ANNOUNCEMENTS
[Walter Driscoll asked to interview me in order to preserve on video some of the latest modifications and evolutions in the versions of the message offered here since 1989. He would label the discussion, "Unlearning with Floyd Henderson."
Please note: For those who have a problem hearing what is being shared, the video offers a fairly accurate set of closed captions which some listeners might want to activate.
The interview is available for viewing by clicking on video "NUMBER THIRTEEN" in the column to the right. Also, by clicking on NUMBER FOURTEEN," visitors can also see the introductory discussion on non-duality on Walter's non-duality site and then a Q and A session which followed.]
1. [See the offer in gold text following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
2. 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. See the green text after today's post for the full meaning and implications of that.
3. A newer video ("Number Ten: Awakening Together Satsang, March 2018") has now been added in the far right column of this page, offering the opportunity to view a recent 2018 satsang session with Floyd being interviewed by Regina and Jacqueline of "The Awakening Together Group." (See the details in the blue text after this post.)
4. Some prefer paperback books even if they have to wait a day or so to receive it and have to pay more for a printed book and its shipment. Now, 10 paperback books by Henderson are in print and available in two anthologies through Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and over 40,000+ booksellers around the globe including in the Americas, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Russia, China, Spain, Brazil and South Korea. See the end of this post in red text for details.
5. Would you like to have us send to someone as a gift from you a copy of any ebook in our inventory?
6. You may purchase a Floyd Henderson Shopify Gift Card here for someone and offer recommendations for the books in Floyd's store which might be of assistance to them.
7. You may click here to visit Floyd's bookstore which offers both digital books and paperback books which deal with non-duality, non-duality-based fictional adventures, recovery, and financial budgeting.
ARE YOU AT THE WET CHARCOAL STAGE OR THE GUNPOWDER STAGE?
(Most haven’t a clue and must be told)
THE CURSE OF HUMANKINDS’ RELATIVE EXISTENCE: IDENTIFICATIONS
“The personality is but a product of imagination. ‘The self’ is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking of yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is ‘the self’ that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it.”
“Beyond the self lies the unmanifested, the causeless cause of everything. Even to talk of ‘re-uniting the person with the self’ is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The “mind” has been shown to be the source of all assumed personality. Personality, in turn, has been shown to be the source of most of the relative existence problems on the planet, and each of the nine basic types generates a particular set of personality disorders. (Consider the total effect, then, of those basic types functioning alongside scores of other false personality identifications and the disorders they also generate.)
A point should be offered that
comes from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, 1994 (commonly referred to as “DSM-IV”):
A personality disorder is a pattern of deviant or abnormal
behavior that the person doesn’t change even though it causes emotional
upsets and trouble with other people at work and in personal
relationships. It is not limited to episodes of mental illness, and it
is not caused by drug or alcohol use, head injury, or illness.
So, all of the (relative) negatives of personality, negatives which have
motivated non-dual sages for centuries to encourage the abandonment of
personality, are becoming better understood. What additional motivation to realize could possibly be required among those with any wisdom at all, once the
facts about personality are understood:
(1) to identify with the personality, formed as a childhood exercise, is a disorder; (2) the behavior that follows the assumption of personality is deviant and abnormal; (3) it is persons - not the realized - who cling to false personas as identities; (4) emotional intoxication is rooted in personality;
(5) relative existence problems, whether at work or at home or in between are rooted in personality; (6) personality has nothing to do with mental illnesses; and (7) personality problems are not caused by addiction, physical injury, or mental illness.
As a relevant example of the DSM-IV definition, apply it to the billions who are suffering from the Addictive Personality Disorder (APD). Take drug or alcohol abuse as an example. Per definition, the disorder is “not caused by drug or alcohol use.”
The drug or alcohol abuse is a symptom of a personality disorder. Neither the drug nor the alcohol is the core problem; therefore, if an alcoholic suffering from APD merely stops drinking, that will have no effect at all on removing the negative traits and behaviors of the personality disorder. The traits and behaviors will continue as a result of what the primary literature calls the “grave mental and emotional disorders” that APD’s exhibit.
(Also, note that the
literature did not say that APD’s have “grave mental and emotional illnesses,”
though some do. Most are suffering personality disorders, not mental illness.
That applies to all APD’s, no matter whether they are addicted to food, power,
gambling, shopping, another person, alcohol, religion, drugs, sex, love,
spirituality, chaos, money, etc.)
As noted earlier, the reason that persons with disorders typically do not
change is because consequences are not imposed or because they are not imposed
to a degree that inspires taking the necessary action to be free of the effects
of one or more personality disorders. (That is another reason that few will
ever seek realization and why fewer still will ever realize fully.)
Further, any rationalizations and justifications and denial and excuse-making
in regards to those with personality disorders - such as “His / her behavior
must be understood or tolerated as a result of mental illness” or “She / he is
an alcoholic or drug addict and that must be considered” or “He / she has some
injury or illness” - are (as shown by the definition above) totally unfounded,
inapplicable, and irrelevant in regards to personality disorders.
Tolerance of the warped
thinking and warped behavior of persons with any disorders only prolongs their
entrapment in personality and guarantees the continued manifestation of the
effects of their disorders.
Now, pause to reconsider the information quoted above from the DSM-IV. Then,
list all of the roles that you have assumed that are inspiring you to feel
anxious or to fight. Are there certain self-images that are you trying
to defend?
Is there any evidence that you are forfeiting the fullness and freedom of AS IF living in order to maintain some assumed personality / persona? Are you having trouble in a relationship because “The Boss” persona is fighting for control? Are you angry with someone who is not supporting your false image?
This came from a person who was trapped in - and proud of - her personal identity as “The Alcoholic”:
“I’ve been in a twelve step group for 3 years, 2 months, and 11 days as of today.”
(WHO's counting? What ego-state is counting? And for what purpose, really?).
“I want to say that we may not be perfect and we may not have the same rate of success as our founders did, but that’s the way it is when there is no cure for the disease or illness you’re dealing with but we’re still helping people with the problem one day at a time and people who come here do stop drinking even if for a while and that’s progress and that’s our goal not perfection.”
Reply: “There's a woman named Jean Sharon Abbott who was misdiagnosed as a young child with spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy. After 33 years of countless doctor visits, medical procedures, and unnecessary medications and surgeries, she was correctly diagnosed with dopa-responsive dystonia (DRD).
“Her doctors told her the same thing for thirty-three years: ‘We’re helping you. We’re giving you the best treatment available for your disease. It’s not curable, but if you stick with us, we’ll at least keep you alive.’ The problem with that: they did not know her real problem so they were treating symptoms instead of cause.
“And by buying into a treatment plan that was totally inappropriate and by listening to the doctors who were failing to treat her real problem, she was blocked from leaving that group and going somewhere else and finding the real cause and the real solution.
“That said, you’ll continue to
do what you do, trying to treat mental illness with spirituality and the emotional intoxication it generates. (That comment about spiritual intoxication came from a fellow called Bill W. Surprise. Surprise).
“Been there, tried that. Did not work. Maharaj also: been there, tried that. Did not work. Yet those whom you convince that you know what they need will, as a result of believing you, likely never find the proper treatment for their actual problem which is mental and which involves personality disorders and neuroses and even psychoses.
“Meanwhile, the craziest thing the people listening to you did was not done while under the influence. The craziest thing they did was - even after their insane, multi-year history with alcohol - they begin drinking again . . . when stone-cold sober.
“See? There’s no truth to your assumption that ‘drunk equals crazy but not drunk equals sane.’ Simply being ‘not drunk’ does not equate at all with being ‘restored to sanity.’ The booze was not the problem. Booze was what your members were using to try to treat their real problems which were totally mental. Treating symptoms rather than cause never helps anyone and cannot be consider real ‘progress’ by any stretch of the imagination.
“There is something worst than being the way people were when they were drunk. It is: still being that way but not drunk. Drunkenness might end, but craziness continues without proper treatment.”]
To move on:
Though Maharaj came to understand that the main problems of humanity center in the mind - not in “a bad heart” or in “a sick soul” or in a “malady-plagued spirit” - he did not ignore the role played by assigned and / or assumed personality identifications in generating fighting and conflict and chaos (whether in a home, in an office, in traffic, or on a global scale).
Why? For this simple reason: there can be no acceptance of personalities as actual identifications if there is no mind. If there is a mind, it will accept personalities as identifications. The two go hand-in-hand, so to speak.
Regarding the mind-personality conundrum:
The results of a study of global mental illness by the World Health Organization and Harvard Medical School, as reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association, reveal that from 1% to 5% percent of the populations of most of the countries surveyed were suffering from serious mental illness. By contrast, estimates are that over 99% of the humans on earth suffer from one or more personality disorders.
MORE ON THE NINE BASIC PERSONALITY TYPES
More relevant is the fact that all nine of the basic personality types - which all people have to one degree or another - have the potential to generate a variety of personality disorders.
With most humans being highly-influenced by the subconscious agendas of at least five of those nine types, then most people have at least five groups of disorders which they need to be aware of, need to acknowledge the presence and power of, need to discuss, and then need to be freed of by taking the proper steps to find the proper treatment.
Sometimes that freedom can come by being guided through all of the steps on the path which Maharaj used and which are now being used here; sometimes, other guidance might be needed.
Thus, as non-dual sages have taught for centuries, the relative existence problems of the planet are rooted in the coupling of mind / personality. Realization offers the opportunity to eliminate most of the problems of the planet since, statistically, they are rooted more in personality than in mental illness.
[That said, be aware of the fact that the only difference in personality disorders and insanity - which Maharaj said is a symptom of the Ultimate Sickness which almost all humans are suffering from - is only a matter of degree. All neuroses and psychoses begin as personality disorders which, when ignored, can result in persons disintegrating psychically and then developing grave mental disorders which can eventually disintegrate further into full-blown mental illness / insanity.]
When diagnosable mental health problems reach a level of seriousness that is labeled “clinical,” then a mental illness exists and professional intervention and treatment are indicated. The non-dual understanding cannot treat such conditions;
however, those mental illnesses are very different from personality disorders, and personality disorders can sometimes be addressed and eliminated via the understanding that is attainable by way of the the non-dual understanding. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists attempt to treat personality disorders as well as mental illnesses. Realization offers treatment only for personality disorders, serious though they may be.
Since personality disorders are far more common on planet earth than are mental illnesses, then a logical approach would involve this: when insane-type behavior is being observed, look first to determine if personality is inspiring the conduct in an effort to sustain an illusory self.
Again, while the effects of personality on behavior often appear to involve some degree of mental illness - with persons certainly seeming to be totally insane at times - mental illness and personality disorders are different (by degree).
Consider: 59% of all women and 41% of all men who are killed in the U.S. annually will die during a “relationship breakup.” Some speak of “temporary insanity” as a persona (such as “husband” or “wife” or “lover”) strikes out when a false identity feels threatened.
Those crimes appear to be evidence of a mental illness, yet the stage for those murders is always set long before the murders happen. The murders happen as a result of acculturation whereby persons accepted culturally-assigned personas as true identities and take those to define who they truly are and then they will be willing to kill in an effort to protect a fictitious role assigned within their societies whenever that role / persona feels threatened.
That which is labeled “insanity” or “temporary insanity” in such cases is not actually a mental illness at all. The astronomical murder rate across the planet is more often a result of personality, not a result of clinical mental illness. Yet most people on the planet dismiss such conduct as “insane” or caused by “evil forces” while never being aware of the actual role that personality is playing.
Another reason that personality defects and mental illnesses are mistaken (one for the other) is because the same type of destructive or self-destructive tendencies can be triggered by either. It is true that mental illnesses and personality disorders both call for “treatment,” and the call should be an urgent one, but the effective treatments for those two conditions are quite different.
Again, psychiatrists and psychotherapists attempt to treat both personality disorders and the mental illnesses which they can disintegrate into. Realization offers a treatment plan for personality disorders which, when serious enough, can generate insane thoughts and words and actions.
All but the truly insane, the too young, or the brain-damaged can realize, though the power of faulty programming and conditioning, etc. will prevent most persons from ever doing so. Most will remain trapped in personality for the entire period of manifestation.
If realization is to happen, some questions to be asked include,
“What personas have you adopted and how powerful is their influence upon your behavior?”
“When angry or hurt, WHO is feeling the anger or hurt?”
“What persona is causing you to be miserable or to suffer or to generate conflict?”
and
“How is ego, and your assumption of ego-states as identities, driving you throughout each and every day, all day long?”
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
To watch the most recent talk and Q&A with Walter and his guests, click:
Walter Driscoll and Floyd Henderson
To watch the interview when Walter and Floyd discussed the fact that the Ultimate Sickness is a mental / mind sickness and why learning more is not the answer and why unlearning is the answer, click:
