EGO-STATES: Either The Invisible Drivers or The Former Hijackers or The Eventual Destroyers, Part Four

FROM A SITE VISITOR: So the whole problem really begins with ego, right? Sam (PS Thanks for the blog site.)

F.: Henry David Thoreau suggested that most persons live “lives of quiet desperation.” An example of that is being observed in the case cited earlier in this series in which a woman is considering suicide because she is losing her “wife” label. Among the Realized, the quiet does often mark the relative existence but desperation mars none of it. The Realized merely see all exactly as it is yet still live in a contented, AS IF fashion that allows peace to happen whether “in relationship” or not, whether “in love” or not, or whether “married” or not. That is never the case with persons (the non-Realized).

Most persons move in and out of what they think are “personal relationships,” often settling into one that they think will be forever. That concept of “personal relationship” amounts to “duality to the second power,” so to speak, because “personal” is rooted in personas and because “relationship” requires a belief that there are two persons who are relating to each other (as opposed to the unicity being known). Were the unicity to be known, there would be nothing happening that could be taken “personally,” there would be no need to work on trying to “relate,” and there would be no ego or egotism driving all “interactions.”

However, since persons cannot witness objectively and see all exactly as it is, they operate in denial, claiming that “all is going along quite well, actually” and that “things in my life are as good as—or far better than—can be expected.” (If that were the case, why is it that as of January 2007, substance abuse rates are at an all-time high as persons try to escape the relative circumstances which they cannot cope with? Why is it that in the U.S., doctors are prescribing anti-depressants to over 10,000,000 women each year? And why is it that 25% of men and women are now abusing alcohol at a level that indicates a need for some level of treatment?)

Can Advaita lead to Realization which could provide a means by which "two" could function in a natural, "not-two" manner? Of course. Since few will ever Realize, though, is it likely that the relative problems that persons are experiencing in “personal relationships” will be reduced? Of course not. How could "two" who do not know the “not-two” possibly have any clue about what the term “love” is trying to point to?

How can persons who do not have the slightest clue about Who/What They Truly Are have any clear understanding of what “love”—or anything else—is? Since their “world” is nothing more than a distorted image of their own “I-consciousness,” and since that warped consciousness traps them in the false I / ego, and since that entrapment will motivate them to seek a perfect clone of themselves to “love,” all persons end up in love with self only. Several previous pointers are relevant in that regard:

Persons desiring to know what love is might benefit more (relatively speaking, of course) if they were able to understand what love is not.

What persons call "love" is the most magnificent experience of all; it is also the most horrendous experience of all. With such duality, how can that possibly be taken for the real? As for feeling or emotion, if love happens as a feeling, take the ride and watch the feelings rise and fall; if love happens as an emotion—that is, if it is being "experienced" by a person in an ego-state—prepare for war.

If such a discussion makes “you” feel uncomfortable to even consider the subject matter, find WHO is it that feels uncomfortable. And even if the discussion does make “you” feel uncomfortable, can you nevertheless relate to any part of the above?

For example, have you ever been convinced that you have really known someone—a friend, an employer, a spouse, a lover, whatever—only to find later that your impression or image of them was totally wrong and that maybe you had been totally fooled? When “the wife” becoming the “not-wife” was asked if her story could be shared anonymously on this site, she said, “If it might keep others from making the mistakes I made, then it’s fine with me.”

That supposes that, trapped as she was in a false identity, she chose to do what she did. It also supposes that if you are trapped in a false persona, you can have freedom of choice, if you can learn from her mistakes (which is not likely to happen either). Would anyone seriously believe that she chose the life she has lived for the last twenty years? Trapped as a result of assuming the false identity of “The Insecure and Dutiful Wife,” she acquiesced to a man’s demand that she abandon her natural instinct to have a child; that she work but never receive any of the pay for her work; that she assent to his daily demands for sex; and that she stand by in denial as he took another woman on trips and as he set up an apartment for the two of them. Now she claims that "he fooled her and didn’t love her," though "she loved him."

She loved him, or she entered into a co-dependent/dependent "relationship" and assumed multiple identities that required his presence to sustain them? Was that love that drove her to behave as she did in her relationship with him? Would love require the abandonment of natural instincts? Would love require that she forfeit the hope of having a child? Would love require the abandonment of Self? Would love require the forfeiture of all that is earned from one’s employment? Would love require that one place one’s head in the sand in order to maintain the status quo and status? Was that love she was showing, or was desire and fear being displayed as an ego-state was driving her and forcing her to place her relative existence on hold to please another and to prevent her from ever seeking the True and Authentic Self? Did she love him, or did she love the roles and the perks that came from sharing a house and a bed with a man she described as being "very handsome and very rich"?

Now, she wants to die without realizing that she has already been dead for 20 years to the degree that she lived a relative existence for someone else and without being true to Self. He had two lives; she had none. For her, the opportunity has finally come for the first time in two decades to actually Realize and then live a contented AS IF existence rather than to end the manifestation. But she would have to find the truth that these earlier considerations (based in non-duality) are pointing to:

“I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.” Oriah Mountain Dreamer

“It appears that where marriage is solemnized by the church and blessed by the priest, it may at the same time be surrounded with customs and ideas of a frivolous, superficial, and even prurient character. Love between a man and a woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking.” Charles Eastman

“I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to Your Self; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.” Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
THE FULL TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT OF “RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS” IS AVAILABLE

Click CASTING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS

“MIND” and MEMORIES: When Nature’s “Assets” Become Warped into “Liabilities,” Part Sixteen

[Continued from yesterday]

F.: The focus now is on the particular personality disorders that develop among each of the nine basic personality types. Personality Type Twos can eventually exhibit the OCD Personality Disorder, a God Complex Disorder, and the Histrionic Personality Disorder and, as always with personality assumption, deeper attachment to false identities happens when persons are stressed, are absorbed in the ego of religiosity or the spiritualized ego, or receive payments for their role-playing.

For coverage of the first two disorders, see yesterday’s post; however, Personality Type Two’s especially display the Histrionic Personality Disorder (a.k.a., Dramatic Personality Disorder) as they fall more and more under the influence of their personality. Again, the relative effects of personality are proven when you observe this disorder in action and see Two’s who suffer instability and emotional intoxication and a distorted self-image. You can see persons suffering this personality defect as their desire to be noticed inspires then to act (and over-react) in ways that are overly-dramatic, highly-theatrical, and generally inappropriate. They become self-ish givers since they intend to get back more than they give, desiring more attention, more “love,” more “respect,” more self-worth, etc. All of that supports duality, desires, and fears.

Personality Type Threes can eventually exhibit the OCD Personality Disorder and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, along with a God Complex Disorder and, as always with personality assumption, deeper attachment to false identities happens when persons are stressed, are overly-pious or highly-spiritual, or receiving monetary gain for their role-playing.

OCD and the God Complex have been covered. Now the discussion turns to the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which many professional therapists agree is the personality disorder that they have had the least success in treating. Threes more than any other groups account for the majority of those on the planet who exhibit the traits of narcissism. According to the DSM-IV, they have an exaggerated sense of self-importance; expect to be recognized as superior; are grandiose; seek unlimited success, power, and beauty; and believe they are special. All of that, of course, generates belief in duality.

They seek out high-status persons or institutions for company; require excessive admiration; have a sense of entitlement; are users, not givers; lack empathy; and are envious, arrogant, haughty, patronizing, and contemptuous. In short, they are the epitome of the egotism that is generated when phony images are cultivated and maintained. These attitudes also support duality to the highest degree with their “better than you” and “different from all others” mentality.

Personality Type Fours can eventually exhibit the Depressive Personality Disorder, the Avoidant Personality Disorder, the Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the God Complex Personality Disorder, especially when stressed, absorbed in the ego of religiosity or the spiritualized ego, or receive payments for their role-playing.

Visitors can read earlier information shared on all of the disorders common to most Fours except for the Avoidant Personality Disorder (APD). Those suffering from APD are inhibited socially and have feelings of inadequacy. They are hypersensitive to criticism and/or rejection which might drive their tendency to isolate or to avoid social contact rather than risk a chance of being abandoned. They are slow to commit as a result of that fear of abandonment. They can develop a sense of inferiority and, therefore, a dualistic sense of separation.

Personality Type Fives can eventually exhibit the God Complex Disorder or the Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD), especially when stressed, overly-pious, highly-spiritual, or being paid to play their roles. See earlier entries for information on the God Complex. SPD sufferers have trouble establishing relationships and experiencing feelings. They avoid close relations, pleasurable experiences, and family connections…preferring to isolate instead. They seem numb, not caring at all about either praise or criticism.

Personality Type Sixes can eventually exhibit the Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD), the Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder (PAPD) and the God Complex Disorder when persons are stressed, are absorbed in the ego of religiosity or the spiritualized ego, or receive payments for their role-playing.

See earlier entries for information on the God Complex. Those suffering from PPD are distrustful and suspicious of “others,” reinforcing their belief in duality. They feel they are constantly being deceived or harmed or exploited by “others” and regularly question the loyalty of friends and family. They take offense over comments not intented to offend, they bear grudges, and they seldom forgive. They react angrily to the slightest of slights. All of that reinforces their dualistic beliefs. PAPD's are resistance to instruction and responsibilities. They become resentful, stubborn, negative, and sullen. They use procrastination as a way to avoid meetings, deadlines, events, or responsibilities.

Personality Type Sevens can eventually exhibit the God Complex Disorder, the Bi-Polar Personality Disorder (BPPD) known in the past as the Manic-Depressive Personality Disorder and the Histrionic Personality Disorder when they become stressed, overly-pious, or highly-spiritual, or when paid to play a role.

Earlier discussions covered all except the BPPD, often marked by extreme states of mood. High vs. low moods can change throughout a day or over the course of months. They tend to develop highly dualistic perspectives and see everything as all black or all white, meaning everything is totally positive or totally negative. The disorder can appear with levels of seriousness but, by definition, supports duality to the extreme. Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued] For additional information about the book which these excerpts are being drawn from (There's No Such Thing As "Peace of Mind") click

here

COMING IN THREE DAYS: A RIVER THAT FLOWS INTO THE OCEAN OF REALITY

DISCARDING “KNOWLEDGE” WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY LEARNED IGNORANCE, Part Six, The Conclusion

Among religions and philosophies, there is no other means that can produce the necessary brain-flush save completion of the entire Advaita “journey” which invites the dissolution of all of the contamination that is “the mind.”

From a site visitor: I’m totally westernized--gulity as charged--so I’ve been trained to give great value to knowledge, which you’ve been knocking. I’m at least willing to listen to you and see if I can get your point, but looking at your bio info, you obviously attended university, acquired enough knowledge to convince someone that they should pay you to use that knowledge, and then paid your bills through use of that knowledge. Your vast knowledge in many subject areas is obvious. So, what’s the deal? Larry

F.: It should be seen, therefore, that (via the Advaita Teachings) you are being invited to discard all of the warped and perverted and insane teachings set forth by “holy” men and by all others. Some have asked, “But how am I to know if an Advaitan Teacher in not warped or perverted or insane?” and that question should be asked. First, you will not be asked to give away a percentage of your money for life or to make extravagant donations to “the latest cause,” to satiate the teachers’ sexual proclivities, to attend meetings or services for life, or to accept unquestioningly any pointers that the teacher offers.

If the teachings are twisted to encourage any of those four, leave. Find another teacher. Reliance upon the teachers’ words should only happen after evidence has demonstrated that the teacher is offering un-self-ish, sane and rational pointers instead of magical thinking and self-serving concepts. Then only should the teachings be accepted. Another test is this: the message will always be about getting rid of, never about accumulation. Stage Four of the Five Stages to Full Realization (discussed in THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS) is the de-accumulation stage that must happen if AS IF living is to follow. A sure evidence that Realization has not happened is a continuing desire, and the desire to accumulate is a doubly-strong warning.

A final point on this subject of guru-selection: the Realization process is not psychotherapy, though many nowadays try to use it as such. Yes, there might be some psychological concepts/thorns that can facilitate the removal of thorns before all of the concepts are tossed. But another problem is being seen lately among many seekers that should be noted: though AS IF living in the relative existence happens post-Realization, dissociative disorders and attachment disorders should not be mistaken for the non-attachment that accompanies Realization. Yet that is happening. Realization is not about "escapism" or "surrender" or "denial." "Giving up" belief in illusions or "giving up" attachment to worldly "stuff" is not about "giving up" on the relative existence.

That "death of ego" that is talked about does not require physical death of the body-mind as well, only a willingness to stop accepting those limited identifications as Self. Many have been seen in recent years who have suffered from problems with mental-emotional roots beyond those addressed by Advaita Teachings. (Those trying to understand their suffering do become seekers more often than those not in touch with their own pain, yes?) Many of those seekers "find" Advaita and use it to try to whitewash or understand their trauma or to rewrite their nightmarish experiences as something spiritual in nature. Many is the U.S. are even programmed by the dominant dogma to accept suffering as being "beneficial" in some "long run."

That whitewashing or rewriting or supposed "understanding" is another self-delusion that will perpetuate entrapment in personality and in personality's accompanying personality disorders. Dissociative disorders, death wishes, attachment disorders, and depression's acquiesence that is often mislabeled as "acceptance"--while all the stuff of the relative existence--are not treated by the seven-steps to Realization. In this age in which "minds" are being formed that are reaching all-time highs in their level of distortion (and in which a bastardized food supply is negatively impacting organs that affect mental-emotional conditions as well) be wary of any individual that claims that he/she has found the secret that can address and heal everything that needs addressing and healing. Sometimes, professionals are required to treat the part that Advaita was not intended to treat. The preponderance of self-help and twelve-step groups nowadays has given "armchair psychology" a respectability that can prove fatal.

To transcend identification with the body and mind does not mean that body and mind are to be neglected for the remainder of the manifestation. Indeed, when Realization frees persons of body-mind identification and restores sanity, subsequent body requirements or mental health needs are typically addressed, not ignored by use of another psychological tool called "denial." As long as a "mind" remains, it can require varied levels of treatment.

Finally, seekers who come here for a retreat or who arrange for satsanga and expect to “receive” are misguided. Those who come to this site hoping to “gain something” are mistaken. If the pointers hit their mark and shift the consciousness through each of the seven levels of the re-purification process, then you will not know more. Instead, the relative ignorance will be gone; the relative and the worldly and the other-worldly knowledge will be discarded; and that which remains will be the no-concept, non-dual Reality that You Are.

And guess what, Larry: that/That is all there ever was to begin with! This is the point to grasp. Suppose you approach a grocer and say, “I’d like to have some broccoli,” whereupon he hands you some broccoli. How insane would it be for you to look at it and then say to the grocer, “No, this is not broccoli—this is stalks and florets and stems and heads. I want some broccoli.” If he were to suggest that you are perceiving wrongly and are mistakenly believing that the various parts that you are labeling are something different from the whole “broccoli,” then you would likely think him insane.

That is the way it is with this understanding: a few have Realized and know “it’s all broccoli and nothing but broccoli” so to speak, but most persons will imagine all kinds of separate parts and will never come to understand that “it’s all just broccoli, period.” So it is. The invitation for you is to forget about trying to accumulate a body of knowledge and try to understand instead. What you think you see, you are seeing in error. Any knowledge that you cling to, you cling to in error. If you study broccoli until you know more about broccoli than any other person on the planet, it will not change the taste of the broccoli or the chemistry of the broccoli. Therefore, Larry, why not just eat your broccoli and then relax? Please enter the silence of contemplation.

WHY MOST PERSONS WILL NEVER REALIZE, Part Three

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Dear Mr. Henderson, Re; your am post of this date.[8 Feb 2007] Can you speak about how to move beyond the fear of losing \"this\" to embracing \"That\". When I think about \"Why not Realize\". It is fear. Fear of losing parts of the little self that I have allowed to define me. Peace,Peace,Peace Virginia

F.: [Continued from yesterday]

DENIAL
When persons read the February 7th and 8th postings that describe the insanity that marks the relative existence of the non-Realized, most will deny that anything in those two postings applies to them. Even as validated research confirms that 95% of people in “developed nations” suffer depression to some degree and that most persons suffer from MPD/DID and that bi-polar disorders have reached an all-time high and that 95% or more are addicted to something, most persons will deny that they are depressed or that they have any really significant problems. The ego always reports to itself that “it is doing just fine” and then reports the same to any who would question that delusion.

Among persons, the case is usually that denial and distortion re-frame miserable experiences as “normal” or as “OK, really” or as "That's just the way it is." It is also usually the case than unbelievable pain—of the mental and emotional and physical varieties—must manifest before persons will take action. When people are asleep, they must be shaken to be awakened, and who that is sound asleep would want to be shaken or awakened? Even those who are having nightmares usually prefer that their nightmare-filled sleep continue as opposed to taking the seven steps that are required in order to be fully awakened.

GREED
Finally, persons are controlled by greed. At the root of that greed is, once again, the desires of false personas and the fear that there will never be enough or that they will not always have enough to sustain all the images that the non-Realized adopt. Whereas Realization is about not wanting and about de-accumulating, body-mind-personality identification is about wanting and accumulating. “Giving up” rather than “getting” is anathema in the planet’s cultures of accumulation. Simplification, therefore, is also scorned, so complications ensue. Trapped within those conditions, the corrupted consciousness will usually remain corrupted throughout its manifestation. (Relatedly, the question that triggered your question was, "Why not Realize?" That could as well be stated as, "Why not clean up the corrupted consciousness that you have become and be restored to the state of pure consciousness that You Were?" or "Why not get free of all the myth-based lies that you've been taught?" or "Why not take out the garbage rather than letting it stay inside and contaminate your home and infect your very being?")

If the consciousness were re-purified enough to understand that “this” is a mirage and that THAT is all that’s real, Full Realization would happen. That understanding happens only after seeing how many lies have been told to humanity for thousands of years. Yet most persons—driven by fear, desire, arrogance, denial and greed—will continue to take lies and myths and superstitions to be true. Furthermore, in cultures where fear, desire, arrogance, denial and greed are now taken to be “the norm,” little inspiration to be free of any of those will manifest.

Thus, most will never Realize because fear, desire, arrogance, denial, greed and chaos have become preferable among the persons of the planet; therefore, the results of Realization—namely, an awareness that there’s nothing to fear, that there are no real requirements that should trigger desires, that having less lightens the load, and that awareness of truth results in peace—have no appeal at all. Because persons have such low tolerance for self-awareness and for self-inventory that reveals their relative-existence liabilities, they automatically have no interest in self-awareness, in Self Awareness, in relative shortcomings and abnormalities, or in truth.

Therefore, most will remain trapped in their body-mind-personality identification. If one would hate to lose even one single finger, think how much more he/she would hate to give up the body. If one is proud of her/his learned ignorance and "mind," why would the person consider giving up the lie-filled mind as the path to peace? If a person is so proud of the roles being played, why would he/she even consider discarding those phony roles and stop playing all the phony games? Most never will, and so it is. But anyone reading this post certainly has the opportunity to begin the seven-step “journey” to Full Realization. Please enter the silence of contemplation.