SHIFTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS, SHIFTS IN DEEDS, Part Four

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Do you think that the realized should be able to tolerate any kind of environment or any kind of people? It sounds like you are saying that. I’ve been reading your writings for several months and lately, there are people I spent a lot of time with before but now I’m not spending time with them at all. I’m not realized, but even if I were, I feel certain that there are some people I just wouldn’t want to be around. Art

F.: Some like Art talk of moving away from some people he “wouldn’t want to be around.” Others stay with people they don’t really want to be around because they are trapped in roles which they have assumed and which they want to continue playing. All roles require a co-dependent counterpart. That dependency displaces freedom, and a lack of freedom displaces happiness. The Advaita Teachings have made clear for centuries that peace and happiness cannot co-exist with false identities and role-playing.

The pointer has been offered that many persons stay around those they don’t really want to be around because of hidden agendas, attachments, laziness, fears, desires, or a sense of entitlement. Case in point was “A,” discussed yesterday, who occasionally wants her husband to die but stays with him for the money and the lifestyle. She even mentions occasionally that she “does loves him…on some level” to minimize the sense that she is really just selling herself.

Are you seeing, Art, that the solution to all these relative existence “relationship problems” lies neither in (a) trying to run away from or in (b) trying to seek out and use? [Solutions are discussed in detail in CASTING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS.]

Today’s post will cover the pointer that [attachments and agendas] can generate acceptance of misery if in denial:

Case “B”:
Regarding, acceptance of misery if in denial
A woman recently complained about “being powerless” to a counselor who shares Advaita pointers during some of her psychotherapy sessions. The woman is frustrated that she "feels powerless" because she doesn’t have the money to provide “the lifestyle that she has always dreamed of.”

The counselor suggested, “You are using the word ‘powerless’ with a negative connotation and the self-fulfilling prophesy is preventing you from moving forth and caring for yourself. To move away from that belief, give me a statement that has a positive connotation and that would be the exact opposite of ‘I am powerless’.”

After extended thinking, the woman answered: “I am being taken care of.” The counselor, stunned for a moment, finally asked, “Did it not occur to you to see that you can ‘empower’ yourself, relatively speaking, if you acquire some salable skill and find employment, meet your own needs, pay your own bills, and become independent?

“I mean, didn’t at least some notion such as, ‘I can become empowered and take care of myself’ not come into consciousness?” The women did not speak, but the look she gave to the counselor spoke volumes, namely, “How are you supposed to help me if you’re going to come up with things that crazy?”

Again, here is a case in which a person is not realizing that a hidden agenda (“to be taken care of”) is leaving her trapped in a relative state of being dependent and needy, in search of someone to take care of her, not finding that person, and therefore suffering misery of a level that drove her to seek counseling. Her denial is that (1) she’s too lazy to get a job and that (2) her real belief is that she is entitled to have some other human take care of her.

As is the case with all who have not Realized, their thoughts and words evidence the degree to which the consciousness has been distorted and the degree to which persons are imprisoned by their desires and fears.

What deeds/actions generally follow such thinking as exhibited in Case “B”? With the “mind”-set currently being exhibited, the most likely scenario will be the forming of an attachment to one who can take care of her, the playing out of a hidden agenda, and eventual entrapment in a self-serving “relationship.” That has been her previous pattern and may well continue to be her pattern for the entire manifestation.

The only freedom that can happen during the manifestation of the consciousness comes when one is freed of thoughts by eliminating belief in the content of the “mind”; when one is freed of the need to speak words constantly…to talk and talk and talk; and in the absence of being driven to go and do and zoom as a result of sleepwalking through the relative existence and being driven by distorted thoughts and warped beliefs.

Again, the post-Realization existence is marked by an absence of the “chatter of a thousand monkeys” that is generated from the “mind” of the non-Realized. It is marked by a movement toward the silence; it is marked by happenings that only happen spontaneously and automatically as a result of being awake, aware, and conscious and as a result of not being driven by hidden agendas or attachments or fears or desires.

Were Case “B” to Realize, she would understand that (1) whatever gives you pleasure will eventually give you pain and that (2) whatever gives you the most pleasure will eventually give you the most pain. (Consider that pointer in terms of your own failed relations, in regards to anything used in excess, or in regards to habits that eventually backfired on you.)

Were “B” to Realize, she would be willing to settle for less rather than seek for more, and she would find a means by which her relative needs for food and clothing and shelter could be met independently rather than by subjecting herself to the entrapment by living in a state of dependence on another.

In "Part Six" of this series, Case “C” will provide an example of the third pointer in this series. In Case “C,” visitors will see a man who has distorted his desire to gain power and his desire to have someone meet his financial and sexual needs into what he terms “love.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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YOUR DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, Part Two

F.: Yesterday, it was seen that persons—those driven by personality and by the residue of childhood experiences—have neither freedom nor independence. Consider how debilitating it is to fear that “others” might see you as "bad" or might not "love" you; to fear that your culture’s definition of “success” might not be attained or to fear reality; to need to be seen as “The Expert”; to fear that “others” won’t take care of you;

to fear being deprived when you already have more than is required; to fear a lack of control and power; to be in fear of “loss.” Consider how childish it is for adults to desire being labeled as “good” or “lovable” or to desire mass approval and adulation; to want to be protected and supported and waited on rather than to support yourself. But those are the very fears and desires that are generated by personality and that persons deal with (often unconsciously) every day. Those are the fears and desires that rob persons of their freedom and their independence.

If a person sitting on death row in Huntsville, Texas were to tell you that he is not incarcerated, you would conclude that he was crazy. Consider how insane-like it is for persons to have neither freedom nor independence while imagining and proclaiming that they are free.

Persons, therefore, live in a prison that they call "their mind" while thinking that they live in “their world.” Their consciousness of self drives an existence that is focused on self and that is, therefore, self-centered and self-absorbed with their individual desires and fears. That is imprisonment...not freedom. Those desires and fears are rooted in personality, and personality depends on body and “mind” for sustenance. All persons are bound not just in personality but are bound as well by “mind” and body identification. In that false state of “mind,” ego differentiates and binds. That is imprisonment...not freedom.

Their false identifications are limiting, binding, and restricting, so neither freedom not independence can possibly happen. Because of belief in a false state, persons fail to understand the true state. Post-Realization, belief in differentiation is not even a possibility; being bound is an impossibility; being limited is totally unfeasible. And it is only when not limited that true freedom and real independence happen.

Identifying with the body and its form, persons haven’t a clue regarding their true, formless nature. Persons who find this site or who visit for satsanga are responding to a subconscious longing for that original state without form which is free of all desire and all fear. That subconscious search is generated by the will of the vestiges of pure consciousness to discard all of the phoniness, to know the real, and to be free once more of anxiety-producing fears and the frustration of unmet desires and unfulfilled expectations.

They long to be free of the inner memories of a child, memories that drive them as adults to wish for and hope for and long for truly childish things...things longed for, but not received, during childhood. Post-Realization, the remainder of the manifestation really can be enjoyed in an AS IF fashion without the longings of a child that were not met fifteen or thirty or sixty years ago.

Yes, sixty years ago, as was the case this week with a woman who at the age of sixty-five is still miserable because her mother to this day will not give her that “atta-girl” that she has longed for all her life. Just because that sixty-five-year-old can drive her car to the store or to another city or to another state does not mean that she is free. To the contrary, she is living within the triple-walled confines of (1) her “mind” and (2) the distorted consciousness and (3) the influence of a mother who was, is and shall always be physically, mentally, and emotionally-unavailable (all relatively speaking).

How can happiness in a sixty-five-year-old woman ever manifest when her thoughts, feelings, and actions are being controlled by a mirage called “mother”? How can happiness in a sixty-five-year-old woman ever manifest when her thoughts, feelings, and actions are being controlled by the desires and fears of “The Frustrated Child Within”?

If ever a case existed wherein a sixty-five-year-old person should be invited to declare her independence, it is that case. If ever a case existed wherein a sixty-five-year-old person should be invited to declare her independence from her false identity of “The Bad Daughter,” it is that case. All merely cycles, in this universe and in all universes. To the dismay of persons, misery and suffering can also cycle in the relative existence, from one generation to the next.

The lyrics of an old Mexican song contain these words that could have been spoken as well by “The Judgmental Mother” in the case above:

I don’t know how to love you.
I don’t even know how to embrace you,
Because what never leaves me
Is this pain that hurts me so.

The misery and suffering of one generation of non-Realized becomes the misery and suffering of the next generation of non-Realized. From as many persons as the daughter might seek advice, she could accumulate just that many pieces of advice about what she needs to do. The non-duality teachings, on the other hand, will explain that she need do nothing other than realize; namely, realize that (1) “daughter” and “good” and “bad” are the stuff of relativity; that (2) all relative "stuff" is illusory; and that (3) if she can see beyond that which is relative and illusory, she might glimpse That Which Is Real. Then, she’ll be able to be free of the binding and limiting “mind” that was generated in large part by a mother operating under the auspices of warped consciousness.

Freed of the effects of the warped consciousness of "her mother," she could realize that she can survive even if the fictitious role of “The Daughter” does not. Then, she could declare her independence from "The Judgmental Mother" and finally be free. [NOTE: Many persons suffer severely from the trauma of abuse and neglect. They might require professional counseling as part of a holistic treatment plan. Some have suppressed recall of the abuse incidents and don’t even know the source of the rage that surfaces on occasion or the nagging unrest that is ever-present.]

For those like the woman trapped in the role of “The Bad Daughter,” however, Realization can help break the chain of pain that is cycled among the non-Realized as they paint their relative existence with the broad strokes of their nonsense. What about you? What are you being moved to declare your independence from? What attachment to illusions, dogma, beliefs, ideas, persons, things, places, or possessions are you being moved to declare your independence from? Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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