Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts

Saturday, August 25, 2007

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

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F.: For the next few days, a story will be shared that reveals the details of the relative existence of a girl named Teresa. Why speak on this site of Teresa? Because what happened to her is what happens to billions every day (and has happened to trillions before her). Her case is like that of most persons: happiness and contentment happen for a period of time after the consciousness manifests; then, the warping of the consciousness happens, generating untold levels of misery and suffering.

While “your story” has not been completed and might yet have a “happy ending,” the story of Teresa is used since her story has been completed and reveals the entire “happiness to misery cycle” that happens when the consciousness is warped by programming, conditioning, and enculturation. And no means of programming has generated more misery and suffering on planet earth than the type to which Teresa was exposed: namely, using religious dogma to program the youth. The result is that the programming converts joy to misery and happiness to suffering, and that is what allows her to serve as the “The Poster Child for the Brutality of Programming.”

Teresa was born “Agnes Gonxha” but was called Gonxha most often because the name meant “flower bud.” Her mother said that name was appropriate for her since the little girl was always "plump and pink and cheerful." Her parents were known for never turning away anyone who needed help, and in Gonxha’s words, the family was “a very happy family.”

Gonxha’s father died when she was eight, but her mother worked very hard to make sure the children were happy, and Gonxha would report years later that her mother succeeded. Despite the death of her father, she said that her childhood was “exceptionally happy.” The name "Teresa" would be adopted years later.

Teresa’s childhood was not unlike that of any young girl: she was shy around males but giggled with her girlfriends as they admired the most handsome boys in town. She had hopes and dreams. She imagined being married and having a family someday. She would work as hard as her parents did to have a happy marriage, to have a happy family, and to help others who came her way.

She fantasized about her husband-to-be-someday. She grew older and began to show signs of a maturing young girl. Her body began to change shape, and she soon experienced the dichotomy of those glad-sad feelings that surrounded her first menstrual cycle; she began to feel more like a woman than a little girl. Feelings became more pronounced. The first stirrings of sexual longings began. Knowing that she was capable of producing offspring, she dreamed more of settling down with a husband some day and starting her own family. Teresa dreamed of unbridled happiness and bliss. She was the epitome of natural living.

Then came an intervention that had an effect that was not unlike the results of using a mind-altering drug that can so damage the psyche that it could never be normal and could never function naturally again. A huge shift happened to Teresa when, under the influence of her mother and the guidance of a priest, Agnes Gonxha was made to be interested in missionary work.

It would have an especial appeal since the dogma offered by the priest promised Teresa (a young girl who had no father) that she could acquire a replacement father in heaven as well as his son who loved her with all his heart. In later years, she would speak of her relationship with that son in terms that are typically used to describe a worldly love-affair between a young woman and a young man.

Her natural childhood feelings were removed and replaced with supernatural beliefs instead: she would be so programmed with those supernatural beliefs that she would behave most unnaturally, claiming to no longer want a husband or sex or children or a family of her own.

Teresa’s dreams of happiness and bliss were replaced with the concepts of her dogma, including the teaching that "the relative existence is a brief period of suffering, misery, service to others, abandonment of one’s natural inclinations, and giving up all plans for marriage, for raising a family, and for enjoying sexual relations." She was taught that such sacrifice would ensure that Teresa was "good," and if she was good (she was promised) then her relatively brief period of suffering in this life would end and would be followed by eternal bliss.

Soon, Teresa had been so programmed that she accepted as a father-substitute an invisible male in another world, and the “this-world” lover that she was programmed to "marry" was a man who had been dead for 2000 years. The deterioration of the psyche of a sweet, plump, pink, and happy girl (whose natural drives had inspired her to want a husband and a family and pleasure) was being short-circuited as a “mind-job” was done on a child. The consciousness was being so warped that Teresa’s natural tendencies were being supplanted by supernatural tendencies. The result would be a most unnatural existence.

She soon bought into the teachings that said "happiness and bliss are to be sacrificed and replaced by misery and suffering." She was assured that "to fight all of her desires to live naturally, to give up sex, to give up her desire to love a living man, to abandon her hopes and dreams, to forfeit her own happiness, to be willing to suffer for decades, and to live unnaturally" would be a “good” thing. In fact, to do otherwise—that is, to live naturally—would actually be a “bad” thing in her case...so the programming went.

Once she accepted those lies as truth, their programming and bastardization of the consciousness was complete. Her psyche had been made completely unnatural. So deteriorated was her psyche that Teresa believed that she heard a voice from another world, and it was the voice of the dead man that she had "married" and had come to love. And that voice affirmed the details of her training, assuring her that she really was to give up all natural feelings and hopes and desires, was to love him only and no other man, was to move from her homeland, and was to live among those suffering in the slums of Calcutta and suffer alongside them.

The warp was in, and anyone with any degree of compassion would hear her words as an adult and ask, “My gosh, Teresa. What did they do to you? You were so plump and pink and happy and cheerful. Listen to yourself now”:

Teresa: “I feel dryness, darkness, loneliness and torture.”

Teresa: "I feel the terrible pain of loss."

Teresa: "There is such terrible darkness within me."

Teresa: "The emptiness is so great."

Eventually she would say:

Teresa: "Love—the word—it brings nothing."

Teresa: "I have come to love the darkness."

“My gosh, Teresa. What did they do to you? You were so plump and pink and happy and cheerful.” And why, after seeing the effects of the warping of that speck of consciousness that would eventually be called “Mother Teresa,” would the persons of the planet continue to subject billions to that same brutal form of programming?

Why would they take something so happy and make it so miserable? Why would they take something so natural and replace it with magical, supernatural concepts that result in most unnatural thoughts and unnatural feelings and unnatural behavior? Indeed, it is true: they know not what they do. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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  • Thursday, May 24, 2007

    EGO-STATES: “LOVE” OR “EGO,” BUT NOT BOTH (A Continuing Series on Ego-States), Part Five

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    FROM A SITE VISITOR: So the whole problem really begins with ego, right? Sam (PS Thanks for the blog site.)

    F.: Taking into account all of the Advaitin pointers that have ever been offered, none is likely to be as despised by persons (by the non-Realized) as the pointer that “there is no continuity of body or mind or personality.” Ranking a close second is likely the pointer that, “If you have not Realized, then you have never loved; if you are only dealing with the non-Realized, you are not being loved.”

    Those who would debate that point are the ones who really desire love or who fear not having love or who believe they really need love or who are convinced that no one could not love them. They do not understand “mutually exclusive.” If reason and logic are applied, it should be clear that one involved in self—that is, a person assuming any false role and taking the false self to be the True Self, will automatically be self-involved and self-absorbed.

    One who is self-involved and self-absorbed will see “a world of others,” and all interaction with those “others” will only be to sustain one’s co-dependent or interdependent ego-states…one’s false self or false selves. That “world” of ego-states and egomania will always be devoid of love. Demanding sex every day might be taken as a sign that "he really loves me" and "he really wants me" and "I am securing my roles." The objective Advaitin witness can see that the only thing happening is that the ego-state of “The Lover” is being sustained for the husband. The savvy clinician will see that a sex addiction is being enabled...and nothing more.

    Persons tout the benefits of "self-esteem"; that notwithstanding, to be self-involved and self-absorbed and in love with one’s false self/selves excludes any chance for the manifestation of unconditional love. The “search for love” among the non-Realized really involves nothing more than a desire to find an opposite-sex clone of self. The belief is, "Surely we will be compatible forever if we have the same thoughts, the same beliefs, the same behaviors and habits, the same desires, the same fears, etc.," as if persons are not in a constant state of flux and as if they "will always be the way they are now."
    The non-Realized, being unaware of the unicity in which True Love is based, will claim that they are “in love” while actually being in love with a mirror image. They are only in love with self, and more specifically, they are only in love with their false ego-states while believing that they truly love those who support their false roles. “The Employee” loves the boss who allows that role to continue (especially if the job is high-paying) and hates the boss who fires her/him and destroys that role. “The Wife” claims to love the man who was her accomplice in forming and sustaining her false images.

    That which is real is unchanging, so if love can turn to hate, it was not real to begin with.

    The case study for this series is a woman whose husband claimed for years that he loved her but now “does not love her anymore.” After the beginning months or years of most marriages, a point is reached when it is declared that “the honeymoon is over.” What does that mean? It means that all of the images that were being shown or assumed during dating are eventually seen to be nothing more than misrepresentations. It means that the personality defects that were being covered up are now coming to light.

    For those who are really asleep or in denial, being fooled (or fooling oneself) can go on for years. The woman going through a divorce claims that “up until now, he always loved me and I always loved him.” Objective witnesses who read the details of her account would conclude that other factors were involved which convinced her that love is compatible with being controlled by a self-absorbed and neglectful man who took the money she earned, who made her handle all projects and then attacked her over the results, who refused to discuss having children, who demanded sex every day for twenty years, who had a multi-year affair, and who is now leaving her for another woman after she played the role of “The Dutiful and Obedient and Accommodating Wife” for twenty years.

    Some might conclude that she was more likely to have been in love with the idea of love or with the idea of “the two of you” or with the idea of their being “a couple.” Some might conclude that she enjoyed being seen about town with what she described as “the best-looking man in town” who bought “the biggest mansion in the city” where they “entertained lavishly.” Some would study her words and conclude that she was in love with something other than “him.” She knows the price they paid for their mansion to the penny, but she does not know the price she has paid by internalizing another person instead of finding her True Self.

    Likely, for the first time in decades, she is in a position to finally be true to her Self rather than playing the role of “His Wife” (“his” meaning literally, “the wife possessed by him”). She is in a position to stop playing her false roles of “The Wife” and “The Opposite-Sex Clone of a Man” and “The Provider of Daily Sex.” She thinks he is leaving her, but the fact is that he was never "with" her. She thinks she is dying now, but she has been "dead" for years (meaning, dead to her True Self).

    The relevant Advaita pointer has been offered earlier:

    The belief by persons that their various roles actually define who they are becomes entrenched. Then, if personas feel that they are being hurt, challenged, interfered with, or threatened, most persons become willing to fight to preserve that which is nothing more than an image. Many have fought to the (relative) death to preserve the false personality that their “minds” have convinced them is who they actually are.

    With her threats to kill herself, the woman is “entrenched” in the roles of “Wife,” “Socialite,” “Co-Owner of a Mansion,” “The Woman Enhanced by Being with a Handsome Man,” “The Woman Who Will Always Be Secure, Having Married the Rich Man,” ad infinitum. With those ego-states now being “threatened,” she is ready to fight to the death. In this case, the fight to the death involves her own relative death because she is convinced that if she cannot continue to play her false roles in “The Drama of the Lie,” that ending the manifestation of the consciousness is the only viable alternative available.

    Consider how much suffering persons experience as 50-60% who marry will have to face the lost of their assumed identities and will have to deal with the emotional intoxication that happens when the loss of so many identities strikes at once.

    If only all false identities were discarded on one’s own timetable instead of a timetable imposed by a co-dependent sustainer of one’s ego-states. If only the ego-states were discarded while visiting with a teacher/guide under calm and rational circumstances. Then, all of the trauma of having identities snatched away could be avoided by having given them up voluntarily. “The Fearful Employee” can disappear though the job can continue. “The Dutiful, Obedient, Accommodating Wife” could disappear though the marriage could continue (the indication for intensive counseling notwithstanding).

    The difference is this: the Realized can still feel what they feel without becoming “robotic,” as some charge. Feelings are witnessed as they rise and fall, but the Realized are free of the assumption of false identities that drive persons to think that the loss of a culturally-assigned label is grounds for suicide. Realization, which allows for AS IF living, is a pre-emptive strike against that which will eventually strike all persons absorbed in ego-states. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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