ON LABELS, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, ADVAITA AND YOUTH, POWER, ADDICTIONS, SPIRITUALITY, AND “CHANGING THE WORLD,” Part Three

[Continued from yesterday]

SITE VISITOR Lisa asked for responses to certain questions as part of an assignment for a college course in religions and philosophies:

LISA: Do we ever stop growing spiritually?

F.: Yes—when you transition the third of the seven steps to Realization and thereby forfeit all personas (including "The Religious Person" and "The Spiritual Giant"). The book you ordered, FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE, will explain that process to you. What actually happens after transitioning that third step is that the fictional concept behind the false identity of "I am a spiritual person" is discarded; therefore, the illusion that there is some person that has been "growing" comes to an end. Remember always that anything following the “I Am,” other than THAT, is a lie; therefore, “I am spiritual” and “I am religious” or “I am a spiritual person” or “I am a religious person” are lies, nothing more than ego-states. Those are merely assumed personas being "supported" by statements generated by the contaminated consciousness. Understand that there are no “good” personas and “bad” personas. Lies are lies, and all ego-states/personas are false identities…are all lies. Just as “Husband” or “Wife” “grow” into “Super Husband” or “Super Wife” and fall under the influence of ego-defense mechanisms that are used to support false identities, spiritual “growth” results in “The Spiritual One” “growing” into “The Super Spiritual One” and then being sustained by egotism.

That is not “growth” at all. It is the expansion of an ego-state. It is the magnification of a false identity. Understand that persons always take an illusion and either dualistically upgrade the illusion or downgrade the illusion. (EX.: Take the lie, “This world is real.” Believing that, persons over the millennia have upgraded that illusion by promising that “after death, there is another world that will provide eternal continuity for the body-mind-personality.” They upgrade the illusion of “this world” with the promise of another world in heaven for the “good people” and they downgrade the illusion of “this world” with the threat of another world called "hell" that awaits the “bad” people.)

Thus, “I am a man” can be an initial illusion. Egotism can generate the belief that “I am a spiritual man,” which is nothing more than an upgrade of the illusion. Guilt can take the initial illusion that "I am a man" and generate the belief that “I am a bad man,” which is nothing more than a downgrading of the illusion. THAT which You Are is not “a woman,” and THAT which I AM is not “a man.” I AM energy temporarily manifested. So Are You. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, much less “grow.”

LISA: If you could change one thing in this world, what would it be?

F.: There is nothing in the world to change because there is no world to be changed. I Am not in the world. You are not in the world either, but you do not yet understand that. The world is in you--in your "mind"--and since the "mind" is not real, neither are any of the images and mirages that it imagines to be real. (A steel girder is neither steel nor girder, is it?) Simply understand that the “I” is an abstraction, along with what is perceived to be a real, physical world. If you understand that the perceiver is an abstraction, it becomes easy to understand that anything which an abstract “perceiver” thinks it is seeing must also be an abstraction.

Advaita teaches that all is one substance. It is now known that matter (such as something called a “steel girder”) is really a field of energy that is in constant movement; similarly, that which is Real is conscious-energy (that is, energy that has the capacity to "be conscious of" if manifested in a space with a nervous system).

Thus, You are consciousness, manifested via a combination of elements with a nervous system and a brain. Were your every action to be determined by the brain rather than the "mind," you would never do anything destructive or harmful...to self or "others." The "mind" is a collection of false memories, false teachings, and false ideas that make you believe that your roles are who you are and that your personality/personas are real. Those false identities all have their own hidden agendas and will fight for their survival even though they are mirages. Only via finding WHO/WHAT YOU TRULY ARE can you be free of the misery-generating lies that have been offered to you as truth(s) that can be stated. (That in itself is a lie.) Freedom happens when you Realize that You Are neither in the world nor of the world and that there is no world to change and no WHO that needs changing. Best regards, f.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

ON LABELS, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, ADVAITA AND YOUTH, POWER, ADDICTIONS, SPIRITUALITY, AND “CHANGING THE WORLD,” Part Two

[Continued from yesterday]

SITE VISITOR Lisa asked for responses to certain questions as part of an assignment for a college course in religions and philosophies:

LISA: How can we help children to access their inner resource?

F.: Actually, Full Realization is not for the young, so to try to teach the youth to tap into the inner resource when they need to be tapping into skills that will allow them to address those basic (relative) needs as listed on the base of Maslow's pyramid would not be advised. If they are to function in their dysfunctional cultures, young adults must play the games of the culture for a time. Otherwise, their parents will be on a Dr. Phil show featuring "Boomerang Kids" about parents who can't get their adult-aged children out of the house. In other words, Pandora's Box of Concepts has been opened, and the freedom from all those concepts and personas that drive the misery of the relative existence on this planet will be their condition until some reach a point in adulthood and begin questioning all of the learned ignorance they have accumulated and then eventually reject it all. Few ever will. So it is.

LISA: Do you have a higher power or have you ever or and can you briefly describe what that is or was.

F.: The master addiction of the planet is a desire to control. That desire drives the secondary addiction: the desire for power (in order to control). That quest for power has led to more destruction and magical-thinking-type nonsense than anything else on the planet. It inspires efforts to accumulate earthly power and also to have an extraterrestrial power (or powers) that can also be tapped into in order to control. (E.g., the desire to control weather generated an imaginary god of rain. The desire to control the outcome of battles generated an imaginary god of war. Eventually, Abraham would take all the various gods of creation, sustenance, and destruction, would tell people that there is only one god, and from that they combined all their former gods into one. That is how then ended up with a schizo god who supposedly creates and sustains but also destroys. The creator god "loves his creations unconditionally" and will sustain them if they believe in him, sacrifice to him, worship him, work for him. Contradictorily, his "unconditional" love has "conditions," and, if they are not met, the sustaining will end and the destruction will begin, along with horrendous, eternal punishments to boot.) To be free of the nonsense of contradictory concepts and inconsistent dogma is to be free of the desire to control. That, in turn, ends the desire for power. As for “higher power,” that implies “lower power” as well, and that would be another duality.

LISA: What would you say is one of the most important lessons you have learned in life.

F.: To unlearn all of the "important lessons about life" that I was taught. One book is entitled, IT'S ALL BULLSHIT (And Why Knowing That Will Set You Free.) Once the learned ignorance of humanity is cast aside, the "path" can be followed that leads to the truth that cannot be stated but that can be understood; thereafter, the functioning of the totality becomes clear and the relative existence can happen in an AS IF fashion, as if any of the stuff of this realm is real or significant, but knowing that it is not.

LISA: What is the way to freedom and inner peace for suffering addicts and alcoholics?

F.: The way involves addressing the cause rather than the symptoms. Since you want these answers short, you may read the postings for Feb 12 and 13 at www.advaitavedantameditations.blogspot.com for more.
TOMORROW, the response to “Do we ever stop growing spiritually?” To all site visitors: Based on the Advaita understanding, what response would the re-purified consciousness provide? Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]