TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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DE-AWESOME-FYING NON-DUAL TERMINOLOGY
More on the rationale for this series:
1. Among the 7+ billion non-realized persons on planet earth, 97% reported in a survey that they limit their “search area” to the space beneath the roof a church or basilica or cathedral or temple or the meeting room of a “spiritual group” or a wat or mosque or synagogue or gurdwara. Actually, they seldom seek because they are convinced that they have found. They are taught to “question nothing” and to “accept with blind faith” whatever they are taught.
2. The same applies to the millions supposedly seeking in particular rooms or a loft or a home or a borrowed gathering space or via a particular ideology, cult, philosophy, or theory.
3. Of those seeking via a system of pointers which included the invitation to “question everything,” few question it all.
4. Here, “non-dualists” are encouraged to “question it all” and then an expanded caveat is added: “even question every non-dual pointer you’ve ever heard or read.”
5. Long before Maharaj shared pointers on the bogus beliefs regarding body and mind and personality identification; and long before he advised seekers to abandon their religious and spiritual role-playing; and long before he advised them to give up their spiritual workaholism and merely abide naturally, he laid the groundwork for all the pointers to come by saying, “Question everything.”
He meant with those words that every belief accumulated by listening to others and by reading the words of others and by going to gatherings (where those he derided as “Big Name Teachers” were collecting millions of dollars a year from seekers) must be questioned.
6. There have been millions of religious and spiritual and philosophical and ideological and Eastern and, yes, even non-dual concepts / beliefs which billions of humans have taken to be “awesome.”
In addition to “awesome,” so many simple and basic parts of the non-dual understanding have been “elevated in status” in a most supercilious, pompous fashion, reporting that various elements of the message are “noble,” “other-worldly,” “extraordinary,” “exceptional,” “distinctive,” and “exclusive.” None of them were, and none of them are.
7. This series is offering a different perspective about those concepts / beliefs / pointers / whatever.
So far in this series, it has been shown that - far from being “awesome concepts or teachings” - there is actually no validity or logic at all to such concepts or teachings as . . .
continuity
and
WHO-ness and / or who-ness
and
“SELF-Actualization”
and
“SELF-Realization”
and
“self-realization” (unless referring to the fact that one has realized that all assigned or assumed selves are illusions as are all assumed Selves as well)
and
liberation
and
enlightenment, awakening, and spiritual awakening,
and
“the Spiritual Malady”
and
higher consciousness
and
noble truths
and
how to know God
and
finding your life’s purpose
and
how to find peace of mind
and, relatedly,
mindfulness
and
becoming who you are
and
having an ageless body and timeless mind
and
karma
and
“Infinite Self” and “Supreme Self” and “Eternal Self”
and
birth-death-rebirth cycles
and
“The Universe”
and
“the work” / “spiritual work” / “spiritual workaholism”
and
contrary types vs. contrarians.
Today, the discussion moves to . . .
BEING BLESSED AND HAVING BLESSÉD DAYS
Back in May while walking through the living area of the house one night, the body was slammed to the floor with what some would later describe as “a massive heart attack.”
It took an hour and twenty minutes for an ambulance to arrive and transport this elemental plant food to an emergency room (which I found to be a place where the staff had something in common with “the truly the realized”: none of them believe that anything is an “emergency”).
I waited in a crowded room with forty of so other people. The wait was fifty minutes before I was taken into the back for “treatment.” I was left in a room where x-rays are taken but where a bed had been jammed inside as well. I waited another twenty minutes before a doctor entered.
He listened to my heart and detected a heart defect which has caused a murmur first diagnosed at the age of ten. He also found that the heart rhythm which had been smooth for the last ten years as a result of using one-prescribed pill and an assortment of food supplements was gone.
That steady rhythm has not returned.
But after the doctor left, the nurse with him stayed to gather more information from me. At that point she said, “You are so blessed.” I unwisely asked, “By whom am I blessed?” She: “Why, by God, darling.” I said, “For some reason, I am not finding my present circumstance to be a blessing.” She said, “Well, you’ll see someday it is.”
Before the covid pandemic had taken a firm hold on the people here, I visited a local market on occasion. Each time the man behind the counter weighted my order and printed a label and stuck it to the paper wrapping my purchase, he would always say, “Y’all have a truly blesséd day now.”
The joy of realization: I no longer have to take the time to tell people like him to FO.
Ask a thousand people what “a truly blesséd day” looks like and you might get a thousand different perspectives about what has to happen for an entire 24-hour period to qualify as “a truly blesséd day.”
And one might also be given some diverse answers if those types are asked where blessings come from. For those who gather once a week and open their worship service by singing “The Doxology” (“Praise God from who all blessings flow”), you’ll likely get their common answer: “From God.”
From those with a more lofty self-image, you might be told that blessings “come from the universe” or “from building up a surplus of positive karmic energy.”
It matters not, because in the end, whatever answer is given is going to be based in magical thinking and superstition and myth-based dogma.
So there is no such thing as “a blessed day” or “a blessing” of any kind.
Years ago, the one who was playing the codependent, counterpart role to my “Husband” ego-state at the time became driven by her “Ready to Reproduce Mode” which lead her to enter a “Nest Building Mode.”
I took a second job in order to buy one of the houses on her “approved nest” list, and a year later I had saved enough to allow us to move out of the apartment we were leasing and into a house.
Soon, the place was opened for tours by her friends and family, and after the “Owwww’s” and “Ahhhhh’s” subsided, the next words from the mouth of the “Wife Player” were, “Yes, I have been so blessed.”
After the fifth or sixth occasion of hearing that comment, egotism drove me to ask, “So you’re blessed by having this house?”
“Definitely.”
“And blessed by whom?”
“Well by God, of course.”
“Okay, so let me ask: ‘If God got you into this house, and were I to experience burnout someday and quit working and the bank forecloses and takes this house, would that also be God’s doing?”
She: “Sometimes I get very concerned about your mental state.”
“Indeed.”
Maharaj: “First of all you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray to that God for something good to happen to you.”
So to believe that someone got something which she or he wanted because they asked God for it and then they got it, such magical thinking can lead to the belief that God came through and “blessed” that person. But if one understands that “in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God,” then the wise will look for some other possible “cause-effect” scenario.
What might be one possible cause-effect driving the use of such comments all days long regarding being blessed and having a blessed day? Might it be that the motive has nothing to do with you or with whether you have a great day or a rotten day.
Might it be that their words are intended to show everyone how religious they are or how spiritual they are? Is it just one more way that false identities drive thoughts and words and actions?
If, as Maharaj said, there is no “Blesser” and there's only "the invention of a God," then there can be no blessings and no blesséd days, and if non-duality is valid - which it is - then there can be no "blessed days" vs. "not-blessed days."
To play that game is to reinforce BS beliefs, and as long as persons are reinforcing their BS beliefs rather than casting them aside, they shall never be free.
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."
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
