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F.: The Advaitin understands that questioning it all is required if programmed, conditioned and acculturated persons are ever to be free of their belief in—and attachment to—falsehoods and nonsense.
Functioning spontaneously is a marker of Realization, so questioning happens spontaneously as well. As soon as something is heard or “seen,” it is questioned: “I turned it over to god and now I am free of worry.”
In the early part of the “journey,” the seeker might move through stages: “Ok, let’s see, that might be true or that might be false…I’ll question that…let’s see…god is a concept…concepts cannot free anyone of anything…they actually trap persons…that’s mind stuff…mind stuff is false…my BS detector has been activated…I call ‘BS’ on that.”
Once Realized, the spontaneous questioning moves at warp speed and activates the detector. Later, once Realized Fully, the process unfolds instantly and thusly:
Claimant: “I turned it over to god and now I am free of worry.”
Fully Realized: BS.
Yet when one is attached to mind-language and engaged in mind-speak, then mind-thinking and mind-speaking prevent questioning. Mind-speak always takes the forms of declarative, imperative, or exclamatory sentences. It never employs the interrogative form, preventing questioning, preventing receipt of pointers, and preventing the seeing of falsehoods.
No one “learns” while speaking, and no one “unlearns” while speaking. Speaking reinforces false beliefs—it does not eliminate them. Yet only by questioning what one has been told and taught, what one believes, what one hears, and what one reads (and yes that includes the pointers on this site) only then is there an opportunity to be free of the belief in and attachment to nonsense.
Being free always involves being free of beliefs and attachments, and the shift to that state of freedom begins with questioning. Yet questioning cannot happen when only declarations, imperatives, and exclamations are being spoken. The invitation is to consider those pointers as the transcript of the exchange continues:
Visitor: My point was that once people stop worrying they are better off. Not using the "created" past or future to upset and distort the present. Whatever reason causes them to stop worrying, they have to be better off, relatively speaking.
F.: The man mentioned yesterday who had “turned it over to god” and who was touting his “In-God’s-time-not-mine” concept (trying to display how truly “spiritual” and "worry-free" he was) seemed to have stopped worrying, so see this:
according to the “best” thinking that your mind can come up with, that man was “better off” by “turning it over to god” and not worrying about being unemployed for eleven months and depleting his retirement fund? Better off in spite of a wife's disgust and a child's stress and anxiety? Yes, that's all about the relative, but what your mind-speak is actually revealing is your belief that persons are “better off being spiritually intoxicated.”
Decisions made under the influence of spiritual intoxication are just as debilitating as those made when physically intoxicated or emotionally intoxicated. The only real antidote for worry is Full Realization, which you have tasted to some degree in the past but have not chewed and swallowed and digested.
You have also tasted how fleeting relief from worry is when you try to “turn it over.” You have admittedly tried that approach off and on all your life and should, therefore, be able to see by now that the “ostrich approach” does not work.
Finally, you label the woman “a real nut,” yet you are accepting her thinking and her belief as truth. Hummmm.
| V.: I am saying that she is better off at this moment in time because she stopped worrying. She is deluded into thinking she is better off, and you are deluded into thinking that she is “better off.” But with the variable mind at work, do you really think that ten minutes after she wrote that lofty claim that she had no worries? And do you not see that the sole intent of her providing that “testimony” was to show what a really good Christian she is as a result of "her faith" and her ability to "surrender"? And do you not realize that moments later she was once again embroiled in the quagmire of her concerns? And if that is not her case, do you not see—at least by your own admission—that such has surely been your life-long pattern? Worry and anxiety and dread are like the flu: you cannot wish them away, you cannot pray them away, and magical thinking will not run them away. Because worry and anxiety and dread are generated by the non-realistic thoughts of the "mind," the only “treatment” for them is to see Reality. At one time, persons turned it over to Zeus, to Mars, to Woden, to Thor, ad infinitum. Now you are a complete atheist in that regard. You do not believe in made up gods if they were made up by ancient Greeks or Romans, yet now you have regressed after years of studying these teachings and report that you got relief when you turned it over to a more recently made up god. You know there is no god, that god is just a concept, so to pray to a god for help and ask him to take care of it and then turn it over and leave it alone is nothing more than self-delusion. You might as well turn it over to a mirage in the But now you're writing to an Advaitin teacher and trying to argue your belief and hers that people are better off when they delude themselves, as if that can fixate her in a state of peace. Instead, it will fixate her in a state of fluctuation. [Now one might say, “Floyd, you don’t have my worries…my problems.” No I do not, but I did have, prior to Realization, what was taken to be “my problems” and “my worries.” There was no valid perspective, there was no possibility for non-attachment, and there were so many fears and desires that every aspect of the relative existence was ironically burdened with what was perceived/misperceived to be an unbearable heaviness that was nevertheless being borne.] Is Realization as much about putting a “spin” on reality as talk of "praying" and “turning it over”? Absolutely not. Realized, it is clear that there is nothing to turn over. THE FOLLOWING NON-DUALITY BOOKS ARE IN THE STORE IN LIMITED SUPPLY AND WILL BE OFFERED AT 50% OFF WHEN BOUGHT AS A PACKAGE: While quantities last, the following package deal is being offered: Receive all ten (10) of the books listed below for $97 total with free shipping in the [Sorry, but the offer does not apply to eBooks. This applies to the last of the paper books which are now in stock but which will never be available again. As various titles sell out, the remaining paper versions will be offered at a pro-rated price of 50% off also.] NON-DUALITY TITLES: From the Absolute to the Nothingness Consciousness/Awareness From the I to the Absolute (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality) It's All Bullshit (and Why Knowing it Sets You Free) Self-Transformation Meditation Guide I Self-Transformation Meditation Guide II There's No Such Thing as ''Peace of Mind'' Spiritual Sobriety (Recovering What Religions Lost) The Essence of the Teachings Liberation To order, visit http://www.floydhenderson.com/ and use the “Contact” link to make arrangements for payment and delivery. |
