IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU MIGHT BE AFRAID OF FREEDOM AND TOTAL INDEPENDENCE?

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IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU MIGHT BE AFRAID OF FREEDOM AND TOTAL INDEPENDENCE?

“ . . . You are afraid of freedom!”
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To continue with the discussion from yesterday:

Nationalistic ceremonies as well as religious ceremonies which rob persons of freedom and reinforce a sense of separation, all of which blocks the opportunity for realization, blocks the chance to return to sanity, blocks total freedom, and blocks uninterrupted peace.

When they are combined, the distortions they perpetuate are even more influential on the non-realized masses.

DEFINING FREEDOM -

CONVENTIONAL SOURCES

continued

Among other things, non-duality is about awakening; by contrast, nothing that has ever been perpetuated by any culture is about waking you up. All is about . . .

1. Putting you to sleep

2. Keeping you asleep and

3. Modeling the ways by which persons can walk in their sleep, can talk in their sleep, and can think in their sleep (i.e., dream and believe the dream is real).

Among the tools used by cultures to put persons to sleep and to keep them that way are their ceremonies. Post-acculturation, there is no freedom so there can be neither happiness nor peace; post-acculturation, there can be neither freedom from ego nor freedom from egotism, for ceremonies generate false identities (egos) and trigger egotism to support those false ego-states.

One dictionary defines freedom as the absence of ceremony and the ability to live naturally.

Have you considered the way that culture's use ceremonies to program and condition the masses? Have you considered the way that ceremonies, repeated on a daily or weekly or annual basis, are used by cultures to control the thinking and talking and behavior of entire populations?

Discussed so far are the ritualistic ceremonies of religious and spiritual groups which occur with such frequency that even the children who are present can recite in their sleep the ceremonial words and can complete in their sleep whatever ceremonial movements are required. And they do recite and move in their sleep during the ceremonies, and so do participating adults.

Among the most frequent ceremonies are their worship services and their ceremonial funerals. Also included among their ceremonies are communion ceremonies, wedding ceremonies, confession ceremonies, and baptism / christening ceremonies.

Some “self-help” groups that claim to be spiritual have “meetings” rather than “religious services,” but their meetings are models of religious worship services which both begin with an opening prayer ceremony, which both have a “spiritual message” segment, which both have a “money collecting” ceremony, and which both have a “closing prayer” ceremony.

Before looking at the next source that has dreamed up the second largest number of ceremonies (namely, nationalistic ceremonies), would you consider the answer to these questions:

a. Can you now observe your own behaviors objectively and see that there have been dozens of ceremonies that you have participated in that were completely senseless in basis and that you did not choose to participate in but were programmed to participate in by your parents or relatives or friends or culture?

b. Have you see how ceremonies were used to introduce to you certain concepts and ideas that you eventually accepted as truth without question?

c. Have you seen the way your culture repeats its ceremonies on a daily or weekly or annual basis in order to keep you trapped and asleep because regular participation in ceremonies reinforces the programming and conditioning of your culture ?

As you read about some of the ceremonies that persons in the U.S. are subjected to, you are invited to consider the nationalistic ceremonies that you have been subjected to where you live:

In the U.S., where persons are highly critical of other nations that subject children to propaganda early on, the school day cannot begin without school-age children having to participate in the ceremony of “The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.”

The pledge, which was written by a Baptist preacher, blends religious and nationalistic propaganda, especially since the U.S. Congress in 1954 added the words “under God” to “The Pledge” after a Catholic organization called The Knights of Columbus pushed for the inclusion of that phrase.

The pledge ceremony, conducted every day that schools are in session, requires students from the ages of five to eighteen to participate in the ceremony which attempts to condition children and teens to be patriotic, to love their country, and to accept anything and everything that will be done during their lifetimes under the auspices of that flag.

The typical student, with the right hand placed over the heart, will recite the words to that pledge nearly 3,500 times before graduation (which is marked with another insipid ceremony which most students would prefer to miss).

They will cite the words that claim the nation is “indivisible,” inspiring them to ignore the fact that

the nation is divided into 50 different states, and to ignore the fact that

(2) the nation is divided regionally as a result of the animosity that many in the southern states still cling to because their states lost a civil war which ended 145 years ago for some but which has not ended at all for others in that region.

It is such delusion and ignorance, and the inability after 3,500 opportunities to see that something being said in a ceremony is totally false, that the non-dual understanding would address.

Too, a sports event in the U.S. cannot begin without the ceremonial singing of the national anthem (an anthem with words that glorify fighting in a nation that already possesses far too much of a warrior mentality to begin with). Only a part of the anthem is sung by thousands at a time, but the full text of the song speaks of:

“the perilous fight” and “ramparts” and “rockets” and “bombs bursting” and “foes”;

and about

“the havoc of war” and “the battle confusion” and claiming “the foes' blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution”;

and about:

“nothing will save them from the gloom of the grave” while claiming “this is a heav'n-rescued land” and calling on all citizens to “praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!” and proclaiming that “this is our motto: 'In God is our trust'“ and then ending with “then conquer we must.”

How could the warrior mentality of a nation ever be eradicated when the masses regularly participate in the ceremonial singing in unison about “the perilous fight” and “ramparts” and “rockets” and “bombs bursting”?

How could the warrior mentality of a nation ever be eradicated when, at community gatherings and in churches and in schools, the masses participate in ceremonies that celebrate such “special” days as the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, VE-Day, V-J Day, Armed Forces Day, Pearl Harbor Day, Flag Day, and even the National Day of Prayer and Freedom Day and Loyalty Day and Patriots Day (on 9/11, of course).

Yes, in the U.S., there are ceremonies that even celebrate national defeats and national humiliations such as happened at Pearl Harbor and in New York City on September 11, 2001. And those ceremonies are especially effective at generating national pride over defeat and the perpetuation of national anger and resentment.

Ceremonies, the effects of which only a small number will ever recognize, rob persons of freedom, and that includes freedom from delusion, distortion, arrogance, anger, resentment, and a host of other effects that generate personality disorders and even insanity.

But the attachment to (and even love of) ceremonies - be they religious, spiritual, or nationalistic - will not be abandoned except among the few that are realized at any given time on this planet. Even as the non-realized raise their voices in unison and sing of their freedom, they are totally imprisoned in ways they will never understand. So it is.

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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