TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Evidence of Realization: "Dancing Lightly and Naturally"
Maharaj: “It is the dance of the conscious presence.”
Yesterday, in the discussion about the fact that “Judging Blocks Lightness,” it was shared how fanaticism and judgmentalism and anger and resentment work together hand-in-hand to drive those whose personality disorders have led to psychic disintegration and to mental unhealthiness and to a desire to harm others.
It has been shown that thoughts lead to and determine words and that words lead to and determine actions. Anything that humans do begins with their thoughts, and humans are thinking more now than ever.
Additionally, those thoughts involve fewer subjects but come in higher frequency. Meaning? Meaning that humans nowadays have a tendency to get hung up on one particular thought and then that particular thought churns away inside the mind, over and over and over.
At times the thought is consciously registering; during other times, it is churning away unconsciously or subconsciously, then pops back into the consciousness, and then hides out again in the shadows of consciousness.
Visitors here understand that being fanatical about something begins with a thought (growing out of the compost of earlier programming, conditioning, etc.). Regular visitors also understand that being constantly hung up on a thought about something or someone - a thought which is whipping about inside the mind over and over and over again - involves the obsessive part of The Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.
The results of a study which were released in 2014 revealed this:
“Though the intrusive, unwanted thoughts of the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have to be extremely intense for someone to be diagnosed with OCD, a new study shows that 94% of people experience such symptoms in their daily lives. That is, being somewhat OCD is remarkably common.”
In other words, most humans suffer from an obsessive mind which leads to compulsive actions.
Maharaj noted that “the sense ‘I am’ is always with you.” Then he went on to explain the problem that the sense of AM-ness sets up when persons are programmed and conditioned to “add” all kinds of nonsense to “the conscious presence” . . . to that basic and universal sense of beingness; therefore, he said, the problem is that “you have attached all kinds of things to it - body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions, etc.”
On another occasion, he expanded on that point, saying, “Between the body and the self there lies a cloud of thoughts and feelings which neither serve the body nor the self. These thoughts and feelings are flimsy, transient and meaningless, mere mental dust that blinds and chokes, yet they are there, obscuring and destroying.” Destroying what?
1. Relatively speaking, the chance to enjoy healthy relationships can be destroyed (as happens when there is a constantly-manifesting, egotism-based thought about not being shown all of the love one is due; or about not being shown all of the respect and admiration that one believes he or she is entitled to; or about a partner who obviously does not realize how blessed she or he is to be in the presence of such a "Super Mate" or such a "Super Spouse").
2. The chance to be at peace can be destroyed when certain thoughts are cycling and cycling and cycling through one’s mind, generating something like the chatter of a thousand monkeys between one’s ears, blocking any opportunity to be at peace. Even in the silence, there is no complete silence as a single thought or many thoughts rattle about inside the peace-destroying mind. [Maharaj said, “There is no such thing as peace of mind.” Here, a related pointer is added: “There is only peace if you are out of your mind.”]
3. The chance to be fully awake and aware and conscious is destroyed, and that can bring an early end to the composite unity.
[For years, when living adjacent to a forest, a daily walk through the woods was routine. It was understood that it is crucial that snakes have access to cool retreat sites in hot weather but it was also understood that when temperatures were cooler, snakes could be seen many days lying in the open, in the middle of the trails I walked, enjoying the warmth of the sun. If one is lost in thoughts, obsessing about a slight or an offense from someone, or focused on the pursuit of some religious or spiritual goal, or distracted by an anger-provoking act by a partner or spouse from the night before, then the failure to be fully awake and aware and conscious could prove fatal if one were to step on a copperhead or one of the other venomous reptiles which were often lying on the footpath.]
Maharaj’s advice: “Refuse all thoughts except one: the thought 'I am'. [Later, of course, even that thought will not arise.] The mind will rebel in the beginning, but with patience and perseverance it will yield and keep quiet. Once you are quiet, things will begin to happen spontaneously and quite naturally without any interference on your part.”
Of course we now know that the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder has a chemical component as well as a mental component, so it is not possible in every case for one to simply “refuse all thoughts.” Even after the understanding of the mental part of the problem, the chemical component remains.
What Maharaj came to see was that the mind “obscures and distorts” and that “it exaggerates, it distorts, it overlooks” and that “mind means disturbance” and that “restlessness itself is mind." So first to the mental part: What method is the only method which can allow one to begin to address the mind part and begin to refuse all thoughts?
The same method which is used by some armed forces during war:
if intelligence sources identify where the opponents’ ammunitions are stored, the plan is not to sneak in and try to remove one munition at a time until hundreds of thousands of munitions have been removed. The plan that is used is to bomb the ammo dump with one hung bomb and be rid of the dangerous content of the storehouse, all in one fell swoop.
That is the same approach that must be used with eliminating thoughts. The mind is the storehouse of the dangerous accumulation of contents which generate thoughts which are made up of learned ignorance and which include ideas, concepts, views, perceptions, notions, impressions, theories, and hypotheses, yet all of those can be reduced to one single word: beliefs.
In the book FREEDOM FROM BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and “No-Belief-ers”)
the point is made that “the realized” cannot be said to be “believers” and cannot be said to be “non-believers.” To the contrary, they have no beliefs at all. To have no beliefs is to empty the mind, and to empty the mind is to take a giant leap forward in the effort to “refuse all thoughts.” So that is the first line of attack.
Yet the chemical element remains as well for those suffering from the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Many psychiatrists prescribe synthetic lithium in an effort to try to address that imbalance, but the side effects that drug are often as bad as the effects of having an ever-churning mind;
therefore, some naturopathic doctors and practitioners offer a food supplement which is all-natural and which weeds out the final vestiges, the physical causes, of obsession and fanaticism. Thus a combination approach is usually called for, one which addresses the mental aspect of the O-CD Disorder as well as the chemical aspect.
So it is not just “judging” which can block the light but it is also anything which provides fuel to the mental fires of fanaticism which destroy any chance for peace to manifest. Much fuel comes at the third step of the seven-step "path" when persons erroneously believe that they have reached the end of the “path” by having assumed new and improved (but equally false) identities such as “The Super Religious One,” “The Spiritual Giant,” and / or “The Super Seeker.”
In that regard, this has been offered in the past: “Of course some willingness to seek is required, and the prerequisite for that seeking to happen is admitting that one does not know it all and has not found it all and that something is missing from whatever path is currently being followed. Yet seeking can be as addictive as anything else when it is being motivated by a desire to know it all or to be seen as ‘A True Spiritual Giant’.”
In the book Dancing Lightly, this is offered for consideration:
[ENDLESS] SEEKING PREVENTS LIGHTNESS
Who that has experienced a number of years of existence on this planet has not come to know the loss of lightness as periods of heaviness have descended upon them? Who has not known the duality of shifting between states of happiness and unhappiness? While most never verbalize exactly what they are feeling - many being "down" for so long that down seems "normal" - who has not faced the sense of a heavy weight upon the shoulders . . . on "the mind"? Who has not felt at times the grave or burdensome or tiresome or gloomy or dismal or oppressive or melancholic or depressive darkness that can come to rob humans of any sense of peace and freedom and lightness?
There is a two-fold quest among the masses: one involves the search for eternal continuity; the other involves the search for continuous happiness. The former is an impossibility; the latter is an impossibility. Happiness is like the tides - forever coming and going. The same applies to anything else which is manifested: it's all temporary, all dealing with elements coming together and coming apart.
Seeking is triggered by a sense of need or fear, so the very act of seeking is itself evidence of a sense of lacking, and who with a sense of lacking - with an overwhelming sense of unmet needs and desires and with a crushing sense of deficiency - can be content?
[To detour to the relative for a moment: as a financial consultant, it has been made clear over the last several decades that the sense of financial want is often self-imposed. Time and again it has been seen that the solution to financial needs can often be addressed if financial sanity is restored and if people see that many problems can be solved by spending less rather than by making more or engaging in acts of desperation to attain more.]
If you are feeling robbed of the lightness and are feeling the heaviness referenced above, "the world" is too much with you. Maharaj taught that you are not in the world . . . that the world is in you. That is, what you perceive to be "the world" is in your "mind," so that there are as many perceptions of what the world is like as there are "minds";
furthermore, because persons are constantly "changing their minds" about what they think they need or fear or like or dislike (search for the earlier discussions of "The Goldilocks Syndrome") their states of happiness and unhappiness are also in constant flux. And therein lies the source of heaviness and the peace-stealing sense of discontinuity.
The maxim "the only thing permanent in this world is change" points to the fact that this consciousness - even if unblocked after the removal of the debris of programming, acculturation, conditioning, domestication, brainwashing and indoctrination - will still be ever in motion. The motion-emotion connection has already been made clear, so freedom and then peace can come only if this consciousness and emotional-intoxication and feeling-intoxication are transcended.
Only if abiding as the original nature can any stability ever happen consistently. During a non-duality Skype session, a man admitted that everything in his life that had seemed at a time to be so huge, so overwhelming, and so important could be looked back on from the distance of days past or weeks past or years past and eventually seen to have been so small, so underwhelming, so insignificant.
That is what should happen when things are viewed from the distance. The distance from Your Original Nature to on-going relative events is limitless. View all from there. Viewed from the distance of Your Original Nature, all in the relative existence begins to appear to be so small that, ultimately, it completely disappears. Here, I do not see the things most think they see.
Maharaj: "I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you stick to things and move along with them." Here, I only see what most see when invited into their darkness, when invited to bring the light" and "You just do not look carefully enough. Look well, and see what I see."
Questioner: "What do you see?"
Maharaj: "I see what you too could see, here and now, but for the wrong focus of your attention. You give no attention to your self. Your mind is all with things, people and ideas, never with your self. Bring your self into focus, become aware of your own existence. See how you function, watch the motives and the results of your actions. Study the prison you have built around yourself by inadvertence."
If you are not enjoying the peace which can only come after being set free, then you are in a self-imposed prison. Each bar of that dark prison is an idea or concept or notion (a.k.a., "belief") which has been accepted from your culture, the culture which serves as your guard and would keep you imprisoned forever.
Here, the light is offered so that you can see what your actual prison is, so that you can remove the bars, so you can then walk free, and so that you can then dance lightly.
To be continued.
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THE EXPLANATION
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."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
"There is no hell."
