TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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To review the key pointers being discussed at this point:
The most influential obstacles of all to realizing and being free have come via dreamed up myths and superstitions and via "religious" and / or "spiritual" sources, including religious and / or spiritual thoughts, ideas, concepts, notions, views, theories, inklings, perceptions, a.k.a., "beliefs."
A man who was abused as a child by a priest. man approached and asked for a way "to be guided to a state of realization and freedom without their having to buy into dogma."
The popular venues where seekers seek (or don't) have a 5000+-year history of failing to set persons free of their distorted and delusional and freedom-blocking and independence-blocking belief systems. venues.
Thus it should be clear why Maharaj eventually advised seekers to avoid those, leading to this totally different option:
REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”
These points were shared yesterday:
The “ignorance and stupidity and insanity” which Maharaj associated with the Ultimate Sickness - and the prevalence of assholism which is now an additional global complication generated by the Sickness – all develop after persons are exposed for generations to ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing.
I had talked to a man who had traumatized his young daughters in a way that will affect them for their entire existence by murdering his estranged wife in front of them. Talk about self-absorption. Talk about concerned only with self. Then I saw how that is magnified thousands of times a day all over the globe, to lesser or greater degrees.
I flashed back to how many of the five thousand teens I had worked with over the years were kind and how many were mean and how many had been traumatized by parents who were self-absorbed, negligent, narcissistic, unavailable, and who have passed along their own attachment disorders to another generation.
I saw how many parents were passing on a sense of inferiority to some of their children and how many were passing down a sense of superiority to their children.
I saw cases where parental domestication methods might not have included the overt teaching of hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality to their children but who were certainly involved in an act of omission by not un-teaching hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality after their children are routinely taught such concepts via acculturation. And I saw the effects of what is passed down by witnessing those who had been bullied at home and then came to school and bullied.
Most do not understand “empathy” because it is being wiped out on a global basis, another of the consequences of the Ultimate Sickness.
I saw the effects of generations of ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing which always lead to “ignorant and stupid and insane” actions.
Maharaj said that “the cause of all is all.” Agreed. Yet it seems clear that Maharaj would have also agreed that – among the many links in a long chain of causes which led to the recently-discussed action involving a man who murdered his wife in the presence of their two daughters – the “ignorance and stupidity and insanity” which always result from ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing could be included among the causal factors.
Continuing with the tradition here of offering concrete, contemporary examples of the results of the Ultimate Sickness to illustrate the truthfulness of non-dual pointers, consider the actions of another man who was also driven at least partly by conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing to commit murder:
On the evening of June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, a white 21-year-old male named Dylann Roof entered a church with a mostly black congregation and sat with some members for about an hour during a bible study session. Afterwards, Roof drew a gun and stated that he was going to shot everyone there.
Twenty-six-year-old Tywanza Sanders asked Roof why he was attacking churchgoers and he responded, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." When Roof aimed to shoot Sanders’ aunt, he dove in front of her and became the first to be shot. Roof shouted racial epithets as he shot the others.
One image from Roof's Facebook page shows him wearing a jacket decorated with two emblems that are popular among American white supremacists: the flags of the former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe now) and apartheid-era South Africa (which was being run by a white separatist minority government which was supported by U.S. President Ronald Reagan who fought all efforts by Nelson Mandela and others to establish a democracy).
Roof’s website includes a “manifesto” which includes a racist diatribe about "Blacks," "Jews," "Hispanics" and "East Asians” as well as photos showing an image of Roof posing with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag first used 150 years ago by a confederacy of Southern states who were trying to overthrown the U.S. Government in order to preserve the institution of slavery.
(These are the same Southerners - playing the role of "The Greatest Patriots in the U.S." - who would go to war immediately with anyone displaying an ISIS flag which is flown by another confederacy that also wants to overthrown the U.S. Government).
The website of the Council of Conservative Citizens was cited by Roof as a source for his radicalization. The group's president, Earl Holt III, stated that the group's website "accurately and honestly report[s] black-on-white violent crime.”
The Council of Conservative Citizens, founded in 1988 in Atlanta, Georgia and then relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, is an American political organization which supports a variety of conservative causes as well as white nationalism and white separation and the concept of white supremacy. Its "Statement of Principles" says that they "oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind."
Several members of the Board of Directors are former leaders of the segregationist Citizens' Councils of America which was commonly referred to as the White Citizens’ Council which was a network of white supremacist organizations first formed in 1954 in the United States and concentrated in the South. Their aim was to stop the implementation of a Supreme Court ruling authorizing school desegregation and to fight all efforts at integration and to halt the civil rights movement completely.
They have long been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but that has not stopped many right-wing, mostly Republican politicians on the national and state and local levels from aligning with them and taking contributions from the group from 1988 and right up to the present. Their supporters in the U.S. Government even worked to attain tax-exempt status for them, so the group has never had to pay the federal taxes which are due from any partisan group.
The group is still actively supporting "social conservative candidates," giving political donations to many of the 2016 Republican candidates for the office of President of the United States including, among others, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum (who has received financial support from the group for many years).
Contrary to the evidence provided by Roof’s oral and written statements regarding his racial motives for the killings, most in the right-wing media and most Republican candidates refused to recognize any racial element to the murders; many set forth the theory that the murders in a church were “just another instance of Christians being attacked by liberals and progressives in their on-going war against religion.”
So were Roof’s actions merely about “good vs. evil” (see the free eBook above under “Freebies” if interested in the discussion of that topic) or was it about conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing and about learned “ignorance and stupidity and insanity”? As far as the “good vs. evil” argument goes, consider the take from these two that shared many understandings in common:
Maharaj:
“Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."
Albert Einstein:
“I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”
Also relevant would be these two similar pointers they offered:
Maharaj:
"The problem with humanity is 'ignorance and stupidity and insanity'.”
Albert Einstein:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
In his "manifesto," Roof wrote: “I was not raised in a racist home or environment.” Those who played the parent role in his life said that he was not raised to be a racist though he was indulged and “spoiled.”
Recall: I saw cases where parental domestication methods might not have included the overt teaching of hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality to their children but who were certainly involved in an act of omission by not un-teaching hatred and racism and separation and judgmentalism and duality after their children are routinely taught such concepts via acculturation.
Having been raised in the Deep South in another hotbed of racism and ignorance called “Louisiana” during the late 40’s and the 50’s and 60’s, there was a first-hand experience here with the way that racism becomes an intrinsic part of one’s mindset as a result of conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing even as overtly programming children to be racist might not be as obvious a factor as the other five contributors.
[How did I escape buying into the duality and hatred and ubiquitous messages about white supremacy which were taught to most by that culture? I had a father who was exposed early on by his Cherokee mother to her sense of the unicity; therefore, I had a father who had no sense of different-from-ment or better-than-ment and who was thereby rendered incapable of having any sense of racism. What the culture taught me, he un-taught me by both word and deed.]
While many of the “founders” who wrote the U.S. Constitution included in that document their lip service to “equality for all in the U.S.,” many of those founders owned slave and had no notion at all that slavery should be brought to an end; they included passages which said that a slave would count as 3/5's of a person; they wrote into law that woman could not vote; and they set up a government which mirrored the British system of government with a royalty, a house of commons, and a house of lords (or here, a president, a house of representatives, and a senate).
Understand that both then and now, they all had a reputation for being virtuous; then, recall how Maharaj noted that neither virtue nor hypocrisy ever manifests without the other also being present.
Next, consider the effects of Roof's acculturation:
It was in this U.S. culture that a highly-popular President Reagan fought to block sanctions against South Africa’s violent, white separatist government.
It is in this U.S. culture where the confederate battle flag - which was used by those who tried to overthrown the U.S. government in order to preserve the institution of slavery - is still being flown by state governments, 150 years after that civil war ended.
It is in this U.S. culture where the confederate battle flag is being displayed by many state governments on their state-issued licenses plates and is being flown by individuals on their homes, on their cars, on their clothes, on their belts and boots and is being displayed on the walls inside their homes and in their college dorm rooms.
It is in this U.S. culture where the high school I attended displayed that flag at football pep rallies, all of which ended with the playing and singing of the song “Dixie” (which had been adopted as the de facto anthem of the states that joined into a confederacy to try to overthrown the U.S. Government during the American Civil War in order to preserve slavery).
It is in this U.S. culture where that flag has been adopted and used since 1865 by the anti-black, anti-government, pro-religion KKK organization as its symbol, so that flag has been used for 150 years as a symbol that is intended to support the intimidation and suppression of blacks and, yes, to support the burning of black churches and the hanging of blacks. (In the U.S., five black churches have burned in the past week alone, and evidence of arson has already been found in several.)
And it was that same flag which once flew over the South Carolina state capitol
and which Roof saw after it was moved to its own flagpole at the entrance to the state capitol where it flies to this day, next to a monument to those who fought for slavery and against the United States.
And as Roof burned the flag of the United States which is the symbol of the same United States which South Carolina and other Southern states tried to overthrow
he posed proudly with (1) the confederacy battle flag which is still being flown by governments and citizens all across the South; and in other parts of the U.S.; and by some Germans who now fly that confederate battle flag as their new symbol of white supremacy and hatred because the Nazi flag has been banned; and he posed proudly with (2) the flags of two white supremacist governments in Africa
Now, while those interested in the non-dual understanding around the globe might possibly care nothing about what has happened in U.S. history, and certainly no “non-dualists” care a whit about one flag or another, the historical context in which Roof was conditioned and domesticated and acculturated and indoctrinated and brainwashed might be relevant to all that would understand the unicity and who would discard all notions about being different from - and therefore better than – those considered to be “others.” So consider these two pointers:
Maharaj:
“When the sense of distinction and separation is absent, you may call it love”
(So what would the wise call it when a sense of distinction and separation are present?)
Albert Einstein:
“A human “experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security.”
And while there might be little interest in “such things relative,” the role of personality assumption might bear witnessing as these two share their take on "things personal":
Maharaj:
“The personality is only an obstacle.”
Albert Einstein:
Humankind might “find in that way peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”
And while those who want to end all discussion about the less obvious elements in a long line of causation which is at least partly rooted in the unconscious and subconscious motives and agendas of assumed and assigned personas, and while those who want to blame such instances as a man killing his wife and a man killing nine people in a Charleston church on “the misuse of free will by those who are evil,” those interested in the non-dual understanding might consider these two pointers:
Maharaj:
“Free will is non-existent. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage.”
Albert Einstein:
“I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer’s words, that ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,” accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper.”
And while those dismissive types who want to blame “evil” as the single cause of such actions as discussed here the last few days while ignoring the role that the mind played in those actions - warped minds which came about as a result of being warped by ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing - some might consider what these two pointers are trying to reveal:
Maharaj:
"Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking."
Albert Einstein:
“Human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free
but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.”
Personality. Learned ignorance. Stupidity. Insanity. Ignorant and stupid and insane programming. Ignorant and stupid and insane conditioning. Ignorant and stupid and insane domestication. Ignorant and stupid and insane acculturation. Ignorant and stupid and insane indoctrination. Ignorant and stupid and insane brainwashing.
All nine of those are links in a long chain of causation. All nine contribute to the masses all around the globe being set up to be driven by their beliefs about different-from-ment and better-than-ment (which, in turn, result in disharmony and chaos and instability manifesting first within and which eventually lead to disharmony and chaos and instability manifesting without).
Consider (a) the link between the personality identifications which Roof had assumed and which had been assigned to him by his culture and (b) his actions. Then consider these two pointers regarding those false personal identifications:
Maharaj:
“The personal comes and goes . . . .”
Albert Einstein:
“I do not believe in immortality of the individual."
Yet how influential those temporary, false identifications can be, so how significant it would be (relatively speaking) if the results of those identifications - and if the results of ignorant and stupid and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing - were understood.
To be continued.
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