TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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THE EVOLUTION OF MAHARAJ’S MESSAGE:
From dogma to spirituality to psychology
"Science will someday advance to the point that it will confirm the validity of the non-dual teachings."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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, domesticated, indoctrinated, and brainwashed to believe so that you can be free, period.
--Floyd Henderson
(The Problem, The Invitation To Seekers, And "The Opportunity" For Readers And Seekers)
[Again, from earlier]:
The "mind" has been filled with fiction; with beliefs that are based not at all in fact; with beliefs that have never been questioned; and with beliefs that have been accepted with no evidence at all but have been accepted on "blind faith" alone; thus, they are all lies.
Lies, in turn, are all based in concepts, ideas, notions, perceptions / misperceptions, thoughts, designs, impressions, images, opinions, views, theories, and supposed knowledge (a.k.a., "learned ignorance"), all of which can be summarized as "beliefs."
Now, excerpts from the book entitled FREEDOM from BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and "No-Belief-ers") will continue:
So humans are programmed, conditioned, etc. from early on to believe "I am _____ (whatever)."
But they are also programmed, conditioned, etc. from early on and throughout the entire relative existence to believe this:
"Not only am I _____ (whatever) but I am also this and this and that and also I can be anything I want to be as well."
Some of you might remember a fellow who came here for a retreat. A key hangup with him was giving up all of the false identities which he had used to define "himself." At the end of one day, the assignment offered to him was to make a list of all of the ego-states / roles / personas he had been assigned or had adopted during his lifetime.
He called hours later and was really excited at what the exercise revealed: he presently had a dozen roles he was playing and also saw a few he had played in the past. When he shared those low numbers, I suggested that he had not even scratched the surface and that he needed to sit in the quiet and find what he had left off the list.
I also told him not to call again and that we'd discuss the revised list during his next visit. When he returned, he was not as excited, having found that in his 30 years he had actually believed that some 80-90 roles and personifications and characters which he had played on the stage of the Theater of the Lie had really helped "identify him."
He also saw that his "life definitions" had always been "a work in progress" and that "what he was" changed fairly regularly as he cast off some roles or had some roles taken from him and as he regularly added some new ones as well.
He was constantly "becoming this" but "no longer being that." Too, he saw that - as he was frequently being redefined - his identity was at the mercy of others who were giving him a defined roles sometimes and at other times were stripping him of certain roles, such as . . .
(1) when more than one employer sent him packing, letting him know he was no longer "The Employee," (much less "The Super Employee" which his ego-defense mechanisms had assured him that he was; and such as . . .
(2) when his wife left and let him know he was no longer "The Husband," (much less "The Super Husband" which his ego-defense mechanisms had assured him that he was).
And such "roles coming" and "roles going" had formed a life-long pattern.
So it is with 99.9% of all humans who follow the words "I am" with anything, thus telling a major lie to themselves and to others.
By contrast, a duck cannot at some point stop being a duck and become a squirrel instead; a deer cannot become a bear; and a bird cannot become a fish; moreover, no duck has ever mistaken itself for a squirrel; no deer has ever mistaken itself for a bear; and no bird has ever mistaken itself for a fish.
Oh that humans had such capability for clarity and accuracy.
More significantly, a duck does not think it is a duck; a squirrel has no belief that it is a squirrel; a deer does not believe that it is a deer; a bear does not believe that it is a bear; a bird does not think it is a bird; and a fish does not think it is a fish.
No duck has ever told another duck, "You are a duck," much less "You are a squirrel." Even if that could happen, it would be insane, yes? But consider what belief-driven persons do every day that is just that insane.
Even more to the point, a duck is not really a duck; a squirrel is not actually a squirrel; a deer is not really a deer; a bear is not truly a bear; a bird is not a bird at all; and a fish is not actually a fish.
In each of those cases, each only "knows" (i.e., "is conscious of the fact that") IT IS, period, but in none of those cases do any believe that they are what anyone has ever said they are. And that fact is a fact in every case on the planet, except with persons.
Persons can truly believe that they are what they are not, and they do; persons do not stop with the "I AM" and the "I AM" only; few persons stop with simply knowing THEY ARE, period . . . end of story;
to the contrary, persons do believe that they can be something (in fact, many things) which they are not, and they do believe that they can become something which they are not.
And that is the case with almost all persons on the planet, so few in number are the occurrences of full realization (which, per Maharaj, is merely "the condition of being free of all belief in all learned ignorance").
Instead, most throughout the course of the relative existence will assume hundreds of personas as actual identities, and each persona that is assumed brings with it its own basic fear and its own basic desire, along with a plethora of other accompanying fears and desires.
One
suggestion is that each persona can be driven by at least seven fears and / or
desires, so accept as actual identities twenty personas assigned by your family
and friends and culture, and assume another twenty that you adopt on your own,
and those forty persons (x 7) will have 280 "voices" which are forever
talking (like the chatter of a thousand monkeys but inside one's head) in order to . . .
(a) defend themselves against perceived fears and / or in order to
(b) try to manipulate "others" or to negotiate with "others" in order to
(c) have their desires met and their fears alleviated.
Is it any wonder, then, that persons soon feel as if they are being pulled in a hundred (or two-hundred, or two-hundred-and-eighty) different directions at once?
Is it any wonder that persons do not feel "at one with self" or anything else? Is it any wonder that persons feel torn? Is it any wonder that persons are fractious and cannot focus? Is it any wonder that human psyches are shattered and scattered and disintegrated?
Is it any wonder that persons can reach a point where they feel as if they have become a fragile pane of glass and that if anyone puts any more pressure on them at all, they will shatter into a million (or at least 280) pieces?
Next, is it not truly strange that persons believe in the "not-self" (and in all of the false selves which are assigned or adopted) but have no clue at all about what they really are (which only science can identify accurately)?
After having adopted so many ego-states as identities - and after egotism manifests time and again as an ego-defense mechanism which is there to "protect and defend" each of the false egos or ego-states - is it any wonder that the wisdom shared by sages has long pointed to pride and arrogance and ego and egotism and narcissism as the bane of humanity?
Is it possible to see why Maharaj targeted the assignment or assumption of religious and spiritual roles - and targeted religious and spiritual arrogance - right alongside any and all other personas which are adopted by those among the non-realized masses?
Is it any wonder that personality-assumption / persona-adoption has long been the target of pointers which invite persons to stop believing that they are what they are not and to stop believing that they can become something that they cannot become?
In
fact, believing that one is what one is not, and believing that one can be or
become something that one is not, is all part of the "Dream / Nightmare of
the Planet." That is why Maharaj would eventually advise seekers to give up the search for some nebulous and noumenal and other-worldly "WHO" they think they might be and to focus instead on searching for and finding all that they are not.
Consider:
A man can be lying on his back in bed in the middle of the night but dreaming that he is upright and running because he is being chased by another man with a knife who is hell-bent on stabbing him. The man who is dreaming will be certain that every part of his dream is real.
In fact, he can be so convinced that what he is dreaming is real that he can start making throaty sounds that develop into louder moanings and can eventually end up screaming at the top of his voice.
When does peace come to humans, if it ever does (which is a rare occurrence)? It can come - as is the case with any dreamer - when someone who was also asleep next to him awakens and then begins to try to also awaken the one in the dream / nightmare state. In such cases, when does peace come to the dreamer? Only when she / he awakens.
The task of the non-duality teacher, who was also asleep for a time, is to try to awaken the one in the dream / nightmare and to allow the earnest seeker to see that what has been disturbing him or her is all just a dream, or nightmare, and nothing more.
The nightmare for some is "I am bad . . . really evil . . . truly worthless . . . so very rotten to the core that I should die." The nightmare for others is, "I am so different and such an outcast, and I am so hopelessly miserable and without any prospects for happiness, that I might as will kill myself."
The nightmare for others is "I am being bullied because I cannot fit in. I might as well hang myself" or "I am being bullied, so I might as well kill those people who are harassing me and then maybe even kill myself."
Conversely, the dream for some is "I am now so righteous, so religious or spiritual, so wonderful, so much better than I was, and so much better than most others that everyone should be like me. I am now able to rescue or save them or - if they refuse what I offer - able to judge and condemn them."
The invitation of the truly realized sage? Harken. Awake. Stop believing in the dream. Stop living the nightmare that you are experiencing because you are asleep. Stop believing that you are something that you are not. Stop believing that you can become something other than the temporarily-manifested composite unity which "you" temporarily are. Stop following "I am" with any word at all.
Recall that Maharaj said, “You are not in the world. The world is in you.” Meaning?
Meaning that the world is imagined by you so it is “in you” . . . that is, "in your mind"; therefore, any misery or suffering being experienced in what is taken to be “this world” is a mental (belief) construct to one degree or another.
How accurate can one's view or perspective of "the world" be? Not accurate at all. Why? Well, because there are some 7.7 billion different views or perspectives of "the world" and what it is and what it's like.
If 7.7 billion persons look at something and see and perceive something totally different from what the other 7.7 billion persons claim to see and perceive, then none of the 7.7 billion views or perspectives can be accurate.
Their views or perspectives are all in their mind, and all that is in the mind is complete fiction . . . is nothing more than a collection of distortions, delusions, confusions, errors, false impressions, misjudgments, mix-ups, misunderstandings, perversions, falsifications, misinterpretations, misconceptions, ad infinitum.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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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."
