TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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The Pure, Universal Consciousness,
Pure Awareness,
and a
"Proper Perspective"
“I talk to you from the perspective of the universal consciousness.”
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Yesterday’s post ended with this:
Tomorrow, we’ll consider a couple of current examples of the results of listening to people with a warped perspective when they speak; the results of believing people who have a warped perspective; the results of thereafter having a warped perspective; and the results of being not only driven by ignorance and insanity but also by abiding in a constant state of emotional-intoxication.
To begin:
In some places on the planet, persons are not preoccupied with a need to be heard, with a need to speak, with a need to be loud, or with a need to stand up - loudly - for their right to even be obnoxious.
For example: during years spent in Western Europe, I enjoyed meals in large, crowded Parisian restaurants without hearing a word being said by the people seated at a table only a few feet away. The same happened in cities to the south and in restaurants in small French villages such as those in Beynac-et-Cazenac, in Bergerac, in Domme, and in many others of various sizes and occupancy.
When I was staying in the apartment of a Roman citizen named Luca who had a flat in a high rise a few blocks off the Piazza della Rotonda in front of the Pantheon, I could enter the coffee shop on the southwest corner of that area and - on a rainy day - sit in the quiet inside with Romans and enjoy a quiet cup of espresso;
or – on pleasant weather days – I could sit outside at a table or on the side of the Fontana dei Pantheon (where countless Romans have sat since the 1500’s) and also enjoy a morning cup of coffee in the quiet.
In the East, many have long endorsed not the concept of “freedom of speech” but have endorsed “freedom from speech” instead.
Not so in the U.S. or in many other loud ass cultures. In the U.S. where the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees that "the government shall not abridge free speech," that guarantee has been expanded by many who erroneously claim that "no person or persons and no non-governmental institutions shall abridge free speech, either," be that in libraries, theaters, restaurants, or anywhere else where loud mouths want to be heard.
Here, political or religious commentators or business advertisers can talk on the public airwaves or on social media platforms and lie all they want at whatever volume they want. Speakers on the floors of the U.S. Congress can and do lie more often than they speak the truth, just like all deceivers and liars and falsifiers and perjurers and fabricators throughout history have always done . . . and without consequences.
I. In the U.S. a political candidate can claim that many persons entering the country from Mexico are rapists; then, that claim can emotionally-intoxicate his followers as he passes his warped perspective on to them; in that state, those persons will hate all soon-to-be-Mexican-rapists-in-the-U.S. while ignoring the fact that 80% of all women who are raped each year are raped by someone of their own race and are raped by someone they know and whom they consider to be a friend or lover or neighbor or co-worker or employer and someone who has always lived in their country, not by someone whom they do not know who crossed a border to enter into their country.
Believe that "the top priority for our safety is to protect our borders" and your attention will be diverted from what you should actually be paying attention to (which is most persons are raped by someone who was born within their borders and by someone who has always lived within their borders and by someone they’ve known or by someone they are dating or by someone they live with or by someone they work with rather than by some “foreign stranger who came here from outside our country”).
In fact, a four-year fact checker project showed that a U.S. President can make 30,573 false or misleading claims during a four-year term and can do so without consequences. Such a project also showed he was able to suggest that people could inject bleach into their bodies and it could “knock [covid] out in one minute,” and though thousands of cases of disinfectant and bleach poisonings were reported by poison control centers in the period following that public claim, the case has been that - as usual - there were no consequences for the one who inspired those poisonings.
And politicians can publicly blame the coronavirus in the U.S. on Asians (including those who have lived here for ages) and can inspire the ignorant to assault so far over 3,800 persons of Asian descent who had nothing to do with the spread of the virus from China to the U.S.. And such politicians can do that without consequences as well.
II. And don't get all paranoia about foreigners coming here and molesting children. While the odds of a child being molested are considerable in the U.S. (at least three million children here will be molested before they reach the age of thirteen) the odds of their being molested by "a foreign invader" are almost nil. Instead, over 90% of those molested will be molested by someone they know, often a family member, step-parent, relative, or supposed friend living next door or going to school with them.
III. Also, politicians and others can tap, and have tapped, into the fears of their followers by pontificating about the high probability of the citizenry being killed by foreign terrorists or can even claim that "we're all going to be killed unless you elect me to protect you." That focus - rooted in a bogus, warped perspective - will lead persons to ignore the fact that 78% of all people killed in the U.S. annually are killed by someone they know, not by someone they do not know. It will lead them to remain blind to the fact that, of the remaining 22% killed annually, 99.9%+ of them are killed by fellow citizens, not by "dangerous foreigners."
Fears regarding “the other” or "those people out there" or "over there" are almost always unwarranted; any actual potential (relative) dangers almost always involve those who are already known and most trusted and who are least feared and nearest at hand. It takes an amazingly-warped perspective and amazing levels of ignorance of the facts and the truth to think otherwise and to be driven by emotional-intoxication.
Another distinction between emoting vs. feeling is this: the realized can feel without attachment and without ever triggering a chain of reactions that result from emotional intoxication. Emoting, on the other hand, is what happens with persons who—living with the belief in their false roles and ego-states—are perpetually intoxicated emotionally and are constantly reacting and over-reacting to what they take to be "personal experiences" or "imagined future events" which are rooted in persona-based fears.
When "AS IF living" happens, living as if anything matters when it does not (that being the style of living that “the realized” often exhibit), then abidance happens without personal attachments, delusions, warped perspectives, or emotional intoxication. "AS IF living" is the manner in which the realized "finish out" the manifestation, meeting so-called “responsibilities” and providing for the space while knowing full well that “this world” is nothing more than an imagining in the distorted perceptions of persons.
That emotion-free lifestyle (which is not devoid of an ability to feel) is unencumbered with attachment and emotional intoxication and belief in the lies of the culture. It is a lifestyle that is free of game-playing and image-perpetuation.
It is a lifestyle unmarred by the emotions and emotional intoxication
experienced by persons. It is a lifestyle during which the realized can witness
feelings rise and fall without any emotional intoxication, without reacting,
without over-reacting, and without setting off a chain of reactions (as happens
with non-realized persons). It is a lifestyle that is free of the misery that
is generated by the desires and fears of personas.
As a result of assuming false personas as actual identities, the non-realized
will be trapped in emotional intoxication and will suffer a relative existence
that will be marked by histrionics and drama. The non-dual understanding can address
some of the roots of emotional intoxication.
For the most part, only witnessing happens among the realized. When actions happen - as they will throughout the waking hours - they will always happen spontaneously but they will never be taken from a state of emotional intoxication.
To summarize: the AS IF existence post-realization (abiding AS IF any of this is real or important while knowing full well that it is not) can be marked by a full gamut of feelings that are witnessed as they rise and fall; however, only personas - those who are trapped in false identities and ego-states - can experience emotions and the subsequent emotional intoxication which always follows.
Finally, acceptance of The Void, the Oblivion, and the Nothingness is not about being “detached.” It is about non-attachment. Detachment does result in the robotic state of having no feelings, which most understandably want to avoid. Non-attachment, though, involves feeling . . . but feeling without attachment to the feeling, without attachment to any circumstances, and without attachment to any false identifications (which leads to emotional intoxication).
The state of non-attachment happens along "the path" on the “journey” to realization after pure witnessing happens throughout the relative existence.
Another new perspective which comes at that stage in the “re-purification-or-unblocking-of-the-consciousness” process [outlined in the book From the I to the Absolute] is this:
“Anything can be . . . but nothing has to be.”
That’s non-attachment, but non-attachment does not imply that no feelings can ever be felt during the remainder of the manifestation. When one's perspective is rooted in the universal, unblocked consciousness, whatever is perceived is perceived via Pure Witnessing (a.k.a., "the True Self"); then one sees the unicity from a "condition" of complete non-attachment.
It is realization which results in freedom from emotion-driven-instability if the dualistic roots of emotional reactions are seen; if all beliefs in illusions are discarded; if clear and proper perspectives replace all warped perspectives; and if events inspired by delusions and emotional intoxication are transitioned via the abandonment of false identities.
To be continued.
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."