ANNOUNCEMENTS
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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
CULTURES AND INSTITUTIONS PROGRAM PERSONS TO ACCEPT A LACK OF TRUE FREEDOM (continued)
Yesterday’s post ended with this:
If you are willing to seek out guidance from a realized Nisargan, then you will have found “A Window Cleaner,” so to speak.
You will have found a speck of consciousness that
understands the muck and grime that obscures your view are really the concepts
and ideas and beliefs that are driving you;
that understands why you cannot possibly view the beauty and peace and bliss;
that understands how the muck and grime were set in place via years of
accumulated programming and conditioning and acculturation and domestication;
that understands exactly why you think what you think, say what you say, and do what you do (even as you believe there is some “you” that is determining all of that);
and that understands that it is all of the “not-you's”
- all of the personalities that you have assumed or that were cast upon you -
that are driving all of your thoughts and words and deeds.
Consider the state of the four men mentioned yesterday:
A realized Nisargan not only understands the roots of the insanity and ignorance that is driving the four men mentioned earlier, but also knows exactly how freedom could come to them if they would but follow the four-step “path” to total freedom from the muck and grime;
from the inability to see clearly; from the inability to
shift beyond the flux and chaos of their relative lives; from the ability to
fixate in the only state where such fixation can happen.
The fact is, though, that those four are exactly like all among the non-realized
masses: the only thing that they are more afraid of than freedom is total
freedom. So it is, but so it need not be. At this point, they have no option.
At this point, maybe you do.
All that persons are afraid of, they are afraid of because they take themselves
to be . . . persons. (Do you see the
trap, the conundrum, the “Catch-22” involved there?) That is to say, there can
be no fear unless there is first an assumed persona with an agenda.
The four men have no option at this point other than to pursue a mirage, other
than to try to defend a mirage, and other than to engage in the futile effort
of trying to convert that which is temporary into that which is permanent. They
may as well become alchemists and try to convert lead into gold.
You, though, might be in a position where you understand that the
tried-and-true means by which total freedom can come is right here before you.
You might be standing at the fork in the road.
Shall you continue along the same route and experience the same consequences, or is “the road that has not yet be taken” calling you? Shall you continue to try to find stability at “the level of experience,” or might you be ready to find stability at the level of reality / Reality?
A visitor said: What you said to Louise about everything
was happening at “the level of experience” obviously was a turning point for
her and allowed her to attain the total freedom you talk about. But I can still
relate to what she was saying about the stress of being a single parent and
trying to pay the bills, so please explain “at the level of experience” so i
might reach that turning point, too.
The reply: First, allow a foundation to be laid for your understanding of
what “at the level of experience” means; then, you will understand that there
was no “louise” that “attained” anything. Consider this exchange:
Questioner: “Is the witness-consciousness permanent or not?”
Maharaj: “It is not permanent. The knower rises and sets
with the known. That in which both the knower and the known arise and set, is beyond
time. The words permanent or eternal do not apply.”
So, too, are the experience and experiencer not permanent. The experiencer
rises and sets with the experience. That in which both the experience and the
experiencer arise and set is beyond time.
Consider also:
Questioner: “To me consciousness is always focalised, centred, individualised,
a person. You seem to say that there can be perceiving without a perceiver,
knowing without a knower, loving without a lover, acting without an actor. I
feel that the trinity of knowing, knower and known can be seen in every
movement of life. Consciousness implies a conscious being, an object of
consciousness and the fact of being conscious. That which is conscious I call a
person. A person lives in the world, is a part of it, affects it and is
affected by it.”
Maharaj: “Why don't you enquire how real are the world
and the person?”
As there is the misconception that there is the “trinity” of knowing, the
knower, the known, so there are the misconceptions that there are
(A) a triad of the body-mind-personality and
(B) the trinity of experiencing, the experiencer, and the experience.
Yes, what is to be known (actually, “understood”) can be
discussed along the way, such as, “The Truth can be known but cannot be stated”;
however, farther along the seven-step “path,” all of that gives way, first, to
subject-object witnessing and then to pure witnessing.
Finally, regarding that “window cleaner” referenced earlier: in addition to most homes having a window cleaner among their cleaning supplies, many also have a fabric softener in their laundry room.
The non-dual understanding is similar to the window cleaner. Both allow for a clearer perspective, a clearer view, a view that is not distorted but allows for seeing things the way they truly are, and much, much more.
Similarly, the fabric softener is like the non-dual understanding in that both address issues which can make the relative existence highly uncomfortable or even intolerable.
Like the wool suit that my father made me wear during my pre-teen years, that garment was almost as bad to a six-year old as the iron maiden outfit used to torture people in medieval times:
Add to those the traits of being non-realized (and suffering from the Ultimate Sickness) and one has three things that make for miserable, irritable, uncomfortable humans.
What can fabric softener - like the non-dual understanding - remove and thereby render the human existence more tolerable and comfortable?
Fabric softener can eliminate the condition of being rigid and fixed and hard-line and inflexible and stern and uncompromising and unyielding and bullheaded and firm and hard and strait-laced and unbending and unchanging and unrelenting and harsh and grim.
Honestly, what do the masses nowadays display as much as those traits? (Little, other than the three general conditions or symptoms of those with the Ultimate Sickness, identified by Maharaj as “ignorance, stupidity, and insanity.”)
In the past month, I have been contacted by three women - all forty or older - who have been struggling with the discomfort of being “devout Catholics,” using terms such as “devoted,” “stanch,” or “fervent” to describe their degree of devotion. “Fanatical” would have probably been more accurate in all three cases.
Two had come to understand the sources of their discomfort, but those two were married and knew their husbands would not leave the church; the one who was single was out of touch with the truth and was being driven subconsciously to - blindly and unquestioningly - do what she has been programmed and conditioned to do for decades.
Two had seen that they were not members of the Catholic Church as much as they were affiliated with a worldwide operation more accurately identified as Pedophiles, Inc.
When I asked how tolerant they were of pedophilia in cultures all around the globe, the two with children were adamant in expressing their disgust.
They knew what was coming next. “So why are you and millions more so tolerant of it in your church? Do you know that your 'tithes' have been used by the Vatican for years to pay up to $20,000,000 to silence the parents of the children who had been molested and to cover up their crimes?
“And why do you think members like you are the same in the case of other religions which are also not dealing with the same problem, though possibly on a smaller scale?”
They could not put an answer to words. The third had never even considered the high level of tolerance of the pedophilia which is so widespread in her religion and which has been prevalent in her religion for hundreds and hundreds of years.
The prediction is that the single woman will return to the church. The other two will likely attend reluctantly until all of their children have left home and then, they said, they would probably leave their marriages if their spouses refused to leave the church.
With all three, I asked how much of the following were influencing their reluctance to go now and to stay gone: rigidity and other religion-inspired inflexibility and being uncompromising and unyielding and being hard and strait-laced and unbending.
All agreed with the diagnosis. All three agreed to complete certain steps which might free them of that. How confident am I that they shall overcome the power of their programming and conditioned? Hardly at all.
Explaining why persons seem to grasp the understanding and then seemingly “lose” it, Maharaj said:
“You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts leave you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to them again.”
It's similar to those suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome or those traumatized children who keep going back to the parent who beat them in order to see if they might not “earn” the love not yet received so far.
(And that happens both with young children and with “adult-age children” who never become totally free of their parents' influence as well).
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.
