TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. [See the offer following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all seven of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
2. 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.
3. A new video ("Number Ten: Awakening Together Satsang, March 2018") has now been added in the far right column of this page, offering the opportunity to view a recent 2018 satsang session with Floyd being interviewed by Regina and Jacqueline of "The Awakening Together Group."
To review the recently-offered pointers which have led to this series on the Ultimate Sickness which 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 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 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: “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 deemed to be “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 a 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). 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 who 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 in and cook him a meal and serve him.” Such advice 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.
This was asked yesterday: So if the problem centers in the mind, and since a sick mind - obviously - cannot heal a sick mind, then what is the solution, per Maharaj?
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 endue 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 insane ass, playing the role of The Big Name Teacher, would recommend, “Well, the proper way to handle this is to love your miscarriage.” Recall, 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, and he certainly must have understood that psychological processing of happenings that 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. 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.
Again, 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."
[Note: Two eye surgeries are upcoming over the next month, so there will be some occasions when postings are not possible during the healing process, periods of rest, follow-up doctor appointments, etc.]
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]
Here's
the direct link to the VIDEO VERSION
of the "Awakening Together" satsang session with Regina and Jacqueline referenced earlier, 18 MARCH 2018
If preferred, here's
the direct link to the AUDIO VERSION
of that session.
