Friday, January 10, 2020

CULTURAL OBSTACLES WHICH BLOCK A SCIENCE-BASED AND NON-DUAL-BASED UNDERSTANDING of both REALITY AND reality

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CULTURAL OBSTACLES WHICH BLOCK A SCIENCE-BASED
AND NON-DUAL-BASED UNDERSTANDING
of both
REALITY AND reality

Consider again Maharaj''s final guesstimate that only "1 out of 10,000,000" will ever "get" the non-dual understanding.

While my Cherokee Grandmother provided herb-based naturopathic healing to some who entered her cabin in the piney woods of East Texas, her ability in many cases to provide "body healing" was often overshadowed by the fact that she provided word-based "mental and emotional healing" to even more who came her way.

As a child, I watched as she endorsed Love and peace and unity and non-judgmentalism and as she modeled calmness and quietness and silence and reason. Those were some of the hallmarks of her culture, received and passed down to those in her presence.

Yet that type culture was a rare culture on a planet where most cultures have propagated hatred and fighting and division and judgmentalism and chaos and noise and incessant talking and where a lack of logic prevailed then and prevails now.

Consider the enormity of the obstacles which one who works for 20 or 40 or 80 years with seekers of the non-dual understanding will witness:

Obstacle #10: Cultures

A "culture" is variously defined as:

"The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group."

"The characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time."

"The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization."

"The set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic."

"Acculturation" is variously defined as:

"The cultural modification of an individual, group, or people via their adapting to or borrowing traits."

"The process by which a human being acquires the culture of a particular society, starting from infancy."

"The process of adopting the cultural traits or social patterns of another group."

"The learning of the ideas, values, conventions, social practices, and behaviors which characterize a social group."

Some who move from one culture to the next report significant levels of psychological distress and other mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, which are linked to their problems tied to adaptation and acculturation.

What fewer are in touch with occurs among those who have not moved from one culture to another but who have been raised in one culture since infancy but still have problems linked to acculturation.

Personality Type Fours (such as Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Johnny Depp, Bob Dylan, Vincent Van Gogh, Jim Morrison, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, James Taylor, and J.D. Salinger to name a few) make up only 1/2 of 1% of the planet's population and they often have or had major problems with acculturation.

Type Fours are often the rebels in a culture. Their BS Detectors are armed from early on, so they spot the prevalent nonsense in their cultures and reject it. They are pre-wired to require proof rather than faith, to question authority, and to be less likely to "go along to get along" as so many other types do.

They are often considered to be "too intense" or "too different" or even "contrarians" by the conformists in their cultures and are often not satisfied with being dismissed by others in their culture who say, "That's just the way it is," responding, "Indeed, that is the way it is in this culture, yet it need not be so."

They are often expressive, artistic, authentic, and introspective. If psychically healthy, they will often prefer the solitude; if psychically unhealthy, they tend to isolate.

Being more compassionate than some other types, they are more likely to be sensitive to the feelings of others as well as their own feelings. If realized, they feel but do not emote. They appreciate beauty of all kinds.

Most of all, they do not suffer fools gladly.

As trying as much of that can be, it is no less trying them those who unquestioningly buy into all parts of the acculturation process to which they are exposed and try to conform, impress their fellows, develop the same popular false images of their peers, "go along to get along," become traditionalists, ultra-conservative, anti-progress, and are haters of change and growth; they model others in order to be accepted, will seldom ever seek authenticity, and will prefer form over substance.

They will accept the nonsense in their culture without ever seeing that it is nonsense. If they are raised in a culture where white supremacy and racial and national exceptionalism are believed to be based in fact, they can become supremacists and xenophobes.

One historical example happened in Germany in the 30's and 40's when a man from Austria moved there and began telling those people that they were members of a superior race. He spoke of eugenics, explaining that there was "scientific proof" that their genes were superior to that of the members of darker and non-Christian races. The result of that acculturation: six million Jews were killed in gas chambers and burned in ovens, along with six million others who were murdered because they were homosexual, physically deformed, or mentally disabled.

Or,

those types can be like Dylann Roof (a white supremacist and white nationalist). They might become willing - as he did - to kill blacks simply because their skin is black. Such is the sway of acculturation.

How does acculturation have such a pervasive sway?

Most persons are conformists. Fifty percent of all persons are Type Sixes, the types who believe that authority should never be challenged. Again, only 1/2 of 1% of the people on planet earth are Type Fours who are pre-wired to challenge authority and to question and to reject so much of what cultures hold dear.

Consider: soybeans are of considerable value and trade on the commodities market because of the versatility of their use in making prepared foods. They have this property which accounts for their value: they take on the flavor of whatever they are placed next to:

Want to use them as filler in frankfurters? No problem,. They'll take on the flavor of frankfurters. Want to use them to make breaded foods? No problem. They'll take on the flavor of breading and the foods which they are coating.

The point: Most persons are like soybeans. They take on the flavor of - that is, they assume the ways of - those whom they are around in their culture.

Whereas Type Fours can be fearless, Types Sixes, (again, 50% of the earth's population) are driven by fear and anxiety and are quite willing to let the authorities in their culture do anything they want as long as they can assuage the fears of the masses (fears which those leaders usually stoked in the first place).

Acculturation is one of what is called here, the "Six Scourges of Humankind" (programming, conditioning, domestication, acculturation, brainwashing, and indoctrination).

Those who look at the overall effects of acculturation objectively will understand why it is considered a "scourge."

When postings resume, the discussion of what a few unique cultures have given to some humans as opposed to what the most typical cultures have robbed almost all other humans of. 

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 their god / their 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) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit charge by the Bank); 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.]

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