TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
“The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, indoctrinated, and brainwashed to believe so that you can be free from being "imprisoned in the mind."
--Floyd Henderson
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Excerpts from the book entitled FREEDOM from BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and "No-Belief-ers") will continue with the a discussion of the way that personality-invoking "-ism's" are another source which generates a plethora of distortion-riddled beliefs:
"-ISM'S" and BELIEFS Rooted in Personality
("-ism's," Part "D")
1. There are those who are truly seeking peace.
2. There are those who are not seeking peace because they are attached to control and are addicted to the excitement of chaos in an effort to relieve a dull existence of its tedium and boredom and depression and monotony.
3. In an effort to escape monotony, both chaos and dualism seem appealing.
4. For those truly seeking peace, it cannot happen unless one is freed from belief in and attachment to any "-ism."
5. Nor can peace happen unless one is freed from belief in any false identity or role or personality or personas because they are the prerequisite for misery and the driving force behind all suffering.
6. The peace / "-ism" dilemma is this: attachment to "-ism's" reinforces attachment to "-ism"-related personas, and "-ism"-related personas reinforce attachment to "-ism's."
Example #1:
"We are a helping, civilizing people when we invade nations with their backwards populations and share our advanced culture with them," which actually means "we have a history of imposing our high cultural standards upon lesser people to our economic advantage."
To assume the role of "The Helping, Civilizing People" reinforces attachment to colonialism; colonialism reinforces the false belief that the invaders are "helping" and "civil." That is not unlike the parent who says, "I am disciplining you by whipping you because I love you" while the child is thinking, "Then just stop loving me, you ignorant ass. Your version of 'love' is killing me."
Example #2:
"We (Jews / Christians / Muslims) are the only ones whose beliefs are right" reinforces belief in and attachment to Judaism / Protestantism or Catholicism / Islamism. Attachment to Judaism / Protestantism or Catholicism / Islamism, in turn, reinforces the false belief that "I am a Jew" or "I am a Christian" or "I am a Muslim."
Such beliefs, in turn, support duality and a sense of "separation from" and "better-than-ment" and "different-from-ness," and those concepts and false identities and drivers of attachment to "-ism's," in turn, have resulted in more murdering than any other single factor in human history.
7. Attachment to "-ism's" will always nurture duality; distortion; illusion; delusion; learned ignorance; varying degrees of psychic unhealthiness as a result of personality disorders; a variety of neuroses; an assortment of psychoses and full-blown insanity; and the resulting inability to be in touch with reality or Reality either one.
8. So, personality and "-ism's" work hand-in-hand to support each other and to nurture attachments and personality-assumption.
9. Personality-assumption robs persons of the ability to choose thoughts and words and deeds and leaves persons at the mercy of the hidden agendas of personality (which is the root of all usually-unfounded-fears and all unmet-and-thus-frustrating desires).
10. Fears and desires generate misery and suffering and rob persons of any chance of finding peace.
11. To understand personality and which personalities are generating the personality-trance which traps persons in an endless cycle of misery-producing thoughts ("mind"-chatter) and which determines subconsciously all words and actions, the Enneagram provides a tool that can uncover the subconscious drivers of thoughts and words and deeds and can reveal - on an exact scale - the degree to which each assumed personality is driving a person.
Thus, the tool that can assist seekers with seeing which personalities are driving them - and to what degree and with what consequences - was introduced yesterday.
It was noted that Ichazo used Enneagram analysis to show seekers exactly how "the ego begins to develop, [how] there is a transition from objectivity to subjectivity, and [how humans] fall from essence into personality."
Ichazo saw the Enneagram as a tool that can be used to examine specifics about the structure of essence and particularly about the ways in which the qualities of essence "become distorted, or contracted into states of ego."
In developing his Enneagram theories, he drew upon the teachings regarding "the nine divine forms"; the teachings of Plato; the teachings of Plotinus; and teachings by early mystics who focused their studies on "the loss of the divine forms in ego consciousness" (those forms including tolerance, humility, sincerity, gratitude, non-attachment, courage, patience, temperance, and discernment).
Therein lies the core Advaita message: when trapped in "an ego-state / personality consciousness" as opposed to being free as a result of awareness of the essence and the authenticity, then tolerance, humility, sincerity, gratitude, non-attachment, courage, patience, temperance, and discernment will never manifest during the AM-ness.
The opposites of the "divine forms," in the course of their travels from Greece to Egypt over the course of a century, became distorted and reduced by religion to "seven deadly sins" which pointed at the means by which "the divine forms" became distorted into the so-called "sins" of anger, pride, envy, avarice, gluttony, lust, and sloth.
Ichazo's non-dual message that was delivered with a focus on personality and "personality-driven defects" also drew from the teachings of the Kabbala, but his key contribution as far as Advaitins are concerned was in discovering how these "divine forms" and their corresponding distortions connected with the already-existing Enneagram symbol and with human thinking, feeling, and instinct.
With that understanding, he showed how a person loses both awareness and the sense of pure presence, falling away from essence into the trance of the personality; how the loss of awareness becomes a person's ego-fixation; how the loss of contact with essence and authenticity eliminates tolerance, humility, sincerity, gratitude, non-attachment, courage, patience, temperance, and discernment;
and how the loss of contact with the essence and the authenticity sets the stage for persons to be driven by their "characteristic passion" (or "passions" or "personality traits"), including wrath and resentment and anger; pride; deceit; melancholia and jealousy and envy; greed and avarice; panic and cowardice; conceit and gluttony; lust; and indifference or laziness.
The link with the Advaita message is this: when one loses contact with the essence and with authenticity and falls into a personality trance, then the combined effects of
(1) that loss of contact with the essence and authenticity
and
(2) the subsequent identification with body and mind and personality
become so acute that the person's ego-states become preoccupied with recreating the contact.
It is - at least in some cases - that "acute" search for contact with one's Original (Pure) Nature that drives persons to assume the role of "The Seeker."
That would be fine except for the fact that - without a realized teacher as a guide or without being in touch with the inner guru - then the search unfolds in a totally futile and self-defeating way.
The masses are engaged in that blind search for their essence and for an awareness of authenticity, but blocked from seeing clearly by the sources of ambiguity and duality (rooted in programming, domestication, conditioning, acculturation, indoctrination, brainwashing, and their personality trance), they know not what they seek;
in most cases, their seeking ends at the third of seven steps on the seven-step "journey" from identification with the false "I" to abidance as the Absolute (the third step being where they assume the false identity of "The Religious One" or "The Spiritual One" or "The Realized One" and where their search becomes focus of seeking control and power);
furthermore, the odds are slim that they will ever cross paths with a fully realized teacher that can reveal to them exactly what "that / That" is which they are "missing" and thus seeking; therefore, they will usually seek blindly or will be misled by their "leaders" or "big name teachers" - all of whom are equally blind.
So it is, but so it need not be for those that have come this way and that accept what the Enneagram and the Advaitin teachings combined can reveal.
It was noted earlier that "-ism's" support personality and personality supports belief in (and attachment to) "-ism's."
Another example: Sinclair Lewis on one "-ism": "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
Were Lewis here nowadays (written six years ago), he could point to candidates in 2012 who would be the President of the United States and who are suggesting that women impregnated during a rape or as the result of an act of incest should not have the right to abort but should "make the best of a bad situation";
that homosexual acts - which are banned by state law in many states - should be declared illegal by national law as well;
that birth control should be banned because it is inspiring "unacceptable sexual activities"; and that some persons have the right to marry but that the constitution should be amended to deny others the right to marry.
In those cases, note the combination of "flag and the cross /
Catholicism"; the cross / Catholicism and flag. Fascism that year manifesting
precisely as predicted. Such is the toll of belief in the
arrogance-based concepts perpetuated by "-ism's" and the blind
acceptance of the desires of "-ism"-based personality / personalities.
"-Ism's" and personas; personas and "-isms."
[Now, during the twelve months since the 2016 presidential election, the "-ism's" called "Republicanism," "white supreme-ism," and "Christian evangelism" have made the 2012 examples above appear to be rather tame by comparison. Nowadays, Lewis would have to modify his prediction to say, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the U.S. flag, in the Nazi flag, in the 1860-era Battle Flag of the Confederacy, and carrying the Christian cross."
At play? Nazism and Revisionism. Fascism. Patriotism and Nationalism and Tribalism. Supreme-ism and Racism and Separatism. Anarchism and Terrorism. Christian Deconstructionism. Demagoguism and Scapegoatism. Emotionalism. Exceptionalism. Insurrectionism. And, of course, Dualism.]
Each supports the other in an endless cycle that encourages the reinforcement of persona-adoption, followed by a person attaching to the "-ism's" that reinforce the persona, followed by the "-ism's" reinforcing the belief that the persona is an actual identity, etc., etc., etc.
To claim that "I am a patriot" is to create an attachment to the beliefs that any given culture suggests are evidence of one's patriotism, including such statements as:
"We are the greatest country on the planet"; "I am willing to die for my country"; "a real man is willing to sacrifice his life to protect his fellow citizens"; or "I will beat to a pulp anyone who desecrates our flag."
Once the persona / personality of "The Patriot" has been adopted, then the conceptualized "-ism" of "patriotism" becomes sacred, hallowed, revered, and sanctified;
and once the conceptualized "-ism" of "patriotism" becomes sacred, hallowed, revered, and sanctified, then the persona / personality of "The Patriot" is also believed to have the status of being sacred, hallowed, revered, and sanctified and that belief will blindly drive all thoughts and words and deeds.
Thus, those trapped in personality are killing and / or dying for their country; killing and / or dying for their god; killing and / or dying for whatever the popes' desires were during the Crusades;
killing and / or dying for whatever the imam's desires are nowadays; killing and / or dying for whatever the commander-in-chief's desires are; killing and / or dying for whatever the prime minister's desires are, ad infinitum.
Such are the results of the perverted beliefs in false personas and in "-ism's." To be free, the recommendation here is to employ the Enneagram as a tool to begin uncovering the variety of personalities which subconsciously drive thoughts and words and deeds and which, therefore, remove all opportunity to make independent choices.
To be continued.
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