Advaita Vedanta: NEEDLESS WORK, COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE ACCEPTANCE and THE CURSE OF HABITS

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NEEDLESS WORK, COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE ACCEPTANCE and THE CURSE OF HABITS

“There are three means of abidance - natural, unnatural, or supernatural - and only one of those allows for the abidance to happen in a sane, logical, realized, awakened, and no-false-beliefs manner.”

--Floyd Henderson

Body Pain vs. Mind-Induced Misery and Suffering, PartTwo

Yesterday’s post ended with this:

In light of the distinction between pain on the one hand and misery and suffering on the other, consider again this comment from two young teens who were practicing “cutting” several years ago: “Life sucks. How cruel are you to try to talk us into being exposed to any more of this crap?”

The teens had every reason, considering the levels of abuse that they had suffered from their truly sick father, to feel miserable and to feel as if the pressure within was so great that cutting could provide relief. Functioning at the level of body identification only, they attacked the body rather than the actual source of their misery.

The reason they are happy or contented and free today is because they found that their problem was rooted in the “mind” and not in the body; thereafter, they addressed (with professional guidance) the real and treatable cause of their misery and suffering.

Once their line of attack turned from the body to the “mind,” relief began to manifest, but (as happened with those two) identification with the body can set the stage for persons who are suffering mentally and / or emotionally to strike out at the body rather than to seek treatment for the contaminated “mind.”

That phenomenon is explained this way in the book “FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE” in a passage which addresses the body-identification / attack-the-body connection that is rooted in misperception and misunderstanding:

Body identification can be chaotic and even fatal. Here's how: I once had a dog that, when it saw its reflection in a mirror, would go ballistic. He fought with that false self, biting at the mirror and trying to destroy himself / his own reflection.

In humans identified with their bodies, the deep-seated need to destroy the ego and false roles and to be true to Self is a subconscious, driving force that leads to self-destructive behavior or even suicidal assaults against the physical body.

If I am my body and I am having overwhelming problems, then the way to be rid of those is to be rid of the body, so the unconscious, fallacious reasoning goes.

So, hopeless and endless body pain? Go for the body if you like.

Misery and suffering? It only makes sense to go for the “mind,” to address the faulty content of the “mind” that prevents persons from seeing what really ails them ... to find and treat the actual source of one's misery and suffering.

The love of the body or the love of the content of the “mind” or the love of any false identities will eventually lead to hate . v. . hating the relative existence, hating “others” whose beliefs do not align with one's own beliefs, and hating anyone who seems to be threatening one's false identities and / or interfering with the hidden agendas of those false personalities.

By contrast, freedom from love of the body and the “mind” and false identifications allows for an objective look at the actual source of one's misery and suffering.

Of that, Maharaj said, “ . . . first, your attitude to suffering must change. Suffering is primarily a call for attention, which itself is a movement of Love.”

One's love of the false self / selves will eventually turn to disgust if the lack of authenticity registers, if living the lie grows old. Love of Self and of All is an entirely different matter.

To understand the authentic is to understand the Oneness, and to know the Oneness is to know Love, and to know Love is to automatically and spontaneously find and root out the source of suffering - first in oneself and then in all who seek as well. In only the most limited way can Love try to address pain, yet Love would eliminate the causes of misery and suffering.

Love, True Love, hears the call of the miserable and those suffering and knows that suffering is primarily a call for attention . . . but attention to the cause(s) of misery and suffering.

Suffering is not a call to “die”; suffering is a call to heal, be the suffering your own or that of “others.” Here, the teacher suffered, determined to find the actual source or cause(s) of suffering, found the cause, eliminated the cause, and then become willing to share the solution with any that seek the “Ultimate Resolution”?

Is your body in 24 / 7 pain? That's one thing. Are you miserable and suffering? That is a totally different “issue.” In the case of the latter, focus on the “mind,” knowing that the misery-producing-contaminants therein can be eliminated painlessly and non-violently, with assistance.

One need not destroy the entire brain to address the suffering that is rooted in the information-storage-and-retrieval part of the brain (a.k.a., “the mind”). As the title of one book available here points out, “THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS 'PEACE OF MIND' (There's Only Peace If You Are Out of Your Mind).”

The examples shared earlier are but a few of the many instances seen over the last 22 years of persons having been driven so insane that they either (a) assault their own bodies or (b) destroy their own bodies in order to bring a miserable manifestation to an end in their misdirected effort to address what is really just a “mind problem” that has nothing to do with the body at all.

Sudhakar S. Dikshit put it this way: “The teacher does not evaluate; his sole concern is with ‘suffering and the ending of suffering’. He knows from his personal and abiding experience that the roots of sorrow are in the mind and it is the mind that must be freed from its distorting and destructive habits.”

“Of these, the identification of the self with its projections is most fatal. By precept and example Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj shows a short-cut, a logical but empirically sound. It operates, when understood.”

Consider each of the main points thoroughly:

a. these teachings are about the ending of suffering;

b. the roots of suffering are in the mind;

c. for a person to be free, the mind must be freed of its habit of distorting;

d. for a person to be free, the mind must be freed of its destructive habits; and

e. to identity with the false self / selves can be fatal.

To be continued.

Please enter into the silence of contemplation.

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Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "god," the "Son of god," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns.

THE EXPLANATION

If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.

Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of god in the past was of a weak god, an absentee god, A Santa Claus-type god, a mean, punishing, vindictive god, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring god whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."

The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a god that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").

Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring god,' any supposed god that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'god' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.

"That is, a non-narcissistic their god / their goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'god' and focus on the 'god as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you."

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"

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and

"Heaven and earth shall fade away."

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and

"Heaven and hell are not geographic places

but are states of mind, nothing more than

concepts dreamed up by men."

--Pope John Paul II

"There is no hell."

--Pope Francis, the current pope

in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,

a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record

teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.

[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.

And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?

Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?

The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit charge by the Bank); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)

With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.

The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.]

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18 MARCH 2018

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