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

Psychiatrists and psychotherapists attempt to treat mental illnesses. Realization offers the treatment for personality disorders.

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Loved your expression “brain-flush”?! Now that resonates. I’ve been visiting your site off-and-on since the early days - you did a piece one time on the brain and mind and consciousness but I can’t find it in the search. Can you tell me how to find that and then tie it in with “brain-flush”? LOL Thanks.

[Continued from yesterday]

F.: So to differentiate between behavior that is driven by mental illness as opposed to that which is driven by programming and conditioning and enculturation, it must be understood that taking personas to be actual identities results in personality disorders which only look like insanity to the objective witness; nevertheless, personality disorders do block the cognitive functioning of the brain. Further, personality disorders block the natural and normal functioning of the brain and body far more often than do mental illnesses. 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 had serious mental illness.

By contrast, estimates are that 99% of the earth’s population suffer from one or more personality disorders; thus, as Advaitin sages have taught for centuries, the relative existence problems of the planet are rooted in personality. Realization offers the opportunity to eliminate most of the problems of the planet since they are rooted in personality, not in mental illness. 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. Advaita cannot treat such conditions; however, those mental illnesses are very different from personality disorders, and personality disorders can be addressed and eliminated via the understanding that is attainable by way of the Advaita teachings. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists attempt to treat mental illnesses. Realization offers the treatment for personality disorders.

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 ...

This is an excerpt from the book
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND”
(There Is Only Peace if You’re Out of Your Mind)

For information on the book, visit http://advaitavedantabooks.blogspot.com/

To order the book, visit
http://floydhenderson.com/order.htm
(You can use the Special Message box)

Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued] For additional information, click

here

TRANSCENDENCE: Not “Death,” but the “Death” of Ego, the “Death” of False Identities, the “Death” of Misperceptions, Part One

“…If you cling to the false identity of “husband,” you shall never find the True Self, so peace will never happen consistently. If you find the True Self, then “husbanding” or “not husbanding” can happen…and consistent peace will happen either way.”

FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Received 1 March 2007] Found your site recently. Some of your writings have helped more since my wife left than the so-called “pros” I went to and the so-called “support groups” but that old husband idea is still kicking my ass (pardon the French.) What you wrote today about being energy and not really being a husband is trying to tell me something but husband still feels very real right now and so does his pain. Any other tips?

F.: Yes, certain other “tips” can be offered. First, rest in the assurance that what you are discussing in your e-mail can be transcended. It is possible for you to reach a state of being that is beyond the so-called “material experiences” or “relative existence experiences” that are not being experienced by You at all but that are being imagined by your assumed, false identities to be real. (That is not intended to minimize the current relative pain that you're perceiving.) Many persons over the years have responded to that assurance with such retorts as, “How could something that I can actually feel not be real?” Well, amputees report that occasionally they can “feel an itch” in a missing foot, can “feel pain” in a missing leg, or can “feel their missing hand” grasping an object. Are those feelings real? No. Are they perceived to be 100% real? Yes. So it is with your imaginary ego-state of "husband" and what it perceives it is “feeling.”

Transcending the disappointments and chaos and misery and pain of this relative existence does not require a “physical death.” One definition of “to die” is “to cease” or “to disappear.” Using those definitions, understand that freedom from your illusory pain can come if you allow the ego to “die,” if you allow the false identities and role-playing to “die,” and if you allow the distorted misperceptions to “die.”

The following will seem cold to some persons, but it is the primary lesson that you must grasp at this point on your “journey” through this relative existence. Here is the primary pointer: if you cling to the false identity of “husband,” you shall never find the True Self, so peace will never happen consistently. If you find the True Self, then “husbanding” or “not husbanding” can happen…and consistent peace will happen either way. Understand that neither “husband” nor “True Self” has any form. Understand the unreality of one and the reality of the other and then ego, identities, and misperceptions shall be transcended.

“Husband” was a figment of someone’s imagination, a label dreamed up only about 800 years ago after 13.5 million years of “human-type experiences” happened without that false identity. You have bought into someone’s imagining and allowed someone else to assign that role to you. Ever since, that role has determined how you feel and think and behave.

Can you see the degree of influence that role assumption can have, especially when combined with a belief in the concept of “possession,” a concept that suggests that a woman can become “my wife” or that a man can become to a woman “her husband”? Belief in the concepts of “human possession” and “personal ownership” is so strong that in the U.S., 59% of all women killed and 41% of all men killed are murdered during breakups when personas believe that their possessions and their identities are being stolen or lost.

And all of that misery (and even murder) happens in defense of a formless mirage…a figment of imaginings generated by the programmed “mind.” How to be free of the effects of the programmed “mind”? Understand that the “mind” is the root of all illusion. How to be rid of the “mind”? It must be turned in on itself, so to speak, in order that all of its fallacious concepts can be seen to be untrue. (What actually happens is that some vestige of pure consciousness becomes aware of the condition of the corrupted consciousness and discards the content of the fictional “mind.”)

In that light of awareness, the “mind” is burned away like a skin cancer that is exposed to the light amplification of a laser; then, the belief in untruths is allowed to “die” (i.e., “to cease” or “to disappear”). Then the “pathway” to truth is cleared of the obstacles of deceit and can be followed step-by-step to Full Realization, to Full Liberation, to Full Freedom.

Again, is the solution to never marry? Of course not, but the only way to avoid your emotional intoxication and emotional pain is to accept that marriage might happen or might not, but in either case it must happen without the playing of phony roles and without the adoption of false identities, if peace is to be maintained.

By the way, the True Self, like the imaginary “husband,” is also formless. It is not “the True Witness” if you assume that Witness to be something with a form. More accurately, it is merely formless witnessing. Abandon the goal to preserve “husband” or to mourn the “death” of “husband” and make it a goal to find the True Self so that objective, pure witnessing can happen. That alone will free you of the effects of the emotional intoxication and the emotional hangovers that happen as false identities "come" and as false identities "go." Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]