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 continues with . . .
SEEKERS’ PROPENSITIES:
To complicate rather than simplify (part two)
resulting in:
"The Bondage of Spiritual Concerns”
I answered a question in 2002 about my use of the term “the Bondage of Spiritual Concerns” in this way:
Working or being on duty 24 / 7 at (1) a high school and (2) in a mud-logging trailer at an oil drilling site for twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, left me exhausted. I considered quitting the teaching job, but - up to that time - it was the only job I had ever wanted. Why?
Because Dr. Herschel Lynn Russell - when I was in his seventh grade class while living in a gang-infected community and being influenced more and more by dangerous delinquents each day - began offering the constructive guidance to me which an absentee father never had.
His interventions led me to another path that changed my existence forever.
But since a teaching job did not pay the most basic bills I had, I continued to work - as so many teacher did and do - a second. Mine happened to be an 84-hour a week job, worked in order to be able to afford to continue to do what amounted to the charity work performed by most public school teachers.
Yet the work load of those two jobs was nothing compared to the exhaustion which would come once I became driven to assume the role of "The Spiritual Giant."
The only thing more exhausting than that came when several ego-defense mechanisms triggered the assumption of two ego-states:
One was the role of "The Spiritual Giant" which was soon self-upgraded to the super-ego-state of "The Super Spiritual Giant”; the second was the role of "The Super Seeker" which was soon self-upgraded to the super-ego-state of " The Super Seeker.”
The part fictional / autobiographical non-duality-based novel entitled THE TWICE-STOLEN NECKLACE MURDERS was published the following year in 2003 and described the laborious and grueling “journey” of the lead character Kirk / “floyd” in this manner:
“In his energy-consuming search for salvation, he’d been dipped, dunked, sprayed, spayed, sprinkled, and neutered; in the quest for truth, he’d been blessed, cursed, cussed, lectured, scolded, and praised;
in his pursuit of Life’s Meaning, he’d been communion’d, Om’d, grape-juiced, wined, ahsram’d, accepted, rejected, Mu’d, and yoga’d; in his chase for service-work-opportunities, he’d been pulverized, martinized, and frappéd;
and in the endeavor to attain Life Eternal, he’d been baptized, Buddha’d, New Aged, powwow’d, Far Eastern Indianized, incense’d, sage’d, Tao’d, Peru’d, Tibet’d, washed in the blood, dunked in the waters, and purportedly purified.
Then in the end, each of the religious leaders had always charged him 10% of his total income for the whole sorry treatment, plus a building-fund-tax and a foreign-missions-surcharge to boot—all in spite of the complete ineffectiveness of their claims to ‘redeem and save’.”
And the cost of the spiritual going and doing and zooming and spiritual workaholism inspired by “The Spiritual Giant’s” role playing would add up to far more than 10%, traveling all over the U.S. and to various parts of the globe seeking what was already within;
building a multi-hundred-volume library of books by the millionaire Big Name Teachers which Maharaj advised seekers to avoid; paying to attend gatherings in 5000-seat auditoriums; etc., etc. etc.
See? Exhausting.
And totally useless . . . totally unnecessary.
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.