TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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The discussion at this point in the series is now focusing on "The Most Influential Obstacle Of All" in terms of blocking the seeing of truth and the blocking of realization and the blocking of the understanding the "No-you-ness" and "No You-ness."
That "understanding" refers to the fact that no identities ever assigned or assumed have had any validity at all, be they among the identities played during the relative, phenomenal existence or be they among the so-called "noumenal" identities which supposedly exist whether prior to the manifestation or which supposedly exist post-manifestation.
"The Most Influential Obstacle Of All" has come throughout human history via dreamed up myths and superstitions and - for the last 5000 years or so - via "religious" and / or "spiritual" sources, including religious and spiritual thoughts, ideas, concepts, notions, views, theories, inklings, perceptions, a.k.a., "beliefs."
A pointer offered on this site for years (as well as by Maharaj during the third phase of his offering of the Ultimate Medicine) is this:
The Ultimate Sickness centers not in too little dogma and not in a spiritual malady and not in a failure to be “A Supreme Self” or “God” but centers in the mind.
Those who have witnessed clearly the overall evolution in
(1) the teaching methods used by Maharaj; and in
(2) the specific shifts in focus as he moved from the use of one yoga after another; and in
(3) the focus of the pointers he offered
can trace many adjustments he made in his effort to address the root cause of the Ultimate Sickness as he moved from
(4) attracting Hindus and leading them in bhajans and injecting some non-dual pointers in the religious exercises to
(5) attracting both Hindus and Westerners to the loft and then
(6) focusing more on the “spiritual messages” that Westerners preferred and blending “spirituality” and “non-duality" to
(7) continuing to endorse Self-Inquiry all the while to
(8) eventually endorsing self-inquiry, making clear that “it is enough to know who you are not rather than finding the answer to “Who Am I” to later
(9) advising seekers to “stop reading the talks in the book I AM THAT and listen to my later talks” and to “give up spirituality” and to “follow your normal inclinations" and to "forget spirituality" and to abide naturally to
(10) focusing on the understanding that the problems of humanity and the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, at their core, all center in the mind.
So if the answers to humankind’s problems are not to be found via religion, and if the answers to humankind’s problems are not to be found through spirituality, and if Self-Inquiry is not an absolute requirement, and if effective self-inquiry is enough, and if the root of humankind’s problems rests in the mind, yet if there is no such thing as the “peace of mind” (which so many humans are seeking) then is there no hope at all for humans to ever be free and at peace?
Of course there is, yet only a few – per Maharaj – will ever reach the understanding required to bring those into existence and to allow those to remain after addressing that which blocks the manifestation of continuing peace, that being, per Maharaj, mind-and-personality-based fears and desires.
And what is desired more than anything among humans? Ask most parents, “What is your greatest hope for your child?” the reply most of the time is: “I just want her / him to be happy,” ignoring the insanity of such Pollyanna-style wishing and dreaming and hoping, blindly believing that anyone can always be forever happy during a relative existence wherein the only guaranteed constant is . . . change.
Thus, when happiness comes, it is the high point of what amounts to a roller-coaster ride through life. Prepare for a drop. Prepare for change rather than anticipating a lifetime of uninterrupted happiness and joy. Yet most don’t, wanting to be free of the annoyances and irritations and discontentments which are marking and marring their relative existence.
Maharaj said of that: “What makes you come here is your being displeased with your life as you know it”
and
“You have some experiences and you try to benefit from them, but remember that whatever is going to be of use to you ultimately is going to harm you. Wherever there is use, there is also dis-use in this world of duality. Whatever you like is going to create harm for you. Whatever you like most is, in the end, going to be most harmful for you.”
Even those termed “realized” – while free of the effects of ego-state-generating emotions and emotionalism and emotional intoxication – will not be freed from having to feel feelings on occasion, feelings which the non-Realized will deem to be “bad feelings.” The relative existence is a duality-based existence, so it will be a source of what persons call “high’s” and “low’s.” Such, rather than unhindered happiness, will be the rule.
Maharaj asked one visitor: “You are welcome to stay in your contentment, but can you?”
And how often is so-called “contentment” really just a temporary state because it is rooted in being temporarily identified with - and in assigning great value by the mind to – whatever one’s culture defines as “valuable” and “successful” and “that which will provide a sense of security”?
On that, Maharaj said: “Youth, vigour, money - all will pass away sooner than you expect.”
For example, there will be cases when sky-high happiness manifests when a couple that has been trying to start a family looks at the results of a home pregnancy test and sees that a pregnancy has indeed happened; but there will follow within a seven-week period on average at least 4.4 million instances of miscarriage in the U.S. alone during a first pregnancy (often either the result of the propensity nowadays for eggs and sperm cells to be damaged as a result of the bastardization of the food supply by the addition of unnatural elements by businesses for the sake of increasing profits or the result of becoming pregnant too soon after the use of birth control and not allowing enough time for the body to return to its natural rhythms).
The effect on millions of persons each year: the sky-high happiness which had come initially followed within weeks a sudden transitioning to an ocean-bottom low of the lowest degree imaginable.
Maharaj: “Enjoyment is a state of mind -- it comes and goes. Its very impermanence makes it perceivable. You cannot be conscious of what does not change. All consciousness is consciousness of change.”
The question becomes, has one developed coping strategies or certain understandings which allow objective, impartial witnessing to happen (which has nothing to do with denial or spinning or dissociating or believing you have to “love what is.” That is total BS. Any couple who wanted a child, became pregnant, and then miscarried is insane if the are willing to follow such advice and claim, “I must love this miscarriage").
A woman came here for de-programming. She had spent considerable time working with a "Big Name Teacher" (Maharaj's term, used by him to identity those whom seekers better stay away from). Her Big Name Teacher told the woman that the way to process the pain and misery around her rape was to "Love your rapist. Have him over to the house that you and your husband live and cook it a meal and serve him.”
According to my visitor, that point has been offered to tens of thousands of seekers - many alcoholic or addicted to other substances - who have paid $5000 and $10,000 and more to hear that advice from one claiming to offer spiritual and non-dual understandings.
And thousands have nodded their heads in sleepwalking-type-agreement when they hear that and other "Love What Is" messages, such as when talking about Nazi's taking babies from Jewish mothers and throwing their babies into fire pits during WWII. The message offered:
If Someone (God, ‘what is’), pulls my baby from me - if that's what it takes, I'm there. Take the baby. Tear my baby from me. Throw it in the fire....My discomfort is my war with God. [...]"
Really?
From
"God was made angry by humanity and flooded the earth and killed everyone on the planet except for the members of one family and two of every species of animals, insects, birds, etc."
to
a Christian pastor who said God allowed the World Trade Centers to be knocked down by Islamic terrorists
"because of moral decay in the U.S. and because of the ACLU, abortionists, feminists, gays, and liberals"
to
the Dalai Lama's explanation about why Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, saying it was . . .
"The fault of the negative karma of the people of New Orleans"
to
"Love the man who raped you" and "Gladly give up your child to be tossed into an oven by Nazis"
so-called "religious" and "spiritual" messaging has not come very far since the circulation of the most ignorant superstitions which led to Egyptian and Norse and Greek and Roman mythology and to the superstition-based beliefs held by such people as the Neanderthals and passed down to present-day persons who still buy unquestioningly into absolute nonsense.
Such advice as "love what is" and "love your rapist" and "love the people who tossed your children into ovens during WWII" is the epitome of what Maharaj called “humanity’s ignorance, stupidity, and insanity.” Yet recommending a lifetime of preoccupation and round-the-clock hating would also be detrimental to one's peace, both mentally and emotionally.
The understanding which ends ignorance and stupidity and insanity can allow for peace to manifest, can allow the peace to be typically interrupted, can allow for psychological processing to happen, and can allow for peace to return even as there is no belief in the delusional concept of “uninterrupted happiness” throughout the relative existence. Understanding is key.
Maharaj: “There is no such thing as mind. There are ideas. Abandon the wrong ideas.”
Thus, when visiting with a woman recently who had undergone a miscarriage, the typical, often overwhelming emotions manifested, including immense levels of sadness but also the accompanying but unwarranted guilt and shame and self-blame which also often manifest. There was also some sense also of life being unfair and trying to understand why a loving god let’s “bad things happen to good people.”
None of the emotions being expressed were discounted. Nor was it the time to address the belief that there is some supposedly God who is controlling everything on the planet, right down to what happens after a sperm cell and an egg meet.
Instead, the conversation was moved to an understanding, an understanding of the biological forces at play, to the fact that up to 25% of all first pregnancies in the U.S. end with a miscarriage, that because of a number of environmental factors, many sperm cells and eggs have chromosome issues, and that – in spite of all that – most of the 4.4 million people who want a child but have miscarriages every year will, eventually, become pregnant again and will procreate. The plan: to assist those who are suffering to be able to move beyond that state.
Maharaj identified as the key "goal" of the non-dual teacher: to eliminate the excess pain and misery and suffering which persons are trying to endure and be freed from.
Maharaj’s understanding, that “when you desire and fear and identify yourself with your feelings, you create sorrow and bondage” – is a freeing understanding, but the one trapped in sorrow and bondage cannot be freed from sorrow and bondage upon request or demand; instead, in this case, the pain and misery and suffering were all felt right along with the woman. There was no sociopathic, psychopathic comment that “You must love this. I know I do.”
What kind of apparently no-feeling, no-empathy, dissociated, sociopathic person - playing the role of "The Big Name Teacher" - would recommend, “Well, the proper way to handle this is to love your miscarriage.”
By contrast, recall that when Maharaj was asked,
“Do you care at all about the people who come your way?”
his reply, evidencing the way that the understanding of the unicity functions, was:
“More than you will ever know.”
Also, how totally asinine it would have been to tell the woman who had just miscarried, “I just want you to be happy. Come on. Get over it right now. Just be happy.” Maharaj abandoned the use of religion and spirituality and Self-Inquiry to address the problems of humanity after he came to understand that the problems of humanity center in the mind.
Obviously, he certainly must have understood that the processing of happenings which are deemed by the masses to be “unhappy events” or even “traumatic events” require psychological processing in order to be able to recover and move on.
Maharaj: “If you want to be beyond suffering, you must meet it half way.” That means, denial of your suffering will not end it; dissociation from what you are feeling will not end it; nor will putting a spin on your suffering and dismissing it with the delusional claim that “It’s all good!” bring it to an end. Unprocessed trauma remains in every cell of the plant food body unless effectively treated.
There are techniques which the best-trained therapists can used to free that up, but only those best-trained in EMDR will even begin to probe the depths of the psyche and released the vestiges of trauma which remain and which subconsciously control the way persons think and talk and behave.
So, there are generally-speaking three type of “peace-robbers” at play all around the planet:
One, the kind of peace-robber represented by the challenges which the relative existence often tosses one's way: the type discussed above dealing with miscarriages; or the type involving the loss of relations or friends; or the type surrounding murders or wars. It is understandable when one experiencing the kinds of pain and misery and suffering which such events can generate and which the trauma associated which such events linger, yet there are means by which that trauma can be addressed (and that does not always include the non-dual understanding).
Two, there is a peace-robber which involves self-imposed crises among those who habitually forfeit their peace as a result of their tendencies to make mountains out of molehills and then live in the darkness of the valleys generated from their exaggerating, stress-inducing, over-reacting, embellishing, amplifying minds which inflate any irritant by assigning it disaster status.
Their relative existence unfolds as a supposed predicament is soon followed by some sort of imagined emergency which is followed by an event which is only thought to be a catastrophe which is followed by a supposed calamity. And all of those events are viewed without any clear perspective at all because of a mind which is incapable of providing an accurate, objective, balanced perception. Some might conclude that those types are not robbed of their peace as much as they forfeit their peace because of the warped condition of a mind which is warped because of programming, conditioning, etc.
Three, there is the type of peace-robber which is rooted in identifications - either / or mind and personality identification (also a result of programming, conditioning, etc.) which produce particular, specialized, personality-specific kinds of pain or misery and suffering.
Of that common source of pain and misery and suffering, Maharaj explained:
"There is no chaos in the world except the chaos which your mind creates."
"There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance. Restlessness itself is mind."
"Beyond the mind there is no suffering."
"To know that you are a prisoner of your mind - that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation - is the dawn of wisdom."
To be continued.
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