to an end the entrapment of the masses in a state of being easily fooled, and being fooled results from . . .
(a) first being fooled by one's parents (or whatever adults influenced one's thoughts and actions from early on by passing along bogus beliefs as absolute truth);
and next results from
(b) fooling yourself because you are allowing your thoughts and words and actions to be driven by the foolishness "they" taught you;
and then later results from . . .
(c) having become so separated from truth and reality and reason and logic and being so acclimated to being inundated with lies and nonsense and being out of touch with reality and lacking reason and logic and having normalized nonsense that other persons throughout one's adulthood years are able to fool her or him along with all others among the masses.
3. Related to both #1 and #2, being able to see all with a clear and accurate perspective and then being able to put all in proper perspective.
A clear perspective would provide one the ability to turn down all offers to accept membership in "The Confederacy of Dunces" Club. Thomas Hardy, in his novel entitled Far From the Madding Crowd (that title taken from Thomas Gray's 18th-century poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard") discussed the importance of man's connection to, and understanding of, the natural world," just as Maharaj did with via the nisarga ("natural") yoga.
Similarly, this deal is about moving far away from all that is unnatural and / or supernatural.
A proper perspective would provide one the ability to see that so much of what persons are angry about and what they rant about and what they fight about and what they kill because of is really (as the non-dualist William Shakespeare wrote over 400 years ago) "much ado about nothing."
What else is this non-dual deal all about?
4. Becoming aware of one's actual mental condition and being aware of the existence of an Ultimate Sickness which has been passed down to nearly every person on planet earth.
As persons can dream that they are awake when they are still asleep, so persons can dream that they are well when, in fact, they are very, very sick.
The sane and the insane can be in touch with their physical condition. If sick, both the sane and insane can be aware of their physical sickness because of discomfort and pain.
By contrast, those with the Ultimate Sickness are mentally sick but can be totally unaware of their mentally-ill condition because they blame their discomfort on externals rather than on internals and because they are often dissociated from - or in denial of - their mind-based suffering and misery.
The Ultimate Sickness results in
(a) persons thinking they are wise when they are actually most unwise
and in
(b) persons thinking they are making choices when their thoughts and words and actions are all actually being determined and controlled by the subconscious agendas of their assigned and assumed personalities, a.k.a., their false identities, roles, characters, etc. being played on the stage of the "Theater of the Lie."
To be continued.
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