TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns. See the end of the post for the full meaning and implications of that.
REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL":
The bondage of world concern, self-concern, material concern, religious concerns, and spiritual concerns
[From yesterday]
Pretty much working or being on duty 24 / 7 at the high school and at the drilling site left me exhausted. I considered quitting the teaching job, but it was the only job I had ever wanted to do, so I worked a second job - as so many teacher did and do - in order to be able to afford to do what amounted to the charity work performed by most public school teachers.
Yet that was nothing compared to the exhaustion which would come once I became influenced to assume the role of "The Spiritual Giant." The only thing more exhausting than that came when several ego-defense mechanisms triggered and ego-state of "The Spiritual Giant" role was self-upgraded to the super-ego-state of "The Super Spiritual Giant."
In the part fictional / autobiographical non-duality-based novel mentioned yesterday and entitled THE TWICE-STOLEN NECKLACE MURDERS, the laborious and grueling “journey” of the lead character Kirk / “floyd” was described this way:
“In his energy-consuming search for salvation, he’d been dipped, dunked, sprayed, spayed, sprinkled, and neutered; in the quest for truth, he’d been blessed, cursed, cussed, lectured, scolded, and praised; in his pursuit of Life’s Meaning, he’d been communion’d, Om’d, grape-juiced, wined, ahsram’d, accepted, rejected, Mu’d, and yoga’d; in his chase for service-work-opportunities, he’d been pulverized, martinized, and frappéd; and in the endeavor to attain Life Eternal, he’d been baptized, Buddha’d, New Aged, powwow’d, Far Eastern Indianized, incense’d, sage’d, Tao’d, Peru’d, Tibet’d, washed in the blood, dunked in the waters, and purportedly purified. Then in the end, each of the religious or spiritual leaders had always charged him 10% of his total income for the whole sorry treatment, plus a building-fund-tax and a foreign-missions-surcharge to boot—all in spite of the complete ineffectiveness of their claims to ‘redeem and save’.”
See? Exhausting.
During the long and winding and arduous “path” that was followed prior to coming across the non-dual teachings, there had been exposure to preachers; Sunday school teachers; public school teachers; college professors; priests; a Sikh; a Buddhist; a New Age guru; a Taoist; sponsors; a life coach; a Cherokee teacher, etc.
That near-endless compilation of persons who were met along the way all had several traits in common:
(1) they all had many beliefs;
(2) they all had assumed false identities that were associated with one religion or another; one spiritual movement or another; one philosophical movement or another; one ideology or another; one "program" or another, etc;
(3) their beliefs were all rooted in a “Reality and reality” perspective, meaning that they dualistically believed not only in “this world” (their “reality,” which they viewed as a temporary existence for each person) but also in “another world” (their “Reality,” the other world or worlds which they thought would be “eternal” for every person, one "world" being a "world of rewards," the other being a "world of punishment");
(4) so they all believed in “this world” and then additionally other worlds that were either an upgraded version of "this world" (“heaven with pearly gates and streets of gold,” “Nirvana,” “the Pure Land,” “heaven with seventy-two virgins and a host of whores and wives as well,” etc.) or a downgraded version of "this world" (“Hell,” “Hades,” “another life on this planet but as a lower species,” an “underworld,” etc.); and the other trait they all had in common was this:
(5) they all wanted me to believe exactly what they believed.
Here, to the contrary, this has been posted on occasion on this site:
"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, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period."
This has also been shared:
"There is no one here who wants you to learn more. What is offered here is an invitation to un-learn all. There is no one here who would teach you anything. What is offered here is an invitation to be un-taught."
And that is a stance which
(A) was never heard before coming across the non-duality teachings - at least as presented by some non-dual teachers who are not among the Big Name Teachers - and which
(B) has never been heard since in any other "venue."
But above all else, after having met with and worked with thousands of seekers, thousands of religious persons, thousands of spiritual persons, and thousands of persons with the Addictive Personality Disorder, it became obvious that another primary trait which they all shared in common with each other is the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCD).
First, addiction. Every person on the planet is addicted to something. The most prevalent, primary addiction is an addiction to control, and the most prevalent, secondary addiction is to power (or a Power or multiple Powers) in order to be able to control.
Next to the Addictive Personality Disorder, it may well be that the second most prevalent personality disorder around the globe nowadays is OCD.
People are fanatical and obsessive and compulsive about their belief systems, about their seeking, about their religion, about developing and maintaining the image of being a spiritual giant, about their politics, about their nation, about their favorite sports teams,
about their sense of white racial superiority, about who is having sex with whom, about who is wanting to marry whom, about what people choose to do with their own bodies, about their guns, about their children, about their accumulations and money and material possessions, about their jobs and the workaholism driving them,
about their preferred food plans, about dieting, about their relationships and about "love," about germs and / or extreme cleanliness, about adrenaline-stimulating activities, about sex, about knowledge, about judging and gossiping, about escaping and avoiding and evading, about finding someone who is willing to pay their bills, about bullying others, about weight and body type, about their ancestry, about fame, about success, about achievement, about purpose, etc., ad infinitum.
Yet little generates more fanaticism and spending and going and doing and zooming than religion or, especially, spirituality.
I've observed persons who have compiled a "holy / spiritual bucket list" of things they want to do and places they want to go - all around the globe - in order to become super holy and super spiritual.
They believe that their religious and spiritual workaholism are believed to be inspired by their excessive levels of decency and kindness and goodness and integrity and righteousness when, in fact, they are inspired by excessive levels of fanaticism and by the content of their minds which are driven by excessive levels of obsession.
Today, Yeshu'a (Jesus) supposedly has an audience of 2.2 billion religious persons who claim to be "his followers." There are millions more who claim to be spiritual and who heed the non-dual pointers he shared after he abandoned organized religion.
While many of them criticize Jews for being fanatical zealots and many more criticize Muslims for being fanatical zealots, they fail to see that they are practicing psychological projection and finding in others the very traits of fanaticism and obsessiveness and compulsiveness which are at the core of their own psyche.
So many who report that the goal of their religious or spiritual quest is to find peace and an ability to relax, yet it is their very quest which is robbing them of peace and an ability to relax. (Others have forfeited that goal and have decided that they will suffer now in order to attain the reward of eternal peace later on.)
It's as if someone wants to join two boards together, drives a nail through one board and into the other in order to accomplish that, and then spends the next fifty years pounding on that one nail over and over again.
A wise person could tell the one engaging in such ceaseless hammering and work, "Uhhhh, what you want is already here right now. It is already done. All you need to do now is stop all that damn pounding and sit back and relax."
Ha. Fat chance. Fanatics do not really want to stop with their ceaseless work and ceaseless exercises and ceaseless going and doing and zooming. The last thing a seeker really wants is to stop seeking for the seeking defines "who he / she is," namely, a "Super Seeker."
"To find" would to put an end to that seeker identity. That's the "Catch-22," the trap which ensnares persons in a recurring cycle of endless seeking while avoiding (1) finding and then (2) being done with seeking once and for all. And - as always - that entrapment involves false personality identification and the desires and fears which are always generated by false selves, by always-phony ego-states.
Every living thing on the planet abides naturally except for humans. Nothing other than humans have beliefs, and no living things other than humans have the belief that they need to know more and more and more in order to survive.
Moreover, no living thing except humans believe that anything other than survival is important at all. [Maharaj: " Living is life’s only purpose."]
Nothing other than humans seek esteem, purpose, recognition, personal value, personal worth, and an image of being "Super Religious" or "Super Spiritual."
Nothing other than humans would consider abiding supernaturally and unnaturally rather than abiding naturally.
Nothing other than humans holds a job and then makes a second job out of mere living (in a "right" and "good" and even "hallowed" and "sanctified" and "consecrated" and "divine" and "saintly" and "virtuous" way).
Maharaj: "Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end"
and
"There is nothing to seek and find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the ‘I am’. Reality is just behind it."
He clarified the valueless-ness of the work, work, work which seekers and others engage in:
"You want peace, love, happiness, but work hard to create pain, hatred
and war"
and
"You yourself are the tools of your work; you have no other tools. Why don’t you take care of the tools before you think of the work?"
Is that advice easier said than done for those who have been programmed, conditioned, etc.? You bet.
Maharaj: "To work in the world is hard; to refrain from all unnecessary
work is even harder."
His advice to one who thought that persons have the power to change the world for the better and that they should work constantly to do so:
Maharaj: "Put first your own house in order and you will see that your work is done."
To be continued.
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Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns.
THE EXPLANATION
If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.
Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of God in the past was of a weak God, an absentee God, A Santa Claus-type God, a mean, punishing, vindictive God, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring God whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."
The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a God that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").
Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring God,' any supposed God that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'God' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.
"That is, a non-narcissistic god / goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'God' and focus on the 'God as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you."
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men."
--Pope John Paul II
"There is no hell."
--Pope Francis, the current pope
[in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,
a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record
teachings
which are part of the Papal Magisterium]
