FALSE IDENTITIES: MYTHS, LIES, AND FACTS, Part Two, The Conclusion

F.: [Continued from yesterday] In Tuesday's post, it was seen that Tom Cunningham has compiled his own list of some of the roles that must also be discarded if one is to be at peace. (All of the roles listed are rooted in Sigmund Freud's “His Majesty the Baby” belief systems, as discussed in the posting from three days ago.)

Cunningham discusses the myths that accompany each of the false identities on his list and then offers by way of contrast the actual facts that apply. For those attempting to identity all ego-state assumed and all roles being played—in order to discard them—the following are offered for consideration. Are you playing any of the games associated with these false identities that are rooted in immaturity and in Freud’s “His/Her Majesty the Baby”?

The Entertainer
Myth: If I can entertain you with my music, my wit, or any other talent, you will worship and adore me.
Fact: We experience acceptance only if others rave about our talents and seek our company in order to be entertained. The game is up when others tire of always having to be a fan or realize we have no warm, human qualities to contribute to a relationship.

The Perfectionist
Myth: I am not worthwhile unless I succeed at being the best at what I do.
Fact: No one is always the best or most successful, but we try to gain self-worth by doing certain things well. The end of the game comes either when we realize the futility of such high expectations or when others tire of our competitiveness.

The Sweet One
Myth: If I am nice and sweet to everyone, they will like me.
Fact: Our fear of rejection causes us to constantly seek approval from everyone. The end of the game is when we realize we can’t make everyone happy or when others tire of our wishy-washy attitudes.

The Rebel
Myth: I must get my way or else. Rules are for other people. If you tell me not to do something, you are waving a red flag in my face and challenging me to do it.
Fact: We rebels usually get the consequences or punishment we deserve or ask for. The end of the game is when we weary of paying the price the outlaw must pay and abandon this behavior.

The Martyr
Myth: I deserve to suffer. I don’t count. Nobody understands. Poor me. I see your pity as an expression of love.
Fact: We confuse love with pity and believe sacrificing ourselves will protect us from abandonment. The end of the game is when we get tired of suffering and realize we deserve better.

The Dropout
Myth: If you won’t play the game my way, then I won’t play the game at all.
Fact: Paralyzed by fear of failure and rejection, we attempt nothing and feel the world owes us. We are so discouraged and pessimistic, we give up before we even start. The end of the game comes when others get tired of providing a free ride.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant (associated with what was called "the European period of Enlightenment") saw the phenomenal as an island of knowledge that persons become locked onto, but the island is surrounded on all sides by the noumenal.

The metaphor is accurate in that persons are (1) locked into their belief systems and then (2) locked into the thoughts, words, and deeds that accompany those belief systems yet are (3) within reach of the noumenal…the understanding of which could unlock them from their entrapment on that island of personas.

The phenomenal island of knowledge (a.k.a. learned ignorance, corrupted consciousness) that results in the locked, closed "minds" of persons who take the phenomenal world to be real can only be escaped by entering into the surrounding realm of the noumenon and then abiding as the Absolute in that no-knowledge and no-concepts realm.

Only by understanding That which is noumenal can Truth be found. Anything dealing with the phenomenal is untruth. All roles and beliefs and ideas and concepts are phenomenal and are, therefore, all lies. Any lie that is taken to be truth forms another of the bars of the prison of the locked “mind.” There is no freedom unless there is freedom from ideas and beliefs. Total freedom can manifest the second that you reach a state of zero concepts. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (Tomorrow: "How to Make Babies Since Most Adults Surveyed Don't Really Know")
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THE INSTABILITY OF DUALITY, Part One

F.: The Realized have no “mind” by which to think, so no dualistic thoughts such as “good vs. bad” can arise. Functioning from a position of neutrality, the extremes of “good” or “bad” are irrelevant. But such is not the case with persons.

Some persons were conditioned and programmed to believe that they are “bad.” The resulting low self-esteem can make persons aggressive, but more often the result is that persons become easily hurt by criticism; avoid feelings while being trapped in emotions; take blame for everything considered negative; feel helpless; fear failure; try to please others; suffer depression; and can become self-destructive. The result of duality in their case is instability.

On the other hand, there are those who were programmed to believe that they are “really good,” "really special," and “really different” from “others.” Freud used the term "His Majesty the Baby" to describe these types. Others use the term "Queen Baby" or "King Baby" to describe persons with overly-inflated self-esteem and who dualistically believe that they are "very good" and "better than others."

As a result of buying into that dualistic extreme, these babies in adult bodies eventually lose the ability to feel but do react with extreme emotionalism; become addicted to chaos and also suffer instability; become obsessed with the phenomenal existence and its preoccupation with the material; become more trapped than most in dualistic and judgmental thinking; overreact; demand immediate gratification; develop a paranoid "me vs. them" mentality; blame and complain; seek approval; hate criticism; and become impulsive, irritable, aggressive, irresponsible, destructive, harmful, deceitful, and manipulative.

Convinced that their sense of entitlement is legitimate, they can even become criminal when all does not go their way or when they do not get what they want. Such are the tolls of buying into "bad" labels, as with the first group, and buying into "good" labels the way that "His Majesty the Baby" does. Functioning under the influence of such duality, instability and moods swings and chaos are inevitable.

A seminal element of the non-duality understanding is the realization that you are neither “good” nor “bad.” The relative nonsense described above which accompanies the belief that one is “very good” or “very bad” should make clear that such beliefs will prevent happiness, contentment, and any sense of ease from happening with any consistency in the relative existence. And the further persons move from a position of neutrality, the more aggravated will their unhappiness or discontentment or dis-ease become. Meaning?

Meaning persons who think that they are “very bad” will generate more misery than those who think they are “bad”; those who think they are “very good” will generate more misery than those who think that are “good.” And all duality eventually leads to those extremes of duality because the moment any ego-state is assumed, automatically egotism assigns super status to that state.

For example, the moment that one accepts the identity of “The Wife,” that person will very soon become “The Super Wife” and will immediately demand that she have a “Super Husband.” The same is true of the male assuming the false identity of “The Husband” who will take himself (his self) to be “The Super Husband” who deserves nothing less than a “Super Wife.” And both will initially want their roles to last forever while being disappointed time and again that their roles are not consistently and constantly receiving the respect due someone of such high status.

Yet all ego-states are temporary. That alone generates a sense of instability as identities come and go. Frustration also comes with assumption of such ego-states since there is (1) a desire among persons for their false ego-states/false identities to last forever while there is also (2) occasional fear that they might not.

Therein lies the irony of duality and of taking the relative to be real: persons want stability, but the very roles they assume, identify with, and take to be everlasting are actually transitory and short-lived. While longing for continuity, they cling to transient roles and dualistic concepts which are ephemeral, that prevent stability, and that cannot possibly last. That which is real and stable is beyond phenomenal boundaries. As the warped consciousness longs for stability and permanence, it hasn’t a clue that only the Noumenon is stable and permanent.

Nor can the corrupted consciousness understand that the “mind” which is projecting the phenomenal is only imagining that the play of the attributes is real. In error, the "mind" takes the temporary to be permanent without having ever experienced even a glimpse of That which is eternal and stable. Only by discarding all belief in the temporary (including the body, the “mind,” the attributes, and the identities) can the Real be seen and can stability happen for the remainder of the manifestation.

To believe that there is “good vs. bad” or that there is “the phenomenal and the Noumenal” or to believe that “I AM THAT; I AM” has anything to do with “two” is to beg for instability and/or fluctuating moods and/or chaos. That any of your current roles will last even to the end of the manifestation is questionable, but those roles certainly will not last beyond. In the meantime, while they are being played, those roles will generate desires at times and fears at other times that further contribute to instability and/or fluctuating moods and/or chaos as well.

The process to eliminate instability and/or fluctuating moods and/or chaos is, first, to end body identification by finding where you were and what you were in the days prior to conception and, secondly, to be done with the illusions of the “mind” once and for all. (A source that can help relieve you of the “mind” that churns out a steady stream of thoughts which prevents peace during the day as well as sleep at night is available.) Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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SOCIOPATHS (PSYCHOPATHS), NARCISSISTS, ADDICTS AND THE NON-REALIZED, Part Ten, The Conclusion

F.: As some have noted in their e-mails, this entire series has dealt with relative “issues.” The Advaita Teachings are presented in stages, and it is in the later stages where discussions with protégés turn the focus to the True Self, to the non-beingness, to The Absolute, and to that which deals with the Noumenon. In the early stages of the teaching, the phenomenal “issues” must be discussed. Why?

If a building is about to collapse because its foundation is warped, then why discuss the cracks in the upper stories? Similarly, it must first be understood that body-mind-personality identification is the warped foundation on which all relative misery is based. If seekers are not freed of identification with personality, and freed of the phenomenal effects of the accompanying disorders, then it is useless to discuss with them any aspects regarding the later steps of a seven-step “journey” to Realization.

While those persons who exhibit the traits and behaviors of the NPD, APD, and ASPD disorders (a) can be destructive while feeling no remorse, or (b) can kill and then walk about the streets as if a hero, or (c) can create families and then abandon them without a care, or (d) can be abusive while maintaining an image of being kind or (e) can begin needless wars and then preen and strut about for the cameras, it should be noted:

Those with such disorders were programmed and conditioned and acculturated in a way that completely separated them from awareness of the True Self and the unicity that They Are. Anyone so abusive was likely subjected to abuse. Relatedly, anyone willing to tolerate the abuse of those with NPD, APD, and ASPD was also likely abused and ended up with a narcissist or sociopath or addict because it “felt familiar.” (The abused—whether abused mentally, physically, emotionally or otherwise—generally have a greater-than-usual tolerance for discomfort or pain. They are especially prone to repetition compulsions…re-creating the same miserable but familiar scenarios...over and over.) It is not only the air, the elements, and the conscious energy that can cycle. In the relative existence, abuse cycles as well.

The objective witness can study either history or current events and see that the Advaita Teachings have been, and are, an indicated part of the “treatment” for that which mars the relative existence of persons (that is, of the non-Realized). In order to review the traits and behaviors of persons with NPD, APD, and ASPD, traits and behaviors that can often be eliminated via Full Realization, the list from yesterday continues:

21. Realization eliminates the assumption of false roles which always generate dependency and co-dependency
22. Realization eliminates egomania, megalomania, and a sense of entitlement
23. Realization eliminates pomposity and strutting about as if on stage
24. Realization eliminates the relative-existence-suffering that is generated by personality and personality disorders
25. Realization eliminates the sense of separation that results when fixated in a state of religious and/or spiritual arrogance (the third of seven steps to Realization)
26. When Realization eliminates that fixation, it also eliminates judging and separating from and even killing, all of which have, historically, resulted from assumption of those two ego-states
27. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use rationalization
28. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use escapism
29. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use repression
30. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use normalization
31. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use denial and minimizing
32. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use avoidance
33. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use self-delusion
34. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use approval seeking
35. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use idealization
36. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use magical thinking
37. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to use dissociation
38. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to avoid intimacy
39. Realization ends the needs for ego-states to experience guilt and shame…

…and finally,

40. Realization (a) ends the need for the constant noise and babble that persons use in their efforts to drown out the clatter of their fictitious “minds” and (b) ends the desire for a captive audience that persons think they need as they speak regularly or "share" regularly [meaning, “as they create opportunites to be listened to regularly”] and (c) ends the need for going and doing and zooming in order to try to escape all of the nonsense of “issues” that are the bane of persons who take their phenomenal state to be real and who have no clue about the truth of their homogeneous existence as the Noumenon.

If persons reading this series can break through the barrier of ego and recognize “self,” then they might consider that there is a seven-step “path” to Realization and that at the end of that “journey to Reality,” all of that which is catalogued in the list of items 1-40 could be discarded. Undertaking that “journey” will only be appealing if (1) the burdensome weight of all that is being carried is recognized and if (2) replacing that weight with a lightness of being suddenly has some allure.

When personality is eliminated, then one is well on the way to the post-Realization, AS IF style of living that is free of all of the insane-like behavior and all of the nonsense of relative issues that are much ado about nothing but that are seemingly made into “something” by ego and by the personality disorders that dominate the relative existence of the non-Realized. Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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PHYSICIANS DO NOT TREAT ILLNESSES BY SAYING, "WELL, JUST STOP BEING SICK"

From a site visitor: in that recent disucssion on transcendence, you spoke of allowing the ego to “die” and qualified the use of die to mean let the ego cease or disappear. Better than nothing, But why suggest that something as false as the ego can either appear or disappear? Why give credibility to something that is just a concept and talk about it didappearing when it has never appeared. It’s like “the bondage of ego.” How can one be bound by that which does not exist? Sounds pretty neo to me. I think you blew it on this one. Yes or no?

F.: First, nothing dealing with anything relative is real, including the “death” of ego, the disappearance of ego, as well as the perceived “bondage” by ego. However, each seeker’s query is addressed at the level where the seeker’s words reveal that seeker to be. Even as that approach is taken, the ultimate intent and consistent focus of these talks and writings is always for the non-dual, no-concept nature of Reality to be revealed to all seekers. In order for that truth to be seen, all lies must be seen first. For details, see www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/relevance_henderson.htm

The Teachings, therefore, must always begin with a discussion of illusion, never with a discussion of Reality. For example, in the recent series on “Transcendence” that you reference, the illusion of “Husband” was discussed. How could a discussion of the fact that “Husband” is illusory be construed as giving “credibility” to the illusion? You might ask, “Can the ‘Real You’ be bound by ego or anything else?” Of course not, but millions of persons each day, bound as they are by belief in illusions, suffer nevertheless from phobias that have no basis in reality. Yet the suffering certainly seems very real to them.

Take, for example “nephophobia,” a fear of clouds. You probably know that clouds are not even clouds. You might know that what is called “a cloud” is just a conglomeration of very fine water droplets or ice particles suspended in the atmosphere at high altitudes. You can offer that scientific truth to one suffering from nephophobia, but that alone is not likely to alleviate the misery of his/her relative existence. Until treated and released from the bondage of their illusion-based fear of “clouds,” the sufferers of nephophobia will still look at a cloud and become breathless, will sweat profusely, and will experience nausea and a dry mouth; will feel sick and will shake; will suffer from heart palpitations; will suffer an inability to speak or think clearly; will sense a fear of dying; and will develop a sensation of detachment from reality or a full blown anxiety attack. Their phobia significantly impacts the quality of their lives (all this relatively speaking) and often keeps sufferers apart from loved ones and business associates, causes loss of employment, and robs them of the ability to complete even the most basic tasks necessary for survival.

To say that such persons cannot possibly suffer from the “bondage of clouds” is to ignore the enormous effect that belief in an illusion has on those persons during their relative existence. If semantics is the issue, then it might be said more accurately that “nephophobiacs are suffering from a delusional belief in clouds, which are nothing more than an illusion which results from faulty perception and which generate fears with no basis.” Fine. The same can be said of every type of suffering that persons experience. That statement paraphrases perfectly one of the most basic of the Advaita Teachings.

Post-manifestation, there is no awareness and there is no “life” or “living.” These Teachings can have no effect other than in the relative existence. So if the Teachings do not free persons of the most palpable effects that illusions have on the relative existence of persons, then why offer the Teachings at all?

All writings here, and all talks during satsangas, focus on guiding seekers to the understanding of their true nature in order for natural “living” to happen for as long as the consciousness is manifested. That does, however, allow for a secondary consequence: namely, that Advaita’s noumenal teachings, if understood, will eliminate “personal,” phenomenal suffering during the manifestation. The “path” on the “journey” through which protégés are guided is direct, containing only seven steps that are required for the re-purification of the consciousness, allowing persons to see that they are not who they take themselves to be, inviting them to set aside body-mind-personality, and allowing abidance as the Absolute. It is all about forfeiting belief in illusions in order to be in touch with reality.

Finally, for clarification, it should be pointed out as well that no “neo-Advaita” approach is used here. How could that which guides seekers to the Original Understanding—an understanding that preceded not only certain respected “holy” writings or “special” writings or “inspired” writings but in fact preceded writing itself—be considered “neo”? If one wants to tell others what someone else said or what someone else wrote, so be it. No effort will come forth from here to dissuade their practice.

On this site, however, the invitation is never to share what someone else said, what someone else wrote, or what someone else knew. The invitation is to find that which You know. What is it that You have always known but have forgotten? No one will ever be invited to become a "devotée" or to consider “floyd” as his/her eternal guru. The invitation here is know that there is no “floyd” and that there is no “devotée.” The invitation here is to tap into that inner guru (that inner resource, that vestige of pure consciousness that has been buried via years of programming and conditioning and enculturation) and to thereby forfeit belief in all lies in order to find the truth that cannot be stated. Please enter the silence of contemplation.