PEACE EVERY DAY…OR NOT, Part Three

[See the post on 30 August 2007 for the original e-mail being addressed]

F.: If ideas and concepts and beliefs are not forfeited (and if one is not freed of the influence of old wounds and old “memories” and old programming) then changing jobs, houses, cities, circumstances, people, or anything else will have no lasting impact on changing one’s emotional state. If the seemingly endless chain of desires and expectations is not forfeited, one can get everything she/he might wish for or hope for or long for, but consistent happiness and consistent peace will not manifest. Full Realization, on the other hand, will provide a lasting impact, relatively speaking.

But Full Realization cannot happen as long as persons think that the beliefs of their parents, their teachers, their preachers, their priests, their imams, their rabbis, or their politicians are Truth. Any of “their” beliefs which have become “your” beliefs will block you from finding Truth...and peace.

Some seekers have seen the lies that are driving them by writing a thorough list of their beliefs, seeing where those beliefs really came from, and then questioning their validity. (In fact, no one’s beliefs have really come from parents or pastors or priests, etc. The most widely-held and most respected beliefs today are thousands of years old, were dreamed up by controlling men during ancient times, were passed down to the ignorant masses, and have been repeated and accepted as truth for thousands of years by billions and billions of non-Realized persons among the also-ignorant masses.)

The writing exercise can reveal to honest seekers the fact that they have no beliefs that are their own but that they have only adopted the beliefs of others. That prevents them from realizing what they have always known, within, but have forgotten. The exercise can show that there is no basis in fact for the concepts and ideas and beliefs that have been adopted from others.

The process can expose the fact that those beliefs are driving you into an unstable existence that is marked by fluctuations between being OK if alone vs. not being OK at work; between enjoying the pleasure of pleasant situations vs. suffering the misery of unpleasant situations; and between feeling spiritual at times vs. not feeling spiritual at other times.

Consider: some homes have thermostats that has been programmed to cool houses in the summer and to heat them in the winter. A thermostat is programmed to maintain temperatures within a certain, limited range. If it has not been programmed, it will not function. Its program determines what it does or what it does not do.

Similarly, persons do nothing that they have not been programmed or conditioned or enculturated to do. Unfortunately for persons, they do not choose their programming any more than a thermostat chooses its programming. As in the case of the thermostat that limits temperature ranges, the programming of persons limits the way that they function as well.

It may appear that the thermostat is making a decision when it activates or deactivates "automatically," but obviously it is not. It has no power of choice because it is programmed. That same type of programming leaves persons totally helpless even though they believe that their ideas and beliefs and concepts are a source of power and are a benefit. They think they are freely making choices.

How deceived they are. You were programmed in the way that certain key role-players in your early life choose to program you. The people who lived next door to where you grew up as a child would have likely given you a totally different program. Those of one religion will program people in a way that is completely diferent from the programming that people of another religion are given.

Those of one denomination will program people in a way that is completely diferent from the programming that people of another denomination are given. People of one political party will program people in a way that is completely diferent from the programming that people of another party are given.

People with one type of boss will become conditioned in a way that is completely diferent from the conditioning that people with a different type of boss will be given. And all of your conditioning and programming—not you—will determine how you emote in any given circumstance.

The invitation to you is to take all seven steps to Realization and then you will not co-dependently allow strangers or people at work or anywhere else to determine how you feel. You’ll begin to cross the path of fewer and fewer “numbskulls” at work or outside work. Eventually, there will be no “jaime" and no “you” that has any agenda that can be interfered with. You’ll be free of any identity that can imagine it has been hurt or threatened, and then you’ll function as the True Self.

Persons are separated from the awareness of That Which They Truly Are, and only awareness of That can result in peace and happiness during the manifestation. As for you, jaime, your case in not unique, so there’s no need to take any words as criticism; nor is there any need to criticize your “self” (or selves).

Your search has taken you far enough along a “path” that you have discovered the philosophy of Advaita, the understanding of which might eliminate at the root all of the frustration and anger that you think you’re experiencing at certain times. To be free, though, you'll be required to abandon all identification with “Jaime the Experiencer of Frustration and Anger” or “The Jaime Who Is Driven by Unmet Expectations and Unfulfilled Desires.” More on that tomorrow. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (Tomorrow: The Conclusion)
READINGS RELATED TO TODAY’S POST:
SEEKING “PEACE OF MIND”?

Click THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (There Is Only Peace If You’re Out of Your Mind)

WORKING ON BEING FREE OF PERSONALITY?

Click LIBERATION

WORKING ON HAVING THE COURAGE TO QUESTION ALL OF THE "SACRED COWS" IN YOUR CULTURE?

Click IT'S ALL BULLSHIT

READY TO TAKE THE SEVEN-STEP “JOURNEY” TO REALITY?

Click FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)

TERESA: The Poster Child for the Brutality of Programming, Part Two

[Note: Leaving town this morning to offer satsanga. “Part Three, the Conclusion” will be posted on Tuesday.]

F.: The recently-published letters of Mother Teresa reveal the level of torment and suffering she experienced most of her life after being programmed and conditioned with dogma as a child and after being maneuvered into giving up her pursuit of the life that she really wanted. “The Nun Headed to Sainthood” persona would combine with the subsequent egotism, thereby driving her to turn her back on truth and light each time either tried to rise into consciousness. The result was not merely the “darkness” she wrote about; the result was that she would eventually proclaim her “love of the darkness.”

Her programming and religious ego-states inspired her to try to justify the use of any means to reach her religion's goals, including receipt of over a million dollars in stolen funds from convicted felon Charles Keating, funds which she used to spread her Christian beliefs. When she wrote to the judge in Keating’s case to beg for leniency, L. A. Deputy D.A. Paul Turley responded. His letter informed her that she was guilty of having received stolen funds and that she should return the money to its rightful owners: the bond-holders from whom the money had been stolen.

She did not answer his letter and she kept the money, but she wrote to a friend and confessed “hypocrisy.” Yet Mother Teresa was not the exception in that regard. The rationalization that “God’s interests always supersede man’s laws” is a common belief among those programmed in “the faith”:

The early Mormons taught that “Lying for the Lord”—as well as cheating and stealing and killing for the Lord—is totally justified if it protects or spreads their religion. Today, many Muslims believe that those who do not adhere to the dictates of their dogma are “infidels” and should be killed. A born-again Christian president said that he heard the voice of “The Father” telling him to bomb and invade another nation. In the case of Teresa, however, she at least recognized her phoniness, unlike the billions on the planet who do not see their own:

TERESA: “My smile is 'a mask' or a 'cloak' that covers everything.”

Unlike most persons who never see that their role-playing is a lie, Teresa did (and living the lie took its toll):

TERESA: "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.”

The facts revealed in letters and other accounts show that, as early as 1948, Teresa likely had an awakening, but the truth was so frightening (after years of believing the lies of her priest and after assuming her false roles to be real) that she had to reject truth and cling, at least publicly, to the lies with which she had been programmed.

Christopher Hitchens said, “She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself.”

Of course she did not dig that pit. It was dug by her priest and her mother and her other programmers who then tossed her into that pit for life. Persons across the globe domesticate their dogs; parents and priests and teachers and politicians across the globe domesticate children by the same means. The only unique elements in the case of Teresa’s programming are her letters which reveal the life-long effects that manifest when the warped consciousness is left untreated. Among most non-Realized persons, the resulting misery and suffering never register.

In this case though, a set of letters exposes the tortured psyche that results when persons are exposed to childhood programming and conditioning and enculturation and are thereafter driven throughout their entire relative existence by nonsensical beliefs and ideas and concepts. Is it any wonder that she would eventually write:

TERESA: “...There is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work’.”

Yesterday, it was asked, “My gosh, Teresa. What did they do to you? You were so plump and pink and happy and cheerful.”

Today, the answer is clear: They did to her what they did to “you” (and to all): they used lies and nonsense to program and condition and domesticate and enculturate you, and her, during childhood. They will try to continue their programming and conditioning of you throughout adulthood. They will do all they can to fool you, convinced that they are telling you the truth.

The difference is, while Teresa rejected the light and "loved the darkness," you can accept the light and come to love the Light. You can be free of the “mind.” You can be liberated. You need not wallow in the depths of what Teresa called “dryness, darkness, loneliness and torture.”

Teresa's spoken words were lies all her life, the same way that the words spoken by all persons are lies; however, even though that speck of consciousness called "Teresa" is no longer manifested, the consciousness that spoke via her written words shows time and again that the answer is not "God." [Teresa:"Heaven means nothing."] Instead, the content of her letters is living proof that the proper treatment for the darkness is enlightenment. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued Tuesday)
READINGS RELATED TO TODAY’S POST:

Click THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (There Is Only Peace If You’re Out of Your Mind)

Click SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (Recovering What Religions Lost)

Click LIBERATION

Click IT’S ALL BULLSHIT