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
and
seekers’ propensities: to talk rather than listen
and
seekers’ propensities: to go and do and zoom rather than relax in the silence
and
seekers’ propensities: to learn rather than un-learn
and
seekers’ / gurus propensities: to teach rather than un-teach
and
seekers’ propensities: to accumulate more rather than de-accumulate all
Today, the discussion turns to . . .
SEEKERS’ PROPENSITIES: To complicate rather than simplify
Information regarding seeking - since the earliest reported case of humankind’s efforts to seek - make clear that the process has been made complicated and convoluted and drawn-out and elaborate and often downright tortuous (both literally and figuratively).
In the case of “literally,” consider the fate of the thousands of virgins that were sacrificed throughout the ages by people seeking rain, by people seeking to make the Rain God happy, and by people seeking to do “God’s will” as explained by priests who put on the earliest snuff film style shows.
The show went like this: in the private quarter of a “holy place,” the priest had sex with a virgin. (What better way than for god’s representative on earth to soothe an angry male beast than to have an orgasm.)
Next, he carried her out into the open and placed her on her back on a slab - an altar - before the villagers, picked up a knife, and (while she was still alive) sliced open her chest and cut out her beating heart.
Then he ate part of the body and drank the body and then raised it in the air to show the god that the sacrifice just made had been for him (a sacrifice being an essential part of all religious and spiritual services throughout history).
Then, the priest passed the heart among the “congregation” so that all could eat the flesh and drink the blood as a way to connect with (that is, to commune with and get “closer to”) a god.
Those were the originators of what would become “religions’ communion service” or "The Lord's Supper") which some 2.5 billion people reenact, some on a weekly or monthly schedule, some on a daily basis.
Some of them believe they are eating “the Christ’s” body and drinking his blood symbolically; some believe - after a priest performs a “transubstantiation rite” over some wine and some bread - that it literally transforms into real flesh and real blood (wink, wink).
Surely Yeshu’a would be so proud of his followers for their religion's regular reenactment of murder, cannibalism, and vampirism, right?
That’s all a fairly complicated process, but “people of faith” unquestioningly line up regularly to participate.
Displays of seekers’ tendencies (and humankind’s tendency as well) to complicate rather than simplify are evident in any and every plan, service, program, meeting, or whatever else their preferred seeking rituals might entail.
Some require members to meet daily for their entire relative existence; some require then to meet four times a week, including twice on Sundays, for their entire relative existence; some require them to go on pilgrimages (where their relative existence is cut short because many regularly die during human stampedes at those events);
some require bathing regularly in “holy waters,” no matter how filthy and polluted those waters actually are; and almost all endorse some kind of sacrifice (especially the placement of money into their coffers);
some encourage devotees to be suspended with metal hooks from "the vehicle of Lord Vishnu";
some require self-flagellation (pictures censored); some require their members to eat the ashes of a burnt dead-body mixed with bananas; and some require the women among them to have their teeth chiseled with crude instruments to “make them more beautiful.”
Now religious people have told me for decades that “their religion does not have such craziness.” All they are required to do is to believe that their “Savior” was “conceived and given birth to by a woman who was still a virgin”;
that their Savior was able to walk on water; that their savior could turn water into wine; that their Savior could feed thousands with a couple of fish and a few pieces of bread;
that their deceased ancestors are half-bird / half-human beings living in an alternate plane but able to revisit this plane and be "guardians" for the good people; that Yeshu'a (misidentified as "Jesus") was fully human and fully divine.
Moreover, they believe that only the bizarre can explain the supposedly normal and that all natural events are generated from and directed by a supernatural source. ("So see? Those others are crazy. We, on the other hand, are perfectly fine.")
No stretch there, huh?
Even non-duality can inspire persons to visit special sites; to engage in certain sacred routines; to meet regularly to discuss non-duality, etc.
Neo-Advaita notwithstanding, only one version of any seeking method - namely, the Direct Path Method combined with the Nisargan Yoga - encourages seekers to seek an understanding which will allow them to abide naturally and sanely (as does every living thing on the planet except for humans).
Not unnaturally? No. Not supernaturally / religious / spiritually? No. Complicated? No. Simple? Yes.
When seekers come here, they are taken through four short steps, leading them to understand that they are not the body, they are not the mind, and they are not their assigned and / or assumed identifications.
Simple.
Then they are encouraged to return to something appraoching the original childlike state wherein they had no illusions about who or what they are and no ignorance driving their every thought and word and action and no insanity plaguing every second of their relative existence (yet).
Then they are encouraged to go forth and abide naturally. No meetings required. No kneeling. No praying. No meditating. No giving or sacrificing to an organization. No self-flagellation.
No being suspended by hooks forced through the skin. No eating flesh. No drinking blood. No cutting off heads of those in other sects or religions.
No holy trips or holy waters or holy sweat lodges or visits to holy places required. No bleeding.
Just natural abidance.
Just . . . being.
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.
