TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. [See the offer in gold text following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all seven of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
2. Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns. See the green text after today's post for the full meaning and implications of that.
3. A new video ("Number Ten: Awakening Together Satsang, March 2018") has now been added in the far right column of this page, offering the opportunity to view a recent 2018 satsang session with Floyd being interviewed by Regina and Jacqueline of "The Awakening Together Group." (See the details in the blue text after this post.)
The point in this series is that the non-dual message has long been widespread but has seldom been understood either then or now.
To continue:
THE NON-DUALITY MESSAGE AS OFFERED IN FILM
Today, the last three movies to be discussed include “Avatar,” “City of Angels,” and “Open Your Eyes”
“Avatar”
“Avatar” is also from the Sanskrit, though the film plays on the word's two meanings of an image used in a role-playing game, and a deity appearing on Earth.
Avatar and the magical land of Pandora in James Cameron's sci-fi blockbuster “may have had a subconscious reference to Hindu mythology,” the director said. [Note: Krishna is often depicted with blue skin.]
At its core, the movie looks at a belief system which is often discussed here on this non-duality blog, namely, how widespread the duality-based belief is among the most arrogant on the planet in regards to their notion of “different-from-ment” and, therefore, “better-than-ment.”
The film provides adumbrations of the “American Holocaust” when 150,000,000 of the indigenous peoples living in what is now called “North, Central, and South America” and in the surrounding islands were slaughtered by invaders from Europe seeking wealth at any cost to people and / or the environment.
The film provides adumbrations of the “American Holocaust” when 150,000,000 of the indigenous peoples living in what is now called “North, Central, and South America” and in the surrounding islands were slaughtered by invaders from Europe seeking wealth at any cost to people and / or the environment.
Ninety-eight percent of the indigenous peoples would be decimated and the rest would be confined to small parcels of lands “reserved” for them (see “reservations”) in order to separate people who looked different from the newly-arrived invaders.
In Avatar, the case is the same as there are those who want to take over the lands from those who look different and are believed to be “less advanced.”
Jean-Luc Picard, in Star Trek Insurrection says, "Some of the darkest chapters in the history of my world involved the forced relocation of smaller groups of people to satisfy the demands of a larger one . . . . "
Indeed.
One critic said: “Avatar is about a race of humanoids that could not be more alien from us and yet, by about half way through the film, it manages to completely convince us of their reality, their plight and their humanity.”
He continued, the purpose of the storytelling is not “to convince us of an unreality, but rather to show us something that is all too real in our world: An all too-pervasive inability to understand how those we perceive as 'other', as 'aliens', as inhuman, are just as human as ourselves.”
“Most of the human characters in Avatar were perfectly happy (at least for the most part) to force the re-location or destruction of these blue creatures for the acquisition of 'wealth' from the ground on which they lived. The way they rationalized this inhuman treatment was to label them 'savages' and later 'the enemy.'
“The human characters could not understand how smashing their trees and destroying their homes - terrorizing them - could result in acts of rebellion and resistance.”
Of course, as is always the case among races and cultures and nations who have a penchant for being trespassers, raiders, and aggressors and whose sense of entitlement convinces them that they are members of a superior races who have the right to “make their country and all countries great” by eliminating all who are different from and not as good as them, they view any those who oppose such aggression as “terrorists.”
The critic them asks: “Does this sound at all familiar to anyone? Are there any people in our world (who at first glance seem inferior or strange) that have been relocated, interfered with, oppressed, suppressed and generally toyed with for decades for the purposes of ensuring and 'securing' access to stuff in the ground - to oil?
“Have those people become desperate? Have they fought back? Have they perpetrated acts of ‘terror’? Have we perpetrated those acts in return? Has the cycle continued unabated with each side blaming the other?”
He said: the film “shows in stark terms our ability to be inhuman to those who appear different from us” and "to justify killing by minimizing and demonizing the 'others' amongst us and to then use our religious views (both of faith and commerce) to justify killing them.”
Remember, the invaders who came to “The Americas” and committed acts of genocide were good Christians soldiers following the orders of their good Christian rulers who left European ports with blessings from good Christians priests who were sending them off with prayers for their safety and “success.”
Of course the subsequent murdering of an entire race of people was justified by claiming they were “heathens who refused to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior, so good riddance.”
“City of Angels”
City of Angels (set in its namesake Los Angeles) tells the story of an angel who falls in love with a mortal woman and wishes to become human in order to be with her. With the guidance of a man who has already made the transition from immortality, the angel falls and discovers the human experience.
One critic’s take ran counter to that of many, saying that the film offers a "’humanistic worldview’ in which physical experiences which humans can enjoy have more value to angels than the spiritual.”
Another conclude that the film is burdened with too much "philosophical claptrap."
Of course the “go to the light” theme has its own place in the non-dual understanding.
Roger Ebert brought the “angels angle” down to earth in his review and may have provided a more legitimate “non-dual perspective” than does the film:
“Angels are big right now in pop entertainment, no doubt because everybody gets one. New Age spirituality is me-oriented and gives its followers top billing in the soap operas of their own lives.
“People like to believe they've had lots of previous incarnations, get messages in their dreams and are psychic. But according to the theory of karma, if you were Joan of Arc in a past life and are currently reduced to studying Marianne Williamson paperbacks, you must have made a wrong turn.”
He concluded: “When there's a trend toward humility and selflessness, then we'll know we're getting somewhere on the spiritual front. That time is not yet.”
“Open Your Eyes”
[“Vanilla Sky,” discussed earlier, is a remake of this Spanish film.]
One critic made reference to the film’s duality and its “intersecting planes of dream and reality.”
Another wrote: “The lead character’s experiences from about the midpoint of the movie onward have been a dream, spliced retroactively into his actual life and replacing his true memories. At the end of the film, he decides to wake.”
Would that it were that easy for seekers . . . to be able to “decide to wake” from the false dream which is taken to be real.
In fact, (as Maharaj noted) that seldom happens, does it?
To be continued.
THE NEWEST OFFER:
Watch an updated seven-hour streaming video of a retreat with Floyd Henderson which can be viewed by anyone with internet access. (In this video, all seven of the steps on "the path" as taught by Maharaj are explained and discussed.)
If interested, click the button below to pay the fee via PayPal. You will then receive an email which includes the link for you to view the private, unlisted video via an arrangement we have made with YouTube, Inc. You do not have to have a YouTube account to watch this privately streamed video.
(If you do not receive the link promptly, your computer or email provider may have high filter settings. Check your spam and trash folders because some providers automatically transfer emails containing links to those folders.)
To access the seven-hour streaming video of a retreat and begin watching right away, click this "Buy Now" button:
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE: The four most recent posts are below. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]
In addition to the five non-duality books made available without charge by Andy Gugar, Jr. (see “FREEBIES” above), you can now access nearly 3,300 posts for any topics of interest to you.
Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns.
THE EXPLANATION
If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.
Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of God in the past was of a weak God, an absentee God, A Santa Claus-type God, a mean, punishing, vindictive God, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring God whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."
The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a God that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").
Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring God,' any supposed God that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'God' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.
"That is, a non-narcissistic god / goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'God' and focus on the 'God as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you."
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
but are states of mind, nothing more than
concepts dreamed up by men."
--Pope John Paul II
"There is no hell."
--Pope Francis, the current pope
in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,
a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.
And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?
Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?
The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit charge by the Bank); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)
With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.
The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.]
Here's
the direct link to the VIDEO VERSION
of the "Awakening Together" satsang session with Regina and Jacqueline referenced earlier, 18 MARCH 2018
If preferred, here's
the direct link to the AUDIO VERSION
of that session.
