TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Excerpts from the book entitled FREEDOM from BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and "No-Belief-ers") will continue with 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 "H")
To understand why the wisest sages have historically called for the end of identifying with personality, the explanation continues by contrasting "the pre-personality human experience" with "the post-personality human experience."
[Note that personality types and styles develop as a result of children trying to cope with and adjust to the adult-imposed insanity going on around them. In most cases by the age of 5 or 6, a primary personality type will have already been set in place. Other types may develop as "wings" - adjacent types to their primary type - as well as other types which are assumed when integrations and / or disintegrations occur; thus, a Multiple Personality Disorder is guaranteed to develop fairly on.]
The existence for humans (or for the earliest "human-like" beings) had always been challenging enough and problematic enough as it was, without the additional hardships generated by personality.
That which is now taken for granted by many (weather-appropriate clothing, an available food supply, protective shelter during adverse weather conditions) required millions of years before manufacturing and agriculture technology developed and addressed those basic requirements.
(Today, as a result of the personality-driven greed and corruption-laden economic practices of a few, millions around the globe are once again facing those same pre-technology challenges as they are struggling to survive the relative existence without weather-appropriate clothing, without a steady food supply, and without protective shelter during adverse weather conditions.)
Yet anthropologists have discovered that - even prior to the development of technologies - there manifested an extended period during which humans (a) developed certain early societies on some parts of the planet and (b) developed a fairly simple - though still challenging - lifestyle.
Anthropological studies of the lifestyle of humans in those cultures have revealed that they spent about 2.5 hours per days "working" and then spent the remainder of the time engaging socially. Interestingly, the components of their survival-related "work" - foraging in a forest, hunting, fishing, etc. - are now considered by many to be "play."
Challenges continued to manifest - floods, fires, tribal invasions, drought, etc. - but for the most part, the existence in those cultures was marked by a simple and natural manner of abidance. Examples of those cultures include many of the earliest African cultures;
include many of the Asian cultures (as they existed prior to the Aryan invasions that triggered the eastward movement of "Asiatics" and "Indians" into what is now known as "the Americas"); and include the cultures they established in what is now called "North, Central, and South America" and including those who are now referred to by some as "Native Americans."
For all the complications that still interrupted a simple and natural mode of living, they did not face the additional burden of trying to negotiate the relative existence while being complicated by sightlessness, that is, by being blindly driven by the hidden agendas of a multiplicity of assumed personas as false identities.
The one called "Grandmother" and "A Cherokee Medicine Woman" was still abiding in that simple and natural fashion from the late 1890's until the early 1970's. She lived in a small frame house that had no running water, no indoor plumbing, no air conditioning, and no heating other than a wood-burning stove.
During those days of living with her, typical tasks included drawing water from the well; gathering wood to place in that wood-burning stove or beneath a large kettle near the back of the house where water was heated for bathing or for washing clothes; gathering food from her garden; feeding the mule that she used to plow the acre of land where she would grow her food supply in that garden;
and assisting as she went into the woods to gather herbs that she used to make teas and other solutions and compounds that she offered without pay to the ill who came her way. (And yes, per the Eastern tradition, they did bring gifts - such as a quilt or, more often, food - to the one offering her time and wisdom in the healing process).
For the most part, though, the existence was simple and natural. A few hours per day were spent in the gathering of wood, the foraging for blackberries during that season, planting, harvesting, etc. The rest of the day passed in a most relaxing, concept-free and personality-free fashion.
If one looks at what the human existence was like in such cases, is it any wonder that sages for thousands of years have invited protégés to abandon all personality identification? Note objectively what happens if one accepts even one false identity - if one adopts even one personality. All of that simplicity and naturalness will be eliminated.
By contrast to that simple and natural manner of abidance, consider the consequences nowadays of trying to negotiate the relative existence under the influence of the resultant sleep-walking blindness that accompanies a person trying to function while in a personality trance.
Then imagine how complicated and challenging and problematic the existence will be when the possible permutations of nine personality types in combination with each other can number 387,420,489.
Consider then the complication of trying to abide with someone in a "relationship" when so many variations of those personality-combinations generate complications which assure that the chances of both parties being driven by similar agendas is nil.
(When asked, "Are you surprised that the divorce rate is now 50% and has sometimes even surged to 60%?" the reply is always: "Yes. When one understands personality and is aware of the plethora of personality combinations which blindly drive thoughts and words and actions, one would guess that the rate would be much higher.")
Furthermore, as with the physician who cannot treat your sickness in the absence of a proper diagnosis, so too the sickness of personality cannot be treated effectively without full awareness and understanding of the problem, without full awareness of what has unconsciously driven every thought and every word and every action since you were a child.
The inability to consciously choose thoughts and words and deeds can result in nothing other than a relative existence that is marked by instability and fluctuation and chaos and degrees of insanity. At the third of seven steps, personality must be understood, addressed, and abandoned if one is to complete the "journey" to total freedom / independence and to stability and peace and bliss.
It has been shown why many non-dual teachers have used with their protégés the understandings which can come via an understanding of the Enneagram.
Those understandings identify humankind's present, personality-driven passions
a. that have displaced earlier, healthy passions and
b. that have displaced "Self-Identifications" and
c. that have led to self-identification, self-absorption, self-destruction, self-delusion and all of the other false-self-generated miseries and sufferings that mark the relative existence now.
Thus evolved the present style of the typical relative existence, complicated by
1. distortion-generating and delusion-supporting "-ism's"; and by
2. unnatural and supernatural beliefs and concepts and ideas that have blocked any opportunity for the non-Realized to abide in a simple, natural (nisarga) fashion; and by
3. simplicity-robbing passions / false identities / personalities.
What were nine of the healthier passions that marked the pre-personality existence of humanity and what were the unhealthy passions that resulted in the assumption of misery-and-suffering-producing personality and in being driven unconsciously by a plethora of personalities and their hidden agendas? That tomorrow.
To be continued.
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