TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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DE-AWESOME-FYING NON-DUAL TERMINOLOGY
To continue with 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
and
being blessed and having blesséd days
and
the power of now
and
the pure, universal consciousness
and
“I am consciousness”
and
“Consciousness is all there is”
and
“Nothing is real”
and
Bliss.
Today, the discussion turns to . . .
ADVANCING YOUR SPIRIT
This concept became quite popular a few years back when a Big Name Teacher and marketing wiz wrote a book with that title and then cut a multi-CD-set on the subject. Millions spent millions on those "spirit advancement" products, paying their money to buy a load of BS.
In fact, the concept provides a double shot of BS.
BS #1: If you read the earlier post on “the spiritual malady,” you understand that there is no such thing as “a spirit” or “a soul” inside humans (or any other living thing).
BS #2: If there is no spirit, then
there is nothing to “advance.” (Moreover, what exactly would that "advancement" entail if it could happen?)
One might as well talk about “advancing my luck quotient with a rabbit’s foot” or one who does not own any kind of mine at all might as well talk about “advancing the output of my gold mine.”
What did Maharaj have to say regarding the subject?
"There is no question of elevating to a higher level. Here it is only a question of understanding"
and
"There is no progress"
and
"Both experience and experiencer will disappear"
and
“Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false”
and
“I have no faith in anything which has ever been told, not even what has been told by the Vedas. Only my own experience.”
If one believes in the false concepts of higher levels and progress and being better and advancement, then one must also buy into the false concepts of lower levels and retrogression and being worse and diminishment.
WHO - what phony ego-state - is wanting or claiming “advancement”?
Furthermore, belief in one half of a dualistic pair leads to belief in the opposite half of a dualistic pair, and one’s entrapment in duality is thereby revealed (no matter how energetically that person might assert her or his level of enlightenment, realization, freedom from being driven by belief in dualistic concepts, etc.)
Humans can find so many ways to increase their workload needlessly, and three of the go-to means they use to set up a go-do-zoom existence involve trying to create and maintain the age-old false identities of “The Super Religious One,” “The Spiritual Giant,” and / or “The Super Seeker.”
And most of what comes from what they accumulate by trying to create and maintain those age-old false identities is always total nonsense.
For persons to believe that they can “advance their spirit” is to believe that they can . . .
advance a bicycle into a motorcycle;
advance a battery-operated, plastic Barbie mobile into an $18,000,000 Bugatti La Voiture Noire automobile;
or
advance a one-bedroom shack into a 20-bedroom, 12-bath manor house.
None of those will ever happen any more than a “spirit” will ever be advanced.
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.