TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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and
"The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom"
and
"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."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Realization is nothing more than a process which results in a person being freed from believing in all learned ignorance."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Anatomy of Human Memory Storage: The Elemental Brain vs. the Non-Elemental Mind
or
The Natural Brain vs. the Never-Natural Mind
To review: the seat of the Ultimate Sickness is the human mind; thus, it is the human mind which must be the focus of the treatment. If persons' minds are split or torn as a result of being filled with dualistic, separatist beliefs, then the Ultimate Medicine - which is an antidote for that mindset - can address the problem; if minds are sick because of psychological splitting, then a different treatment is called for.
In the book INSTABILITY / INSANITY: What the Advaita Teachings Can (and Cannot) Address the following is shared:
NON-DUALITY AS OPPOSED TO THE DUALITY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SPLITTING (Continued)
Even a partially-versed non-dual seeker could not look at the examples and traits of unstable persons that were provided earlier and fail to see how those beliefs and traits are steeped in duality;
however, such instability might also be rooted in psychological problems that are so serious that Advaita's Ultimate Medicine cannot even begin to address the issues which are driving some persons.
Moreover, instability / insanity is usually multi-dimensional in its causes - rooted in numerous sources - so a holistic method of treatment (rather than any one single approach) is most often indicated.
That inspires this disclaimer: there are some highly arrogant and highly dangerous persons (relatively speaking) who believe that whatever they are attached to can address anything and everything that can arise during the relative existence.
Some will claim that their religion has all the answers; some will claim that their "program" has all the answers; some will claim that their philosophy or ideology has all the answers; some will claim that their spiritual exercises and elevated, superior state of spirituality can provide all the answers;
some will claim that their analyst or psychologist or psychiatrist or doctor or pharmacist / chemist or some other drug dealer has all the answers; however, it is rare that any one single approach can address all of the facets at play when instability / insanity reaches a full-blown stage.
People familiar with the approach here over the years know that persons who write to report that they are contemplating suicide are referred to the emergency room of the nearest hospital and know that it has been pointed out that the three body types all require totally different food plans if - as Maharaj noted - the body is to function optimally, allowing the functioning to happen in an optimal manner as well.
So a variety of sources of instability / insanity will be discussed. Never, though, is the Ultimate Medicine offered when it is clear that far more is required to address certain grave mental and emotional issues and disorders. In some cases, yes, the Ultimate Medicine may go a long way in addressing the problem. In some cases, professional treatment by psychologists or psychiatrists will be indicated.
In some other cases, physical and dietary needs should be addressed (which is what all the talk of "the three gunas" is actually about: the way that what persons eat affects and controls their moods.)
[Of course the fanatical and addictive types can never get enough, so some of those types over the years have expanded the list of gunas to 20. Whatever.]
In still
other cases, major personality disorders are driving the instability. Some
cases are rooted in the perversities of acculturation and domestication which are
especially typical in some specific societies and countries and in the cases of those included in the subsets mentioned above: those who are fanatical and those who are trapped in the Addictive Personality Disorder (who are often one in the same).
And as mentioned earlier, many cases nowadays are rooted in "psychological splitting." If instability and insanity are rooted in duality-based splitting, then these teachings can assist in addressing the issues; if actual psychological splitting is the cause of such instability, then the teachings will have little chance of treating that mental and emotional sickness.
Psychological splitting occurs especially among those persons referenced earlier who - for a variety of reasons - have no ability to process and integrate whatever they are feeling. They can emote on occasion, but they seldom feel. Eventually, they can dissociate and will feel nothing and will care nothing about the way their words and actions affect the feelings of others.
Because of childhood experiences in their cold and uncaring families and cultures where such displays of affection as hugging and saying "I love you" are taboo (as was the case with the German family I once married into) the children who are raised by adults who are rigid and distant and excessively formal and remote and detached and aloof become adults who are cold and uncaring and rigid and distant and excessively formal and remote and detached and aloof.
When they encounter someone who grew up in a family or culture that was just the opposite, such cold and detached adults will erect barriers, feeling threatened by those who come too close. A friend in Amsterdam who was known worldwide as one of the most giving and caring and loving people stiffened and balked on one occasion when I put an arm around her shoulder, and that was after years of being "friends."
For her, loving and caring could be handled at a distance, but never up close, and she eventually explained that "people in our culture do not hug like that. We all keep our distance. We are more formal than people in your country."
Persons from one culture to the next have about them "spheres" (or mental walls or "dividers" and assumed-to-be "protectors") that are of varying radiuses, and to move inside one's sphere is unacceptable among those raised in such cold and often "northern" cultures such as in the U.S. or Western Europe or many Eastern European countries.
In addition to childhood experiences, certain traumatic events
throughout one's adult years can inspire the wearing of "a psychological shield" by those who
may have once had an ability to integrate difficult feelings but who later
mobilized certain defenses to avoid what those individuals now perceive as
intolerable or unbearable situations.
[How could dualistic beliefs not dominate the people of the planet when so many are driven by their minds to prefer detachment and disconnection and division and separation and distancing and are programmed to fear and / or hate "the other"?]
The dualistic instability / insanity is that they long for closeness while hating closeness. How could such types not be unstable? How could such types not be frustrated and confused? How could such types not sink into the deepest levels of the Borderline Personality Disorder?
They are
doomed to misery, trapped as they are in their insane, dualistic belief systems with the conflicting motives which are stored in their minds?
Consider the
level of insanity when one has been robbed of those things which mark the
nisarga (natural) mode of functioning that animals display when in their
natural habitat. The deer here touch, nestle against each other, display
affection and closeness, and yes, even "care."
Among persons who are trapped in psychological splitting, hugging becomes anathema; saying "I love you" is never even considered; an inability to trust on even the slightest level is absent; and paranoia sets in when persons feel sure that everyone wants only to use or abuse them.
If persons suffer from what is called here a "broken picker" (thus having a tendency to be attracted to one user or abuser after another) or from a sense of entitlement or from a desire to use others, then they will attract - time and time again - the types who do want to use them and / or abuse them; in their backwards world of splitting, they are often attracted to abusive, possessive, jealous, controlling (a.k.a., "strong" and "protective") types;
thus, after they have been driven blindly to enter into one such senseless entanglement after another, the conclusion that they must keep their distance and must wear armor to protect themselves can become entrenched.
I have spoken with hundreds over the years who really "only married one spouse" though records in courthouse show that they entered into multiple marriages to "the same person" but who had many different names.
Therefore, someone might have told me that she married Tom and John and Jim and Mark, but Tom and John and Jim and Mark were so exactly alike that one with any wisdom and ability to see clearly would not be able to tell them apart; or someone might have told me that he married Olivia and Mary and Emma and Linda but Olivia and Mary and Emma and Linda were so exactly alike that one with any wisdom and ability to see clearly would not be able to tell them apart.
INSTABILITY / INSANITY INDUCED BY DUALITY-DRIVEN SPLITTING
As another defense, persons suffering from this disorder initially view all people as being either totally good or totally bad. Persons suffering from splitting, when in the mode of seeing only "the good," use the ego-defense mechanism called "idealization."
[See the pointer offered earlier regarding those who idealize another and, egotistically, idealize self: such persons will "look at a potential partner and write a 'pro / con' list of that potential partner's traits but will have no "con's" on the list." Those same types are likely to idealize themselves and arrogantly "do the same with their own 'pro / con' list of traits": all "pro's" . . . no "con's," which is a complete impossibility when dealing with persons in relationships which are always relative and are thus changing and unstable.]
Why do the majority of marriages and relationships and love affairs end in disaster? Is it because, as some say, that "love is blind?" No. It is because love, when viewed through the lenses of idealizing and romanticizing, is color blind: none of the red flags being waved can be seen.
The ego-defense mechanism of idealization is triggered when one desires to accumulate a new set of ego-states: lover, companion, spouse, the homeowner to be, the one being cared for financially, ad infinitum.
At that point, one will
assign exceedingly positive qualities to self and to another. But since all of
that is dualistic and thus relative, that "positive" view will not last.
Eventually, the use of idealization will be replaced with the use of
"devaluation"; then, the earlier romanticizer / idealizer will eventually assign
exceedingly "negative" qualities to the partner who was perceived to be "ideal."
Here, the terms used in non-dual pointers are "upgrading" and "downgrading": "The Spouse" soon becomes "The Super Spouse," and where originally only "The Husband" was required to satisfy the role of "The Wife," once her self-upgrading takes place, then "The Super Wife" must have "A Super Husband" to "survive" in her mind. The same is true for the one assuming the role of "The Husband" who then later egotistically upgrades that false self to the status of "The Super Husband."
Early on, idealization will play along with those super labels, but soon, "devaluation" will always manifest as long as persons are being tossed about in the storms of relativity; then, broken relationships or breakups or divorces will follow, along with chaos (and often along with even more instability and insanity).
Of the two types of splitting discussed earlier, the more complicated is the deep-seated, psychological version. Narcissism and arrogance were mentioned in connection with the mental illness of splitting and the use of "idealization." It was Sigmund Freud who first mentioned "idealization" when discussing narcissism.
[Consider: How narcissistic is it to judge others - often in an instant - and conclude that they are all good or all bad?]
He taught that narcissism first manifests in infants who come to believe that they are the be-all and end-all, often as a result of over-indulgent parents who egotistically see the perfect child as being an extension - and even literal manifestation - of their own perfection. Yet the child still wants the parents' love, so children internalize the traits and values modeled by the parents.
I have dealt with thousands during the last 30+ years who - when honest - answered my questions about their early life with their parents and their comments reveal that the parents were insane and had no child-rearing skills at all; yet they hasten to point out that their parents "did the best they could" or "really, they did a great job."
["Eeeeeeeek! Uh . . . okaaay." Proud product of those supposedly fabulous loins, are you?]
That really is coded mind-talk rooted in egotism, suggesting, "They must have done a damn good job. Look at me." [For more on that insane view, see "Stockholm Syndrome."]
To be continued.
Please enter 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."
