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."
THE SEEDS OF DUALITY WHICH PRODUCE DUALITY'S PROGENY:
Offspring Number Fifteen-
A Duality-Based, Arrogance-Induced Sense of Exceptionality Which Supports Exclusion Rather Than Inclusion and Blocks All Sense of Oneness, and An Understanding of the Unicity
A. Some of you may recall the recounting of a discussion with a man who said something to this effect: "I agree with you in that I don't really believe that ours is the greatest nation on earth but I think our leaders should continue to say that in order to give the population a sense of pride."
B. The irony: That man is not a Christian and will not likely ever want to be a Christian, but his wife had been taught throughout her early years by a fanatical parent that "You must only marry a good Christian man if you want to be happy and if you want your marriage to last." Pride was driving that woman to say things that increased her sense of pride (in being a Christian) and which was encouraging others to exclude him because he was "an other."
C. The additional irony: that fanatical woman had broken up several marriages when she was single and having sexual affairs with married men and also broke up her own marriage and left her daughter's father because "he was a Christian but not actually a good one."
The third irony regarding the man quoted in "A" above is that when he proposed to the woman who is now his wife, she had come to me and told me that he had asked her to marry him and that she felt they really did love each other but that she kept hearing her mother in the background saying, "You must only marry a good Christian man if you want to be happy and if you want your marriage to last."
It took many visits before the insanity of that teaching was finally cracked. In the end, they married and have one of the healthiest marriages I've witnessed in a long time. He's still not a Christian.
I would later ask the man during another visit, "If for the sake of discussion you could only choose one trait among humans which causes more of their problems than any other characteristic, which 'personality liability or defect' might you choose?"
He's an intelligent fellow who sees so many ways that personality contributes to humankind's problems that he could not commit to one, which is a totally valid take on the issue, but he did ask, "What would you say?"
The reply: "Choose the term you like, but the pool of terms to choose from might include 'arrogance,' 'pride,' 'conceit,' 'smugness,' 'self-importance,' or 'a sense of exceptionality and superiority'."
I continued: "You once told me that you don't really believe that ours is the greatest nation on earth but you nevertheless think that our leaders should continue to say that in order to give the population a sense of pride. So I ask you this because you've been a student of history: Has the excess of pride exhibited by the citizenry of the U.S. and by their leaders really proved to be an asset, as you once implied?"
He considered for a few moments and gave a "guilty as charged" smile and said, "I guess not."
He said, "And I guess if my wife had listened to her mother who suggested that I was not good enough to marry her because I was not a Christian, I would not be with the woman I love today and we would not have the family we love."
The reply: "Bingo. Her mother has sat in church nearly every Sunday of her life and has heard 'Pride precedes the fall' and 'Pride goes before destruction' and 'a haughty spirit goes before a fall' an untold number of times but has obviously dismissed that maxim."
I explained: "The dreamed up concept of 'the Devil' evolved from the Hebrew word 'satan' when the religious leaders at the Council of Nicea decided that evil in the world was caused by 'the Devil'; thus, they took the word 'satan' which meant "the adversary" or "the enemy" and which most often came to be used to refer to . . . pride and then took the word 'satan' and personalized it and capitalized it into 'Satan'."
"But the key point is, some of the wisest among the Hebrews understood the significant part played by 'arrogance,' 'pride,' 'conceit,' 'smugness,' 'self-importance,' or 'a sense of exceptionality and superiority' in generating humanity's problems."
A duality-based, arrogance-induced sense of exceptionality which supports exclusion rather than inclusion and which blocks any and all sense of oneness and an understanding of the unicity has led to every case in which a "relationship" was broken and ended because at least one partner felt, arrogantly, that the other partner was "not good enough."
The same has happened in the case of fighting neighbors; in the case of religious factions fighting each other; in the case of political factions fighting each other; in the case of civil war when fighting has occurred among fellow citizens; and in the case of every world war.
In every case when a duality-based, arrogance-induced sense of exceptionality exists and generates a sense of exclusion rather than inclusion and blocks any chance of developing a sense of oneness and an understanding of the unicity, one concept above all manifests:
The sense of "the other."
Edmund Husserl in the late 1800's discussed the terms "the Other" and "the Constitutive Other" in terms of "identifying other human beings according to their differences, especially in terms of differences from the Self."
He spoke of 'The Other" as being a cumulative, constituting factor in the (false) self-image of a person, explaining that "the Other is dissimilar to and the opposite of the Self, of Us, and of the Same."
He explained that . . .
"the Constitutive Other is the relation between the personality and the person (body) of a human being"
and that . . .
"it is the relation of superficial characteristics of personal identity which corresponds to the relationship between opposite but correlative characteristics of the Self, because the difference is inner-difference, within the Self."
He said, "The condition of Otherness is a person's non-conformity to and with the social norms of a society."; therefore, "Otherness leads to the condition of disenfranchisement" (or political or literal exclusion) "effected either by the State or by the social institutions invested with the corresponding socio-political power."
He continued, "The imposition of Otherness alienates the labelled person from the centre of society and places him or her at the margins of society, just for being 'the Other."
He said: "The term 'Othering' describes the reductive action of labeling a person as someone who belongs to a 'subordinate' social category defined as 'the Other.' The practice of 'Othering' is the exclusion of persons who do not fit the norm established by some social group which uses 'Othering' to identify and exclude those 'others' from the social group and to assure that they shall be placed at the margins of society where social norms do not apply."
The Nazis "Othered" six million Jews and six million more with intellectual and / or physical disabilities or with non-hetero sexual preferences; placed them first at the margins of society; then, because social norms did not apply to "those people," placed them in cattle cars and hauled them to camps where they would be placed in gas chambers and where their bodies would be placed in ovens for cremation.
The end of WWII brought what was believed to also be an end to such "Othering," but the practice has continued - often out of the public eye - until now that we have a series of political leaders who have once more affirmed and endorsed and modeled the process publicly. The result: a widespread, public affirmation of "Othering" along with a public manifestation of hatred and beatings and killings, all justified in the minds of the "Otherers" who see their victims as being at the margins of society where social norms (such as "You shall not kill") do not apply.
See, some say that opposites attract. That is not the case nowadays. "Sameness" is now the only thing which millions if not billions around the globe are attracted to.
When that is the case, (to use some of Maharaj's words) those driven by ignorance are attracted to those driven by ignorance; those driven by stupidity are attracted to those driven by stupidity; those driven by insanity are attracted to those driven by insanity; those driven by a duality-based, arrogance-induced sense of exceptionality which supports exclusion rather than inclusion attracts those also driven by a duality-based, arrogance-induced sense of exceptionality which supports exclusion;
and, maybe most significantly,
narcissists attract narcissists;
sociopaths attract sociopaths;
and
psychopaths attract psychopaths.
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"
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
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 become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.
And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?
Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?
The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)
With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.
The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.]
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.
