TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Yesterday: "Religious and "spiritual" organizations and groups and venues have held a monopoly on seeking for over 5000 years, yet they traveling along the "path" they offer never reach the full understanding. They continue to participate in the going and doing and zooming which their organization and group and venue inspire or even require.
While many have an understandable aversion to dealing with the people controlling those organizations and groups and venues (such as the millions physically, emotionally, and / or sexually abused in those venues), few will ever realize that a clear and fact-based perspective has never been - and never will be - found in those emotionally-intoxicating, traditional settings; yet how many of those seeking and seeking and seeking will ever consider that the understanding which they have been missing all along can more likely be found by grasping what can be offered by those in the scientific community rather than by those in a religious or spiritual or other cult-like community.
Thus the discussion "Realizing Without Dogma, Without Continuous Spiritual Practices, and Without a Preoccupation With 'The Nature Of Reality And Things Noumenal'.”
A key point in that regard is this:
(A) Look at all of the life forms on the planet which are abiding naturally; then look at humans who have made a second job out of mere living because they are abiding unnaturally or are going and doing and zooming in an effort to abide supernaturally / religiously / spiritually;
then,
(B) if able to witness purely and clearly and honestly and objectively, it will be seen that every living thing on this planet is living naturally except for humans; that humans are the ones who are not abiding naturally but are trying instead to abide supernaturally / religiously / spiritually; and that it is only those life forms which are abiding naturally which consistently display a sense of peace and contentment.
It is humans, and not any other life form, who are sometimes driven by a lack of peace and contentment to seek out those versed in the science of psychology (though many pet owners nowadays have driven their pets to be as crazy as their owners so a new occupation has emerged called "pet psychologists" who describe themselves as "professionals who work with animals that have any number of behavioral issues").
["Sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Brown, but we've completed our diagnosis and have determined that the root of Fido's problems is . . . you. In fact, he's exactly like you; therefore, we've had to call representatives from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the local police force to remove Fido from your home. He cannot be returned until he has spent three months in the care of a pet psychologist and until you have completed sessions for two years with a psychologist who works with humans.
"You are also scheduled for a home visit by representatives from Child Protective Services to see if the programming and conditioning and domestication etc. to which your children are being exposed is rendering them as insane as it has in the case of your dog."
So much for engaging in the "domestication process." A child once programmed, conditioned, domesticated, etc. on planet earth nowadays will likely need the services of a professional versed in the science of treating the sick mind rather than what is being offered by the typical priest or preacher or pope or rabbi or ayatollah or swami or lama or other type of cult leader.]
So, what are some of the other options which make possible realizing without dogma, without continuous spiritual practices, and without a preoccupation with the nature of reality and things noumenal?
To begin finding the answer, consider what all of the following have in common?
Anti-abortion activists
Far left-wing politicians
Far right-wing politicians
Politicians who claim to “want government to get out of the lives of people” (specifically, out of the lives of their financial contributors) yet who believe at the same time that the government should be able to determine what type sex a person can have in the privacy of one's own bedroom and what type sex one should be outlawed from having in her or his own bedroom and what a woman can and cannot do with her own body
Politicians who believe the government should be able to determine what type people one has sex with, based on race and / or gender for example, as well as what orientation is okay and what orientation is not
People who go to church every day or who go to “confession” every day
People who go to a mosque five times per day
White nationalists
White supremacists
Nazis / Neo-Nazis
Other racists
People who behead those with differing religious beliefs
People who are Christian extremists
People who are Muslim extremists
People who are Jewish extremists
People who are Hindu extremists
People who are Buddhist extremists
People who are Sikh extremists
People who are extremists in any other religion or cult
People who are spiritual extremists
People who go to one or more meetings every day, and intend to do so forever
People who believe that all “bad guys” should be shot
People who believe that all gays should be shot
People who believe that anyone who decides to leave a relationship with them should be shot
People who believe that “others” of a different race or of a particular race should all be shot
People who believe that a woman who commits adultery should be stoned to death
People who believe that anyone drawing a picture of their religious leader should be shot
People who believe that anyone labeled by their leaders as “an enemy” or “a threat” should be shot
People who rigidly adhere to food laws or rules set forth by religions or by spiritual movements
People who seek to accumulate more knowledge than all “others,” spending an entire existence reading and studying and becoming an expert at some religion or spiritual program or philosophy or ideology
People who seek perfection
People who seek a positive public image in order to gain admiration from the masses
People who think that they are holy (and even more holy than “others” and actually very different from “others” and thus better than “others”) and who wear special robes or special clothes and special hats and special hairdos (or no hair) to prove it
People who spend an entire lifetime focusing on their “Self” or their “Special Self” or their “Supreme Self” or the “Self Beyond” or their “Supreme Soul” or their “Supreme Spirit” or “Atman”
While (a) the specific agendas of the persons in the examples above are being determined by their various assumed personalities and roles, which vary considerably; and while (b) their behaviors which are determined by those agendas will vary considerably, what they all have in common without variation will include the following:
the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder
emotional intoxication
fanaticism
an unwillingness to compromise
unbending and strict and severe and stern and even harsh personality styles
monomania, that is, an exaggerated or obsessive preoccupation with one thing and one thing only
rigidity, inflexibility, stiffness (just like soldiers marching or "standing at attention")
being uptight
a fixed sense of rightness
warped thinking, especially of the dualistic (black or white) type
high degrees of being psychologically retentive / anal
high levels of stubbornness
a desire for control and for the power to be able to control (which go hand-in-hand with fear and with arrogance)
a desire to know-it-all and to be seen as one who knows it all
a tendency to be ill-humored and overly-serious
a preference for complication and complexity
ignorance and insanity (often manifesting side-by-side with some degree of intelligence)
a plethora of fallacies in reasoning
unyielding belief systems
self-contradictory thoughts and words and actions
instability
What do those who have been restored to sanity have in common?
Freedom from all of the above.
Next, as for "what to seek" and "how to seek it"?
Consider the irony and contradiction if one believes that selflessness is the key attribute of Paramatman / Paramātmā, where all personality, individuality, and identification supposedly vanishes yet assumes, nevertheless, one sort of Selfness or another as their “ultimate attribute” or identity?
It should be kept simple rather than being made more complicated.
Maharaj noted time and again that “this is all so simple.” It can be if the process if reduced to a few steps or if one need but come to “know who you are not, even if you never come to know ‘Who You Are’.”
As has been pointed out on this site for nearly a decade - and as has been shared orally and in writing since 1989 - there are either seven steps or four steps on the “path” offered here, steps which can guide a seeker to transitioning beyond the various degrees of (assumed) separation from both “reality” and from “Reality.”
And the most detrimental false sense of separation – both relatively speaking and in terms of the non-dual understanding – involves identification. Body identification, mind identification and personality identification are the three types which the sages for ages have cited. Maharaj joined those that went a step further, noting that any and all identifications are to be discarded (including the lofty or special or Supreme identities which many assume after they erroneously think or claim that they have “Realized Fully”).
Was not it admitted that those who come here for retreats are led to understand all seven steps – including the three beyond the Fourth Step where all concepts and ideas and beliefs about identities are purged? Yes, but understand: when that "full understanding" is shared here, it is done with an explanation regarding what Maharaj considered the first leg of the “journey” which he saw as the “coming in” stage;
with an explanation of the second leg of the “journey” which he alluded to with such terms as the “going back” or “reversing to the source” stage; and with an explanation of the third leg of the “journey” where one “comes back in again” but comes back this time without being programmed and conditioned and acculturated and domesticated and indoctrinated and brainwashed. Instead of staying "out there," they are guided to "come back in" and overlay Reality (i.e., sanity as well as clear and accurate seeing and perceiving) on the relative existence.
See the difference in the entire seven-step “journey” which Maharaj taught for a time and the four-step "journey" which he said "would be enough": if all seven steps are completed here, it happens in the same way that a therapist using the EMDR method with a trauma victim guides a client to freedom. First, the therapist "digs down deep" and uncovers suppressed and denied traumatic events from the past, "opens up" the client, “cuts” out all of that darkness, and then "closes the client’s wounds" before the client is allowed to leave the office.
Or it happens in the same way that a heart surgeon works with a patient, opening her or him up, cutting out the parts that need to be removed, and then closing the patient’s wounds before releasing the patient from the hospital.
So, if one is led through all of the steps to a discussion of – and an understanding of - THAT or the Absolute or “things beyond the relative AM-ness," they are not “left out there.” They are led back to the IS-ness and encouraged to abide naturally and to be done with all of the unnatural / supernatural / lofty / spiritual stuff with which they were previously preoccupied.
So two options are available:
(1) find out all that you are not and be done with the seeking at that point; or,
(2) come to understand not only the AM-ness and all that you are not but also the THAT-ness (that is, both the “phenomenal” as well as the so-called “Noumenal”) but do not remain “there” either in Foo Foo Land or “out there,” removed and dissociated from the “realities” of the AM-ness. “Come back” and overlay "Reality" on "reality" and thereafter abide sanely and naturally and spontaneously and wisely.
Either way, understand that, though Maharaj never listed the seven steps in a 1-7 list, he did discuss all seven steps thoroughly over the years. Understand that the first three steps are preparation for discarding all identities and all concepts and beliefs and thereby setting the stage for returning to "the Child No-Knowing State" or “the Child Ignorance Stage,” as some call it.
You are invited to understand also that the aim of any discussion of the last three steps is merely to allow seekers to understand exactly what cycles – and how it cycles – but to then “return” to the AM-ness and abide wisely for the remainder of the manifestation.
Next: an explanation of the three legs of the “journey” will be shared for those that might be interested in the rest of the story or the rest of the “path” that Maharaj discussed during the earlier phases of his teachings.
To be continued.
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