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
and
advancing your spirit.
Today, the discussion turns to . . .
SEEKERS’ PROPENSITIES:
Talk rather than listen
Go and do and zoom rather than relax in the silence
Learn rather than un-learn
Teach rather than un-teach
Accumulate more rather than de-accumulate all
It matters not whether seeking is taking place in “houses of worship” or in Twelve Step meetings or in ashrams or in homes where satsang is being offered or in a sweat lodge or in a 5000-person gathering organized by a Big Name Teacher.
Wherever, more often than not - lip service
aside - humans are not focusing on seeking and finding a way to be freed from their chaos-generating,
peace-killing Belief Systems (that is, their BS) but are involved in attention
seeking . . . meeting in places where they can talk to a captive audience and be the center of attention.
The goal of having that captive audience:
to seek admiration;
to spread one’s emotional intoxication in order to “really get the juices flowing” among the members of their audience;
to get validation;
to display their accumulated knowledge (a.k.a., per Maharaj, their “learned ignorance”);
to upstage others;
to re-stock their storehouse of narcissistic supplies;
to get money from their audience;
to give their personality disorders and neuroses and psychoses a chance to vent;
to engage in “sadfishing” by overstating the trials and tribulations of their current state in order to gain sympathy;
to share their self-pity and / or their sense of victimization;
etc., etc., etc.
No matter their ulterior motives - which often operate at a subconscious or unconscious level but at other times are the result of a very conscious, manipulative agenda - most seekers are . . .
into talking rather than listening; into going and doing and zooming rather than relaxing in the quiet; into learning rather than un-learning; into teaching rather than un-teaching; and into accumulating more and more concrete things (material possessions, money) as well as abstract things (knowledge, admiration, respect, etc.)
Talking Rather Than Listening
My Cherokee Grandmother once made a fleeting reference to her Asian roots and the fact that her ancestors left Asia behind and crossed into North America (N.A.).
(I would come to understand that happened via traversing Beringia some 13,000 or more years ago.)
On another occasion she mentioned that in “the West” people are preoccupied with their freedom of speech whereas in the East her ancestors valued freedom from speech.
The indigenous peoples in N.A. pointed out that the talk they heard from the European invaders of the lands on which they had lived for 13,000+ years almost always proved to be lies.
(They may have been among the first to share a now commonplace observation that "It’s easy to know when he’s lying . . . his lips are moving").
For the indigenous people, the understanding was this: the closest way to define “truth” is to understand it is what passes in the moment between inhalation and exhalation.
The Beatles sang, “All we are saying is, ‘Give peace a chance’.”
Then indigenous peoples could have said, “All we are saying is, ‘Give silence a chance’.”
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.
