“I AM THAT; I AM” or just “I AM THAT”? Part Three

An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Noneness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

F.: This which is called “floyd” by some—and that which is called “you” by many—is merely a triad of temporarily combined elements with air circulating into and out of a space and conscious-energy temporarily manifested within the space.

Regarding that energy part of the triad, wherefore this notion that the temporarily-manifested energy is “bad” and that the pre-manifested and post-manifested energy is “good”? Energy is energy and there is nothing any more dualistic about it than there is about anything else.

Consider this about energy: scientists have catalogued all of the changes that have to happen in order for the energy in the core of the sun to be converted eventually into electricity on planet earth. So how many persons would suggest that the energy in the core of the sun should be given higher status than the manifest electricity in a home?

If the flow of electrical power to a house is interrupted during a storm, the (distorted) perception is that a state of emergency exists if the interruption continues even for five or six hours. In such cases, the value of energy manifested on the planet—especially in the form of the electricity within any given house—is appreciated significantly, at least when it is unavailable for a time.

When it comes right down to it, the energy manifested throughout a house is valued far more than the energy at the core of the sun that is not manifested on the planet earth. Is it not curious how the opposite perception is so popular among many seekers who devalue the manifested conscious-energy while ennobling the unmanifested energy…or the THAT-ness?

Of course all misery and suffering among persons is linked directly to the programming and conditioning that corrupts or blocks the manifest consciousness. And of course it is the corrupted or blocked consciousness that fuels the illusions of ego as well as egotism’s support of illusory ego-states. But ego and egotism can also inspire the tendency by some seekers to assign special value to “Me as THAT.”

And yes, Maharaj did teach that there can be no liberation if one is attached to the concept of the I AM. Yet fish and deer and birds are "liberated" in that they are not attached to any concepts or personas; nevertheless, fish and deer and birds are very much aware of the Am-ness.

Relishing the post-Realization Am-ness, therefore, has nothing at all to do with the non-Realized’s attachment to the I AM; it has nothing at all to do with projecting a world; and it has nothing at all to do with blocking an ability to differentiate true from false.

The relative effects of the post-Realization Am-ness have nothing at all in common with the relative effects generated via pre-Realization Am-ness. For a seeker to dismantle the belief systems that have supported the false concepts associated with the pre-Realization Am-ness does not mean that the Am-ness itself must end. What ends is the limited and limiting identification with the Am-ness.

The deer does not think, “I AM.” It just IS. That is the invitation here: yes, Maharaj said to put to an end the belief in any and all concepts, but he did not say to put an end to the Am-ness. Nor did he say, in the end, that one should ultimately identify with The Ultimate. In the end, the message was to identify with nothing (which was, in fact, his very definition of wisdom).

[NOTE: Along the "path," there is admittedly a shift in identification with "this" to identification with "that," but if your seeking has ended with an identification with something special (or with any identification at all) then wisdom is absent.]

The discounting of the value of the pre-Realization Am-ness need not be applied to the post-Realization Am-ness; however, that discounting often happens. The invitation is to see that such discounting is an act based in the arrogance of those who have assumed some elevated status and now claim (a) not that they are nothing but that (b) they are “The Ultimate,” “A Supreme Self,” “godly,” or “God.”

There is as much nonsense and self-importance associated with those touting their enlightened state as there was when those same persons were embroiled in the nonsense and self-ish-ness of their pre-Realization state of Is-ness. The non-dualistic state is free of all beliefs, including the belief that one is “this” or one is “that.”

The deer which live in a nisarga (natural) fashion do not believe that they are anything, do not believe that energy “there” is more noble than “energy” here, and do not foster any notions about advancement, improvement, or “better-than-ness.”

Further, if one were to study objectively the history of this planet—or were to look objectively at the present state of relative affairs on the planet—they might conclude the following:

most of the relative problems on the planet have been generated by (1) those who think they have “made it” and by (2) those who believe they have “arrived” and by (3) those who have adopted “new and improved” false identities such as “The Devoutly Religious One” or “The Spiritual Giant” and by (4) those who now take themselves—their “self” or “selves” to be—“The Ultimate” or “The Supreme” or “The Godly One” or “God” himself, herself, or itself.

By “The Void”? No. By “The Nothingness”? No. By “The Supreme This or That”? Yes, yes, yes. True, the manifest consciousness is overrated among the non-Realized, but the supposedly post-Realized state is often unjustifiably glorified as well.

Next, why even begin the “journey,” much less complete it, if the Am-ness is not to be enjoyed post-Realization? Misery and suffering are rooted in the conceptualized and conceptualizing Am-ness, true;

however, the non-Realized—attached to the illusions generated by the blocked Am-ness—share nothing in common with the Fully Realized, post-Realization specks that savor the remainder of the manifestation no matter what transpires (even as feelings are witnessed as they rise and fall).

Furthermore, a sanctioning of the post-Realization Am-ness should never be interpreted as an endorsement of the pre-Realization Am-ness. Moreover, to sanction the post-Realization Am-ness is not to contradict Maharaj’s pointer that the knowledge of I AM is nothing.

Maharaj was totally accurate in that regard. Note, though, that the deer has no “knowledge” of its Am-ness, though it is aware of its Am–ness (with no learning of higher or praiseworthy concepts involved).

This in not about “knowledge” of the Am-ness. It is about relishing in the beingness, in enjoying that which is natural, after the Am-ness is seen for what it is and for what it is not. The post-programming beingness is most unnatural; the post-Realization beingness is perfectly natural.

So why not just BE? WHO thinks that it is not good enough for her or him to just be in that state of beingness rather than subsumed in an unnatural (or supernatural) state of constant doingness?

Questioner: What is that state?

Maharaj: It is something like a deer taking rest in the shadow of a tree.

Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

Now you can receive for $40 a downloadable computer file version of the same 7-hour satsang that seekers receive when they visit for the Advaita Retreat with Floyd. You will be guided through the seven steps from identification with the false "I" to the Absolute (and beyond).
For more information or to order, click:
DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

SIX WAYS THAT SEEKERS HAVE REALIZED:

1. BY WATCHING the 4-Disk Video (DVD) Set, or the same retreat available as a downloadable file. Either will provide an entire seven-hour retreat / series of satsang sessions showing three seekers being guided through all seven steps by Floyd and can provide viewers with an “experiential,” step-by-step series of satsang meetings that will move the viewers from identification with the I to abidance as the Absolute and then to abidance as That Which Is beyond

Some seekers are already using the computer file version and the DVD sets for meetings in groups in homes, playing the retreat, pausing for discussion, etc.

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DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

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[It is recommended that you watch the video with pen and paper in hand. Write whatever you need clarified. You'll see that there are constant reviews and you might find an answer later in the seven-hour presentation. Then, after you watch it all, there will be a common ground for discussion. Purchase of the DVD’s or the file will include the right to clarifications and answers to your specific questions via e-mail.]

2. BY READING these books in this exact order:
IT'S ALL BULLSHIT (And Why Knowing It Sets You Free)
SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (Recovering What Religions Lost)
[Those two prepare the seeker to question it all]
THE MEDITATION GUIDES
[Provide a broad overview of the understanding]
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?
[Begins to free the seeker of body identification and the desire for body continuity]
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS "PEACE OF MIND" (There Is Only Peace if You're Out of Your Mind)
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of the false content of the “mind”]
LIBERATION
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of personas]
THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS
[Provides the final preparation for the seeker to be directed along the “path”]
FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)
[Directs the seeker along the “path”]
CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: The Nature of Reality Beyond Self-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding as The Absolute)
[Allows the seeker to understand the functioning of the totality, the manifestation, and what is involved with the un-manifestation]
FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO THE NOTHINGNESS
[Provides the seeker the wisdom to understand the Noneness as well as the Oneness]
Purchase an e-Book now and begin reading it in minutes (except with e-checks that can take 7-10 days). Trusting our clients as we do, all e-Books are provided to you in printable form.
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3. BY ENROLLING in the Online Advaita Classes
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4. BY ATTENDING an Advaitin retreat for satsang with floyd and being guided through all seven steps. For details of the retreats offered, please visit the retreat information site.

5. BY ARRANGING satsang by telephone in the U.S. or by Skype internationally:
Use the Contact link for details or for information on making arrangements for a session

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THE MYTH OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. CONCLUSION: – SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

On the planet, all living things function effortlessly and naturally – except humans. Why is this? Bound by false identification with the personal / individual mind-body-personality construct, most humans are ego-intoxicated and driven by a fluctuating array of imaginary personas. In the natural world, the cannas in the garden, the baboons in the Nature Reserve, and the deer (an often used Advaitan benchmark) all function spontaneously and efficiently – all without a highly developed analytical and self-reflective mind.

When the consciousness is uncorrupted, as in the case of the baboon or the deer, there is no drive to improve, accumulate, outlive, or outsmart nature or biology. There is no impulse to graze on foods that are inappropriate for the physiological functioning of that species; and seldom is there an attempt to adopt addictive or destructive habits and behaviours that are not part of the natural, spontaneous choices that respect life, rather than eroding it. In humans, the consciousness is usually so corrupted that there is little or no understanding of what natural functioning may mean. So humans routinely:

• engage in destructive habits ... and develop addictions;

• eat foods that are chemically suspect and unhealthy....and develop chronic illnesses;

• act unconsciously based on the fears and desires of imaginary personas ... and live in the chaos that ego-driven reactivity produces.

Is it any wonder that this unnatural situation has resulted in people feeling that they are “not okay” and searching within a personal development movement that promises a solution?

(Note: However, even animals in the wild are exposed to the consequences of the corrupted consciousness in humans – which can have far reaching effects. In the book, A Primate’s Memoir: Love, Death and Baboons in East Africa, neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky describes how members of a baboon troop attracted to a rubbish dump outside of a tourist camp begin to eat food that is not part of their natural diet in the wild and suffer the consequences of this unnatural behaviour. Why are the baboons exposed to unnatural food choices? Through the carelessness and greed of human beings driven by a desire to accumulate without a sense of integrity for the natural environment in which they are located.

A similar scenario is the recent shark attacks along the Cape Town coast. Cape Town has one of the highest Great White shark populations in the world – but there were very few shark attacks until recently. Environmentalists argue that the tourist shark cage diving industry uses chumming to attract sharks to give tourists their “wild in Africa” experience – and the chumming has affected the natural functioning of the sharks who normally feed on the abundant seal population. Again, people driven by the desire to accumulate behave in unnatural ways with the resulting chaos in the natural environment.)

When a person seeks to improve, develop, evolve, heal and fix, it is because he or she feels incomplete or not whole. Other words which often describe this feeling are: fragmented, splintered, shattered, not fulfilling one's full potential, unresolved, unfinished, becoming. There are wounds to heal, traumas to resolve, skills to acquire. There are chakras to open, loving kindness to develop, third eyes to open, auras of white light to project. Can You see these descriptions focus on the limitations of the separate individual. Can You intuit the underlying longing for wholeness? All humans intuitively sense the Oneness, the functioning of the totality, yet their faulty programming and conditioning prevents them from being it. As Maharaj says: “The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes."

So – those seekers using the filter of the fictional mind to perceive the world dualistically will continue to seek to improve, develop, evolve, heal and fix. Usually, when these seekers believe they are successfully improved, developed, evolved, healed and fixed and have become personal development veterans, they will launch into the personal development movement themselves with their various trademarked products and seminars to improve, develop, evolve, heal and fix others.

For the Advaitan seeker then, the personal development movement is a myth – it cannot offer the freedom of true understanding. Rather than providing wholeness, it represents a net that binds – by entrenching the concepts that reinforce dualism and separation (often while pretending to do the opposite). “The net is full of holes”, says Maharaj. He points the way to the “hole-less” beyond with these words:

"Now, the perception of this truth [of no separate individuals/ no doers] must happen suddenly with the deepest conviction and the most urgent immediacy. It is not a matter of developing understanding through reasoning over a period of time, but it is a sudden shock of timeless apprehension, an instantaneous cessation of the mind process in which thinking is suspended and intuitive awareness dawns. Then, after this seed of apprehension has been planted and has taken root, the deliverance from the imagined bondage will proceed on its own course, in its own time. Once you are thoroughly convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the object with which you had identified yourself all this time is really only a phenomenon, having neither independence nor autonomy... that it is merely a dreamed figure, an appearance without substance, seen as a phenomenal object through the dualistic minds of other sentient objects regarding themselves as subjects... and that this shadow can have neither bondage nor liberation... then you as consciousness have become liberated from the mistaken identification you had been making. But if the least vestige of entity-hood hangs on, and you still think of yourself as a being seeking liberation, then you will not find it. As long as you think you are this apparatus and assume the burden of bondage and seek liberation, then liberation will be meaningless. Is it the apparatus that is to be liberated? Find out who it is that is seeking liberation. Discover the true identity of the seeker. It is not liberation but the seeker who is being sought. Find him and liberation will be waiting for you, for it was always there... it has never left you."

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – that guide You from the temporary fluctuating relative stance to abidance as Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

THE MYTH OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. PART 3: – SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

In an October post, floyd said: “Understand that there is no self that needs protecting, but imaginary selves do seem to need many things to exist.” Applied to the personal development movement, floyd may have said: “Understand that there is no self that needs improving, fixing, healing, or developing, but imaginary selves do seem to need many things to exist.” Take that pointer into silent consideration, and if at any time you feel inspired to acquire, fix, evolve, deepen, develop and improve yourself, ask the more relevant question: WHO wants to acquire? WHO wants to fix? WHO wants to evolve? WHO wants to deepen? WHO wants to develop?

Understand – it is not so much the personal development movement and its emphasis on “improving the person” that we are deconstructing here. Rather, the myth of the personal development movement is offered as a pointer. Instead of dabbling in the external and the unreal, when the desire to improve or the fear of not being or having enough arise, the impersonal gaze can simply recognise and witness the pull of an imaginary self.

To re-examine an often-used teaching metaphor, imagine for a moment the cloudless sky. Perfect, white, “chocolate box” summer’s day clouds may float across the sky; or dark, rain-filled storm clouds may float by. Are the white clouds “good” or “positive”? Are the dark clouds “bad” or “negative”? Of course not – they are simply clouds appearing temporarily in the empty sky. The clouds are no different from the thought bundles that make up the imaginary selves.

The Advaitan Teachings tell You directly, You are the cloudless sky. You are not a cloud – neither a white, fluffy cloud nor a dark storm cloud. The clouds – whatever their attributes – appear in You. The clouds are fleeting, temporary, limited, constantly changing in appearance. You are permanent, constant, stable, limitless. Before the clouds appeared, You are the cloudless sky. While the clouds appear and float by, You are the cloudless sky. When the clouds disappear, You are the cloudless sky. Can the clouds harm or tarnish You? Can they improve You? Can they affect You in any way? Of course not. The very idea is absurd.

Now, to apply this metaphor to the personal development movement. Can You see that the teachers in the personal development movement are in the "Cloud Improving Business"? They offer You the allure and promise of permanent stabilization as the airbrushed cloud of your wildest imagination. WHO would be attracted to such a promise? Can You see now how these self-help marketers appeal to the desires of the imaginary personas?

You – the reader of this posting – what is it that You seek? If You are seeking for the freedom of Realization offered via nisarga yoga, use your discernment. Avoid distractions. It is not necessary to evaluate every offering, technique and teacher within the personal development scene. Instead, ask yourself WHO is attracted or interested? Locate and witness the imaginary self that senses lack and incompletion, and seeks to get and gain.

Read through the 1500 postings on this blog, and the transcripts of Maharaj’s dialogues with seekers in his loft. Anywhere, does floyd or maharaj advise you to search in the external relative world for teachers or techniques? Anywhere, does floyd or maharaj advise you to improve or develop yourself as a precursor to Realization? No. Instead, re-reading these texts, the invitation will be found again and again to be silent and to withdraw the gaze from the external and turn within. Again and again the invitation will be found to withdraw all false identifications – including with the identification as a human being, as evidenced by the two quotes below:

Floyd: Once it is understood that consciousness will witness purely if not blocked or contaminated or will witness inaccurately if blocked or contaminated, then no speck of consciousness and no temporarily combined set of elements and no circulating breath can erroneously believe that there is any such thing as having, gaining, losing, thinking, profiting, improving, beginning, ending, being born, dying, being reborn, being offended, or suffering misery.

Maharaj: You are not a kindergarten student of spirituality, so you must cease to think and speak as if you are a phenomenal object. You are the animating consciousness that provides sentience to the sentient being. But you are this consciousness only in manifestation. In truth you are that which is prior to consciousness itself. You are the pure Awareness. You do not need to be liberated. Liberation is a preposterous idea, for were you an object as you still think you are, then as an object you could never be liberated.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – that guide You from the temporary fluctuating relative stance to abidance as Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

THE MYTH OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. PART 2: – SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

Outside the window is a bed of cannas – with their magnificent deep orange flowers and seriated pale and dark green leaves. Often, I observe these flowers noticing the relative “life stages“ – the new buds, the flowers in their perfect prime, followed by the inevitable withering, desiccation and decay of the blooms. Everything about the cycle of life or the life stages in the relative is revealed here. These life stages can be seen not only by observing the cannas in the garden, but also the troop of baboons that gather on the road at the Cape Point Nature Reserve, or the surging mass of human beings at the local supermarket.

From the vantage point of the impersonal gaze, these life stages are simply witnessed. Within the constantly changing field of consciousness, all life follows this predictable pattern: cycling into manifestation; temporary, manifest “identity”; cycling out of manifestation. The “identity” which may appear fixed and solid is actually temporary, fleeting, always fluctuating. There is nothing that can be perceived as permanent in this changing kaleidoscope of the relative life.
As floyd indicated yesterday, the conscious energy that cycles into and out of manifestation witnesses but cannot emote, grow, develop, evolve, feel fear, be empowered. The conscious energy is impersonal – without attributes.

Let’s examine the personal development movement from this impersonal vantage point. The process of personal development really means improving or developing the person – or persona. In other words, it functions at the level of personality. Essentially most personal development techniques label and identify a “negative” or “limited” persona and replace this with a “positive” and “empowered” persona. So, for example, the persona of the “abandoned child” may be replaced with the persona of the “golden child”. In reality, the net of thoughts that construct a limited persona are deconstructed and edited, and a new net of thoughts are adopted that give life to a new, improved persona. This is the technique used in positive affirmation type work, re-imaging, LGATs and even some types of psychotherapy. Can You see that these personal development techniques could be called: "Redecorating the Egoic Self" or "Plastic Surgery for the Personas"? They are concerned with improving or re-imaging a fictional self-identity.

Can personas be changed? Of course – they can be tweaked and re-shaped and re-tooled with various self-empowerment techniques. The Angry and Controlling Boss can become the Flexible and Visionary Leader; the Unassertive and Shy Employee can become the Employee Who is True to Herself and Speaks Up; the Domineering Parent can become a Good Listener and a Caring Communicator. The predominant personality type cannot be shifted – this is set in place usually by the age of six. However, every personality type has an actualized or empowered range – and the skills to navigate within this range can be learned and acquired. Perhaps on the surface, this appears helpful and useful. However, from the viewpoint of the Advaitan Teachings, the stance that binds one to body-mind-personality identification is a prison. Limited or “improved”, personas are still personality constructs – illusory forms driven by desires and fears. They are still ties that bind.

Yet, for many, the various personal development seminars seem to “work”. For some, there is a temporary rush that comes from resting in the gap between abandoning old patterns and ideas and replacing them with new ones. Instead of seeing that in the gap they are resting in their own true nature, the entranced seekers will assume that the techniques have “done the trick”. The world out there may look and feel different – for a time. However, there is still a fictional and limited self in place – a false identity driven by a net of fears and desires – and sooner or later this sense of being limited, separate, and splintered will re-emerge, and usually the seeker will sign up for the Advanced Course or the new Therapy of the Month – to obtain a fresh injection of temporary relief.

As Maharaj says: “The limited only is perfectible. The unlimited is already perfect. You are perfect, only you don't know it. Learn to know yourself and you will discover wonders.” And:

"The desire to find the self will surely be fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward."

Is Your gaze turned inwards? Is the final desire to find the True Self what is driving You? Have You abandoned the endless distractions of the personal development and spiritual movements in the outer world?

(Note: For some seekers entranced by personality, the relative effects are such that psychotherapy, counseling and even medication are appropriate and necessary interventions. A degree of stability at the relative level is required for the liberation teachings of Advaita to be understood.)

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – that guide You from the temporary fluctuating relative stance to abidance as Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

THE MYTH OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. PART 1: – SITE CO-HOST: LOUISE STERLING

From the moment we emerge from the womb, we are programmed with the emphatic instruction that we are a separate individual in a world of separate others. We are labeled “boy” or “girl”, “difficult” or “easy”, “special” and “different”, “chosen”, “angel”, “prince” or “princess”, “brat” or “inconvenience”. As we move through the life stages, the labels continue to be added and adjusted. During the school years, we become “a little Einstein”, “hopeless at math”, “socially competent”, “shy and introverted”, “a trouble maker”, “well-behaved and well-adjusted”. As we enter the world of relationships, we become a “great lover”, “a perfect wife or husband”, “a nagging bitch“ or a “dysfunctional philanderer.” So it goes. Eventually, we acquire some of these labels ourselves; we come to believe them, attach to them, and use them to define our sense of self-identity.

In this society, there is a strong emphasis on self-actualization and personal development. In this schema, the individual stabilizes the labels that are “positive” and “empowering” and toils to overcome and eradicate the labels that are “negative” and “self-limiting”. A popular label currently in New Age circles is “enlightened” – and many seminars and courses are offered to the individual to acquire this “enlightened” and “awakened” state – which is really a pinnacle label.

This is the myth of personal development. Let’s examine a few reasons why this is a myth from the point of view of the Advaitan understanding.

1. All labels – both positive and negative – are false
The Advaitan Teachings return You to Your Source – before the formation of anything that can be perceived in this relative world. Who Are You? The question is rhetorical. Any answer is a description of the false. Yet, the question is repeated again and again, used to throw up and eliminate all identification.

Can You see that ALL labels are false? Can You see that the labels (like “spiritually aware” or “highly evolved”) or practices (like “opening the heart”, “becoming centred”, “connecting to the divine”) that are sought and revered via the personal development movement are dualistic and false? Can You see that Who You Are is beyond all labeling, description conceptualization and differentiation? Can You see that the palliative offerings of the personal development movement are fake pills and not the Ultimate Medicine?

2. There is no separate, self-centred, evolving or suffering, individual
Maharaj says: “You are not who you take yourself to be.” You have been programmed to believe this false story of an individual self. Yet, it is not true. If you observe closely, you will see that the thoughts and ideas you have about yourself are always in flux. Since this sense you have about yourself is created by the binding together of thoughts, and since thoughts are always changing – the sense of self is always changing, always fluctuating, always unstable. Maharaj explains further: “There is no "my self" and "his self". There is the Self, the only Self of all. Misled by the diversity of names and shapes, minds and bodies, you imagine multiple selves. We both are the self.” Or as floyd says with reference to the fears that plague the “suffering individual”: “You never feel scared. You can only witness. The pure consciousness can neither be brave nor afraid, but it can see what false identity thinks there is something to fear. Identify for a time with the energy at the wall plug in your kitchen. Can it be brave? Can it fear? Or it is just there, now, temporarily? Some day, that which houses it will fall and crumble. Your house shall not last forever. At that point, the energy will no longer be manifested there, but it will not end either. In the meantime, it is totally incapable of being afraid or brave, of having or not having. It just is.”

What happens when You drop this erroneous idea that You are a separate, self-centred, evolving or suffering individual? Can You see the absurdity of attempting to develop, enhance and improve this non-existent self?

3. Personal development implies accumulating new beliefs and new roles, whereas Realization involves eliminating all beliefs and all roles
The Advaitan Teaching encourages de-accumulation; the elimination of every role and every belief. The reason is clear. The fictional self is constructed from a matrix of thoughts, beliefs and roles that bind. The task of the Advaitan Teacher is to unravel this false binding; to strip away everything so that nothing remains. Who You Are is revealed in absence, in silence, when the false self is in absentia. Examine some popular examples of false roles and identities thrown up by the personal development movement: “intuitive healer”, “spiritual warrior”, “enlightened teacher” etc. Sheer logic must reveal that these roles are created by a net of beliefs and ideas about the self; and sheer logic must reveal that these roles are additions – added to what is Formless, Limitless, Non-dual. Whatever these roles may SOUND like to the ears of the grasping individual, they are all false.

Can You see why the alluring roles of the personal development movement are glittering trinkets that act as barriers to knowing Who You Are? With this understanding, can You eliminate ALL roles, ALL beliefs, ALL constructions of a self that differentiate?

The flirtation with the personal development movement and the acquiring of new roles typically occurs at the third step in the Seven-Step movement towards Realization. While it is acknowledged on this site that the step must be made, it must also been transitioned -- despite the allure it holds for many seekers.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

(For extending teaching on the Advaitan Understanding – that guide You from the temporary fluctuating relative stance to abidance as Your Real Nature, see the links on the right hand side of this blog.)

Comments / clarifications may be sent to louise.advaita@gmail.com

OVERCOMING A KEY OBSTACLE TO REALIZATION: BEING PROGRAMMED TO BELIEVE IN A PERSONAL SELF AND A PERSONAL GOD, The Conclusion

An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Noneness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

Co-Host LOUISE STERLING will be posting for at least the remainder of this week. Please visit the site each day this week with the assurance that the speck of consciousness called “louise” will offer considerations as relevant as all of those which she has shared in her other series.

[An invitation: Yesterday was the 1,500th posting on this site, so you are invited to visit the archives where there are one-thousand-five-hundred postings that can be accessed without charge. Use the search feature in the upper right-hand corner of this page to find other series posted by Louise as well as discussions that deal with almost any Advaitin topic which you might like to read about in more detail.]

FROM A SITE VISITOR: thanx for the terms ‘god-trance’ and ‘personality-trance’ – those really resonated – made clear what state I’ve lived in almost all of my life.

FROM ANOTHER SITE VISITOR: [Regarding a pointer offered yesterday] You owe cavemen an apology (LOL) Love the site.

F.: I stand corrected. Thank you.

Persons identified with the personal also identity their god or gods or “forces” or "laws" as personal, even while many claim that is not the case. If it is claimed to be some “force” or “cosmic energy” or “universe” rather than someone personal that is causing (with some particular motive) whatever events happen on this planet, then that “force” or “cosmic energy” or “universe” is still behaving in a person-like fashion.

Charting energy levels (and dualistically logging those in as “positive” or “negative”) and then intervening to bring about "a re-balancing of energy levels and types" is still a very person-like process, all claims that "floyd, you just don’t understand the complexities of karma and the way the universe works" to the contrary.

Indeed, the Realized understand the functioning of the totality, having been present for the formation not only of this universe but all universes. Yet the Realized Nisargan cares not a whit about all of that—giving the matter as much concern as would a bird or a deer or a snake or a whale.

To be trapped in the personality-trance is to assign personal traits not only to oneself but also to whatever it might be one believes is in charge of the universe. It is to assign person-like responsibility for whatever happens and thereby sets the stage for the ignorant to believe that naturally-occurring events are really supernatural events that have been set into motion by a Personal Being or Power.

[And the utter inanity and senselessness and absurdity inspired by the belief in a personal power that brings about havoc is this: if it were a human exacting the kind of death and destruction and misery and suffering and horror that persons claim some god or force or supreme power is either exacting now or supposedly exacted in the past, persons would hate that human; yet after being warped via programming and conditioning to accept the unacceptable as not only acceptable but actually "just fine," they worship and adore their god or power even though they believe it is behaving in the very same destructive and horrible fashion. Why? Because of their desires and their fears...because they themselves want power and Power and control.]

To be free of the slings and arrows of belief in anything or anyone that is personal, staying with the “I AM” is often enough. To follow that phrase with any word—a phrase which is as close as one can come to stating the temporary truth regarding a temporary condition—is to verbalize an untruth. Meaning?

Meaning, to report that “I am this, I am that, I am a religious person, I am a spiritual person, I am a supreme self, I am the infinite self,” ad infinitum, is an act of deception.

“But what about ‘I Am being'?” it has been asked. “Wouldn’t that statement be true, even though a word is following ‘I Am’?” Temporarily, yes, You Are being, but why go there?

Does the buck say to the doe, “Do you know, mate, that I am being”? Of course not. None of that “mind”-speak is natural. Why the burdensome preoccupation with all such “stuff” when You could be functioning in the natural fashion that all forms, except humans, function in throughout the manifestation?

The invitation here is to abide as Your original nature; to abide with the peace and freedom that comes when the Oneness is known via the understanding of non-duality; to know Real Love and to taste throughout the manifestation the sweetness of that nectar;

to be free of belief in all myths and superstitions and to be free of belief in all ideas and concepts (which are always based in ignorance); and then, eventually, to understand the Noneness—the Noneness of any personal self, Personal Self, personal being, Personal Being, person-like force, person-like law, person-like “cosmic something,” personal creator, personal sustainer, or personal destroyer that makes things happen.

Maharaj said:

Things happen without cause and reason and, after all, what does it matter, who is who? Your high opinion of me is your opinion only. Any moment you may change it. Why attach importance to opinions, even your own?

Like everything mental, the so-called law of causation contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause.

It is the illusion of time that makes you talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity and creative freedom takes its place.

Once you create for yourself a world in time and space, governed by causality, you are bound to search for and find causes for everything. You put the question and impose an answer.

When I say a thing is without a cause, I mean it can be without a particular cause.

In fact, the cause of all is...all. Again, it is being trapped in the personality-trance that inspires persons to think that they know the single cause which they imagine to be behind every happening. Actually, as Ashley said recently, what happens just happens. There is no single cause and there is no single causer (much less any special or Supreme "Causer").

It is ego and egotism and a hidden agenda that motivates persons in a personality-trance to tell others what the cause of a particular event is, the desire being to manipulate and control persons and to fill a “mind” with nonsense so that the “mind” can be manipulated in order to manipulate behavior.

If you would be free (free of the influence of personality and manipulators and indoctrinators and controllers) then you must be free of all beliefs in (a) "the personal" and then free of all belief in (b) all other concepts and ideas about everything else. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

Now you can receive for $40 a downloadable computer file version of the same 7-hour satsang that seekers receive when they visit for the Advaita Retreat with Floyd. You will be guided through the seven steps from identification with the false "I" to the Absolute (and beyond).
For more information or to order, click:
DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

SIX WAYS THAT SEEKERS HAVE REALIZED:

1. BY WATCHING the 4-Disk Video (DVD) Set, or the same retreat available as a downloadable file. Either will provide an entire seven-hour retreat / series of satsang sessions showing three seekers being guided through all seven steps by Floyd and can provide viewers with an “experiential,” step-by-step series of satsang meetings that will move the viewers from identification with the I to abidance as the Absolute and then to abidance as That Which Is beyond

Some seekers are already using the computer file version and the DVD sets for meetings in groups in homes, playing the retreat, pausing for discussion, etc.

To find out more or to purchase the DVD set or the downloadable computer file version of the retreat, click:
DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

Option “A” is for the downloadable file version, Option “B” is used to order the DVD set for delivery inside the U.S., Option “C” for international orders.

For the download, Paypal will send me a notice that payment has been received and then I will send by e-mail the downloading instruction, password, etc.

[It is recommended that you watch the video with pen and paper in hand. Write whatever you need clarified. You'll see that there are constant reviews and you might find an answer later in the seven-hour presentation. Then, after you watch it all, there will be a common ground for discussion. Purchase of the DVD’s or the file will include the right to clarifications and answers to your specific questions via e-mail.]

2. BY READING these books in this exact order:
IT'S ALL BULLSHIT (And Why Knowing It Sets You Free)
SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (Recovering What Religions Lost)
[Those two prepare the seeker to question it all]
THE MEDITATION GUIDES
[Provide a broad overview of the understanding]
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?
[Begins to free the seeker of body identification and the desire for body continuity]
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS "PEACE OF MIND" (There Is Only Peace if You're Out of Your Mind)
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of the false content of the “mind”]
LIBERATION
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of personas]
THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS
[Provides the final preparation for the seeker to be directed along the “path”]
FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)
[Directs the seeker along the “path”]
CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: The Nature of Reality Beyond Self-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding as The Absolute)
[Allows the seeker to understand the functioning of the totality, the manifestation, and what is involved with the un-manifestation]
FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO THE NOTHINGNESS
[Provides the seeker the wisdom to understand the Noneness as well as the Oneness]
Purchase an e-Book now and begin reading it in minutes (except with e-checks that can take 7-10 days). Trusting our clients as we do, all e-Books are provided to you in printable form.
SAVE IF YOU BUY ALL ELEVEN AT ONCE:
(You may order the books one at a time or you may use the following link to acquire the entire 11-e-Book set on sale for $99 if ordered at one time with the “Buy Now” button below. For this option, there will be no download links provided; once the near-instant notice of payment is received from PayPal, your e-Books will be sent to you as e-mail attachments. All are printable for your convenience.)

You may visit The Official Website of Floyd Henderson for information on each book.

3. BY ENROLLING in the Online Advaita Classes
For information, visit Information on the Advaita Classes on the Internet
To enroll visit Enroll in the Advaita Internet Course

4. BY ATTENDING an Advaitin retreat for satsang with floyd and being guided through all seven steps. For details of the retreats offered, please visit the retreat information site.

5. BY ARRANGING satsang by telephone in the U.S. or by Skype internationally:
Use the Contact link for details or for information on making arrangements for a session

6. BY ARRANGING for floyd to travel to your location and meet with you or your group. Use the contact link above to discuss details.

OVERCOMING A KEY OBSTACLE TO REALIZATION: BEING PROGRAMMED TO BELIEVE IN A PERSONAL SELF AND A PERSONAL GOD, Part Six

An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Noneness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

F.: As the series nears its end, a review will begin with what some site visitors have shared:

** The block of the belief in a [literal, personal] Higher Power has me in silence, struggling with thirteen years of prayers and beliefs

** I am looking at the personas that caused the insane behaviors and am understanding

** thanx for the terms ‘god-trance’ and ‘personality-trance’ – those really resonated – made clear what state I’ve lived in almost all of my life

** …there is no ‘One’ in control of anything, it is all just happening

To avoid the “block,” the “god-trance,” the “personality-trance,” the “insane behaviors,” and the erroneous belief that there is someone or something "determining everything that happens" on the planet and using natural disasters to teach lessons or to mete out punishment, then all notions about personal beings and personal Supreme Beings must be abandoned.

When persons fixate at the third step of a seven-path “journey” to Full Realization and believe that their religious personas and / or spiritual personas are true identities, they will mistake ignorance for intelligence, certain that every happening on the planet can be traced to a single cause and that they unequivocally know the cause.

For most of the non-Realized, that single cause is erroneously believed to be either (a) the god of Abraham, worshiped by the members of the three dominant sky cults: Jews, Christians, and Muslims; or some will claim to be spiritual but not religious and believe that the single cause is (b) “a god or gods, but not the god worshiped by religious people”; or (c) some nebulous “will of the universe”; or

(d) “the cosmic laws” that determine—by some manner of extraterrestrial bookkeeping which supposedly tracks "good" and "bad" and karmic energy levels—whether a prize or a penalty is due to people and at various times brings about benefit or devastation in order to re-balance the “positive and negative energy” in the universe; or (e) “Satan” and “Satanists.”

All of those ignorance-based beliefs will inspire the adoption of religious or spiritual personas, and personas always generate and support a series of ideas and concepts and beliefs which are based in falsehoods; which boost the levels of accumulated ignorance on the planet; which reinforce the lies of duality and separate-ness; and which exalt magical thinking and blind faith while denigrating scientific proofs and actual facts.

Lost in that dream / nightmare of the planet and living life as an actor of the stage of “The Theater of the Lie,” then a man who has assumed the persona of “The Spiritual Giant” (but has not the slightest trace of hormonal discipline) can claim that there is a god who has used his sexual escapades to reward the man with job promotions and economic advancement (see yesterday’s post);

will allow another who has assumed the role of “The Wonderful Religious Woman” to continue to play that role even as she prayed at the altar of her church every day for a year that her god would kill her spouse (see again yesterday’s post);

that the Twin Towers in New York were knocked down on 9-11 because gods was angry about the proliferation of gays, liberated women and non-Christians in the U.S. (see Reverend Jerry Falwell); that the current suffering and misery in Haiti is a result of a pact made with Satan more than 200 years ago (see Reverend Pat Robertson);

that “if Allah has not wanted the towers knocked down on 9-11, then the men could not have succeeded in their mission” (see the Muslim cleric who made that claim); and that “Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans because of the negative karma of the people there” (see the Dalai Lama).

The proliferation of ignorance-based beliefs that are perpetuated by those assuming personal and religious and spiritual identities—beliefs that include a personal god or gods or some force behaving like a personal power—will lead to widespread attachment to nonsense, to misery and suffering, and to the continued assignment of high value to ignorance.

Such are the results of those trapped in “a god-trance” or in “a will-of-the-universe-trance” or in “a cosmic-force-that-causes-all-events-on-this-planet-trance.”

Tomorrow, the series conclusion will look specifically at (1) the personality-trance, at (2) the ways that the persona-trance / the personality-trance generates as much belief in nonsense as the god-trance, and at (3) the way that the personality-trance has caused the masses on planet earth to revert back into a state of attachment to myth and superstition and ignorance that has not been so widespread since the period that anthropologists refer to as "the caveman era."

Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

OVERCOMING A KEY OBSTACLE TO REALIZATION: BEING PROGRAMMED TO BELIEVE IN A PERSONAL SELF AND A PERSONAL GOD, Part Five

An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Noneness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Floyd Henderson, have not forgotten to contact you - been spending some time viewing the DVD’s (The Seven Step Journey to Reality) for the second time. It is interesting waking up to the understanding and the direction you’ve pointed me in for the last eighteen months. The block of the belief in a [literal, personal] Higher Power has me in silence, struggling with thirteen years of prayers and beliefs and a [“special book.”] I do want to continue with you. I am looking at the personas that caused the insane behaviors and am understanding “The Helper” - very clear today [that I was] seeking to be loved and to fix the broken. I can see how this has blocked [me from knowing] my True Self. Thanks

FROM ANOTHER SITE VISITOR: thanx for the terms ‘god-trance’ and ‘personality-trance’ – those really resonated – made clear what state I’ve lived in almost all of my life

FROM ANOTHER SITE VISITOR: [In response to yesterday’s post] Floyd-once again the proverbial head of the nail has been hit when the question was posed asking why you would send help when the people have “brought a curse on themselves” (quoting Robertson). There has to be some logical reason why “God” would allow this to happen or their religion, and all that blind faith it is riding on, is worthless. They have to come up with a reason why “God” is justified in allowing it; otherwise, they would have to question their “God” and the answers might not coincide with what they choose to believe. It is precisely these kinds of catastrophic events that should be a wakeup call that there is no One in control of anything, it is all just happening, and it would have happened even if there were not a living soul on that island. It will probably happen again in 200 years, and whoever is living there then will share the same fate, regardless of their religion. Ashley

F.: Hello, Ashley. And You are spot on when you allude to the fact that there can be no duality when it comes to this topic: either there is faith or fact, and faith is blind while fact is available to all who would see truth; yet facts are seldom sought by those who are so proud of their blind faith.

Why seek the facts about hundreds of events that happen each day if you can explain everything with one simple explanation: “It is God’s will” or “the will of the universe” or “the cosmic laws at work”?

Indeed, as Ashley notes, the earthquake would have happened even if the island had not been inhabited, and any who look at the facts would see that the notion that there is some power or force or universe or cosmic something involved in meting out retribution is nonsense.

The facts are that two earthquakes happen every minute on this planet, bringing the annual total to just shy of 1,000,000 earthquakes per year. The Center for Earthquake Research and Information reports that “most occur in remote areas with no buildings or people and are not destructive.”

Are most of the 960,000 earthquakes per year for “practice,” or are they instances where a power or god or cosmic something just missed the intended target most of the time? Pure nonsense is eliminated when fact trumps faith, but few will ever seek fact since their faith provides an illusion of knowledge and power and control and placebo-like treatment for their relative fear.

More to the point, everything rooted in belief in a person, in the belief in anything personal, and in personality assumption is going to be nonsense and will lead to misery and suffering and / or ignorance.

The first writer above in other parts of his e-mail alluded to the misery and insanity that resulted when he succumbed to the influence of the Type Two personality and the Type Eight personality which drove him for months (and for years before that) to try to rescue those who were not ready to be rescued and to try to control persons who did not want to be controlled.

Robertson’s nonsense seen yesterday evolved from the assumption of many personas: “The Good and Wise Religious Man,” “The One Who Knows God’s Will and Understands God’s Mysterious Ways,” and “The One Who Has Become a Millionaire by Enticing People To Enter Into a God-Trance.”

In the god-trance, persons (the non-Realized) assign to every event some supernatural cause even as they attempt to co-op the power of god or the universe or the cosmos or whatever imaginary force they think is causing every event on the planet.

If you have been a regular visitor to the site, you have seen the examples offered before of what it looks like to be thinking and talking and behaving while being driven blindly while in a god-trance state:

** A vice-presidential candidate who is sure that her religious beliefs made her so special to her god that it was he who selected her for that political role.

** A man fired three times from three jobs because of sexual misconduct who mourned each of those firings briefly but who then put “the god-trance spin” on the events, claiming, “You know what - to heck with it. It’s all good. There’s only God’s will. Every time I've lost a job, I got a better one.”

Such illogical warping of the cause of that series of relative happenings ignores the relative trail of misery the man left behind for those caught up in his actions (again showing how his god can seemingly use one, singular event not only to dole out misery for some but also to provide blessings for others);

or, that warping proves that indeed the god of the man obsessed with sex does work in mysterious ways, advancing a supposedly noumenal, spiritual plan by blending with it the use of phenomenal, physical organs. That is indeed a most mysterious combination, and that would truly be a god that does "work in mysterious (and dualistic) ways."

** The one assuming the personality of "The Saintly, Religious Woman" who was employed in a church and who told her husband that she had gone to the chancel and knelled in prayer every morning for a year, “asking God to kill you.” That persona-based activity was also mysterious since she had no clue about how truly warped the consciousness can be when personas are assumed and seek power and control, especially in matters of life and death—just as with the recent earthquake or with floods or hurricanes or with other naturally-occurring events on the planet.

There are few degrees of insanity that are any crazier than personality-driven thoughts and words and deeds which reinforce insane behaviors and beliefs; which foster personality disorders; which devalue facts and logic; which inspire persons to become totally out of touch with reality; which give persons a sense of being intelligent though trapped in total ignorance; and which generate a cold sense of better-than-ness and separation in the relative existence. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

OVERCOMING A KEY OBSTACLE TO REALIZATION: BEING PROGRAMMED TO BELIEVE IN A PERSONAL SELF AND A PERSONAL GOD, Part Four

An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Noneness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Floyd Henderson, have not forgotten to contact you - been spending some time viewing the DVD’s (The Seven Step Journey to Reality) for the second time. It is interesting waking up to the understanding and the direction you’ve pointed me in for the last eighteen months. The block of the belief in a [literal, personal] Higher Power has me in silence, struggling with thirteen years of prayers and beliefs and a [“special book.”] I do want to continue with you. I am looking at the personas that caused the insane behaviors and am understanding “The Helper” - very clear today [that I was] seeking to be loved and to fix the broken. I can see how this has blocked [me from knowing] my True Self. Thanks

FROM ANOTHER SITE VISITOR: thanx for the terms ‘god-trance’ and ‘personality-trance’ – those really resonated – made clear what state I’ve lived in almost all of my life

F.: You’re welcome. The term “Power of the Universe”-trance would be as appropriate. One example offered in the past was the Dalai Lama’s claim that Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans in the U.S. because of the “negative karma of the people of New Orleans.”

The Christian evangelist Pat Robertson has provided another example of people in a trance who assign supernatural cause to natural events. Pastor Robertson said that the recent earthquake in Haiti was God's punishment for a "pact with the devil" that Haitian slaves' made two hundred years ago to win freedom from France.

Later, Robertson tried to brighten his image by claiming that his ministry would send some aid to the people of Haiti. Why is he usurping the will of his God whom Robertson said planned the catastrophe and wants the people to suffer? Illogical persons will always reveal their lack of reason and their self-contradictory but faulty "logic" if one listens carefully.

The problem with being in the "god-trance" or in a personality-trance or in a “cosmic power”-trance or in a “cosmic law”-trance is that—while those in such trances claim to be all about “love” and "compassion"—the actual result is the opposite.

If natural happenings occur that result in massive suffering but are blamed on some supernatural cause, on some personal god or god-force or "the will of the universe," then the blamer is not going to question the actions of whatever “authority” they believe to be behind the suffering; hence, the suffering is justified and more than acceptable, in their "minds."

Lip service notwithstanding, where is the compassion from Pat Robertson for the suffering of the people of Haiti if that suffering is God’s will? The dualistic belief is, “You asked for it. Now start thinking and talking and behaving in the way that God wants and then God can stop heaping such misery and punishment on you.”

When in the hospital after breaking seventeen bones in a motorcycle accident a few years ago, the doctors placed "floyd's" body into a medically-induced trance to alleviate some of the physical pain. If someone had come into the room and said,

“There are children whose bones have been broken by the falling rubble caused by an earthquake and their bones are being reset without benefit of any anesthesia,” what chance would there have been that “floyd” could feel anything for anyone while in a trance state induced by the doctors? I would have been robbed of any chance to feel compassion because the chance to feel anything would have been blocked.

Similarly, what chance could there possibly be for empathy to manifest among persons whose indoctrination has blocked them from caring about the misery of other humans (such as those presently suffering in Haiti) if such blocked persons are resting comfortably in the arrogance-producing trance state that has been induced by their indoctrinators?

The conclusion from those with the distorted belief that natural events are really supernatural events is, “Who am I to question the will of god / the power / the universe / the cosmic force / etc. who wants those people to suffer in order to punish them?"

(And, in this case, the punishment is said to be not for anything done by those presently suffering but for something that other people supposedly did two hundred years ago, so the Christian Robertson has bought into the non-Christian Dalai Lama's karma theory without even knowing it.)

The Ultimate Medicine is available to treat the sickness that results in a lack of compassion and in the lack of awareness of what “Real Love” is. The god-power-universe-cosmic-force-trance reinforces the false sense of separation via a false sense of better-than-ness;

generates judgment and aloofness and coldness; and results in distortion and delusion as naturally-occurring events are warped via magical thinking into “godly” or “force of the universe” events.

If this is the will of Reverend Robertson’s god…


…then why would any sane and rational human feel even the slightest inclination to be closer to Robertson's god, much less worship such an entity? No sane and rational persons would.

And if this is the will of your universe, I am not impressed with your universe. If it is the result of the cosmic laws you adhere to, then I am not impressed with your laws. If the misery and suffering that is revealed in the picture above is believed by you to be the result of something or someone supernatural, then it is most assuredly time to question your beliefs if you would ever be free of religious or spiritual or cultural ignorance.

And while no sane and rational person would be attracted to a force or god or law that works in such a cruel fashion, persons driven by ideology would...and do. Persons indoctrinated would...and do. Persons programmed and conditioned to believe in a personal god who is into punishing would...and do. Freedom from such sick thoughts and concepts and ideas and beliefs can come via the Ultimate Medicine.

The invitation here is to drink of the Ultimate Medicine; taste the nectar of immortality; drink of the remedy for the planet-wide insanity that grips indoctrinated persons; swallow the medicine that can wash away the inability to feel;

digest the medicine via contemplation so that it might remove the ignorance and emotional intoxication that plagues the non-Realized across the globe; and be healed of the dream of the planet (which is also at the root of the sickness of the planet).

Otherwise, you will buy into the widespread ignorance that supports belief in personal gods and personal selves and negative, punishing forces and punitive cosmic laws that are supposedly preoccupied with retribution and that are at work throughout the universe.

Trapped in such indoctrination-inspired ignorance, persons will never be free of their attachment to supernatural-style lies. Freed from the effects of indoctrination, Realization can happen and bring with it an understanding of the Truth that can be known but that cannot be stated. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

Now you can receive for $40 a downloadable computer file version of the same 7-hour satsang that seekers receive when they visit for the Advaita Retreat with Floyd. You will be guided through the seven steps from identification with the false "I" to the Absolute (and beyond).
For more information or to order, click:
DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

SIX WAYS THAT SEEKERS HAVE REALIZED:

1. BY WATCHING the 4-Disk Video (DVD) Set, or the same retreat available as a downloadable file. Either will provide an entire seven-hour retreat / series of satsang sessions showing three seekers being guided through all seven steps by Floyd and can provide viewers with an “experiential,” step-by-step series of satsang meetings that will move the viewers from identification with the I to abidance as the Absolute and then to abidance as That Which Is beyond

Some seekers are already using the computer file version and the DVD sets for meetings in groups in homes, playing the retreat, pausing for discussion, etc.

To find out more or to purchase the DVD set or the downloadable computer file version of the retreat, click:
DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

Option “A” is for the downloadable file version, Option “B” is used to order the DVD set for delivery inside the U.S., Option “C” for international orders.

For the download, Paypal will send me a notice that payment has been received and then I will send by e-mail the downloading instruction, password, etc.

[It is recommended that you watch the video with pen and paper in hand. Write whatever you need clarified. You'll see that there are constant reviews and you might find an answer later in the seven-hour presentation. Then, after you watch it all, there will be a common ground for discussion. Purchase of the DVD’s or the file will include the right to clarifications and answers to your specific questions via e-mail.]

2. BY READING these books in this exact order:
IT'S ALL BULLSHIT (And Why Knowing It Sets You Free)
SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (Recovering What Religions Lost)
[Those two prepare the seeker to question it all]
THE MEDITATION GUIDES
[Provide a broad overview of the understanding]
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?
[Begins to free the seeker of body identification and the desire for body continuity]
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS "PEACE OF MIND" (There Is Only Peace if You're Out of Your Mind)
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of the false content of the “mind”]
LIBERATION
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of personas]
THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS
[Provides the final preparation for the seeker to be directed along the “path”]
FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)
[Directs the seeker along the “path”]
CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: The Nature of Reality Beyond Self-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding as The Absolute)
[Allows the seeker to understand the functioning of the totality, the manifestation, and what is involved with the un-manifestation]
FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO THE NOTHINGNESS
[Provides the seeker the wisdom to understand the Noneness as well as the Oneness]
Purchase an e-Book now and begin reading it in minutes (except with e-checks that can take 7-10 days). Trusting our clients as we do, all e-Books are provided to you in printable form.
SAVE IF YOU BUY ALL ELEVEN AT ONCE:
(You may order the books one at a time or you may use the following link to acquire the entire 11-e-Book set on sale for $99 if ordered at one time with the “Buy Now” button below. For this option, there will be no download links provided; once the near-instant notice of payment is received from PayPal, your e-Books will be sent to you as e-mail attachments. All are printable for your convenience.)

You may visit The Official Website of Floyd Henderson for information on each book.

3. BY ENROLLING in the Online Advaita Classes
For information, visit Information on the Advaita Classes on the Internet
To enroll visit Enroll in the Advaita Internet Course

4. BY ATTENDING an Advaitin retreat for satsang with floyd and being guided through all seven steps. For details of the retreats offered, please visit the retreat information site.

5. BY ARRANGING satsang by telephone in the U.S. or by Skype internationally:
Use the Contact link for details or for information on making arrangements for a session

6. BY ARRANGING for floyd to travel to your location and meet with you or your group. Use the contact link above to discuss details.

OVERCOMING A KEY OBSTACLE TO REALIZATION: BEING PROGRAMMED TO BELIEVE IN A PERSONAL SELF AND A PERSONAL GOD, Part Three

An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Noneness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free, period.

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Floyd Henderson, have not forgotten to contact you - been spending some time viewing the DVD’s (The Seven Step Journey to Reality) for the second time. It is interesting waking up to the understanding and the direction you’ve pointed me in for the last eighteen months. The block of the belief in a [literal, personal] Higher Power has me in silence, struggling with thirteen years of prayers and beliefs and a [“special book.”] I do want to continue with you. I am looking at the personas that caused the insane behaviors and am understanding “The Helper” - very clear today [that I was] seeking to be loved and to fix the broken. I can see how this has blocked [me from knowing] my True Self. Thanks

F.: [Continued from yesterday]

Yesterday, it was noted that “if Personality Type Two’s do begin to discard the traits of that type, they often move into the quiet and begin to seek the Authentic Self." The same can happen with any who are trapped in the limiting identification of a persona (or, most often, personas).

Next, no one has ever been trapped in a persona or in personas who has not been exposed to considerable indoctrination. To fail to see that one has been indoctrinated is to continue to be driven unconsciously by one's indoctrinators.

So, the invitation now is to expand the focus in order to find all of the sources of indoctrination that have had a hand in warping the consciousness (which now prevents some of you from seeing clearly) and that blocked the consciousness (which now prevents some of you from being able to answer the most basic question, “Who/What Am I, really?”)

The indoctrinators include those working in the institutions of government and education; in the institutions of religion; and in the institutions of “reform” and “self-help”; but the earliest source of your indoctrination was within the institution of the family—the household.

Since the man who wrote the e-mail above was subjected to decades of programming by Catholics, then certain words spoken by the post-Realization Christ will be shared. They evidence Christ’s exposure to the Advaitin teachings and provide a pointer that is relevant to this discussion:

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace. I come to bring a sword, for I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household."

So the members of the household are indoctrinators; those working in the institutions to whom the members of the household gave unchecked authority to program their children are indoctrinators. Those in ideological movements and “spiritual groups” and organized religion are indoctrinators.

And what those calling themselves “Christians” do not see is that they are ignoring the messages from the man they go to church to worship in services offered via organized religion. They ignore what he modeled for them, specifically: he tried organized religion; he abandoned organized religion; he entered the forest dweller stage to seek truth; he stopped sharing from the texts used to indoctrinate him during childhood; and, at the end, he shared the Advaita teachings during the final days of manifestation before taking mahasamadhi:

"When you speak of me, speak of me as I AM"

"Before Abraham was, I AM"

"No one shall ever see heaven - it's within"

"Heaven and earth shall fade away"

and

“I come to bring a sword, for I came to set a man against his father”

Meaning ? Meaning, the household roles of “son” and “father” etc. must be seen to be false identifications. Meaning that the members of your household must be seen as those who indoctrinated you and who programmed you to believe that myths and lies are truth. Meaning that if you would be free, you must see that they were the first to strip away the natural instinct to question nonsense when nonsense is offered as truth.

Indoctrinators rob the masses of the simplicity of natural living (which is marked by peace and freedom and harmony) and set the stage, instead, for the disharmony of accumulation-and-ideology-inspired fighting and killing, especially in regards to four issues:

…“resources”
…“land”
…“religion”
…“hatred of any considered to be 'different'”

What are the actual roots of all such unnatural and supernatural living that result in disharmony and fighting and killing? Being programmed to accumulate; being indoctrinated to believe in the concept of “ownership”;

being conditioned to believe in a dualistic concept of “a god of right and wrong” who wants persons involved with the “right” religion to kill all of the people involved with the “wrong” religions;

being acculturated in ways that instill nationalistic pride and a sense of entitlement that leads to the belief that some humans have the right to take the lands and resources being used by other humans; and being acculturated to believe that any who interfere with the bogus ego-states which are assigned by your culture and which you take to be "who you are" should be hated and eliminated.

Yet what might be the most baffling result of all indoctrination is this result: that the indoctrinated will believe that the truth is based in what their indoctrinators say rather than in what their indoctrinators do, actions that are insane, nonsensical, hypocritical, and self-contradictory.

At the beginning of this post, the pointer is offered that “here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either.” The surest sign that someone is intent on indoctrinating you is that they have a set of conceptualized beliefs;

that they want you to accept their concepts and beliefs as truth, without question; and that they want you to go forth and parrot those conceptualized beliefs to others.

It is the thousands of years of such unquestioned participation in the cycling of ignorance that have left the masses trapped in their beliefs about a personal self and personal god(s); trapped in their present stupor;

trapped in their present state of discontentment; and trapped in their sleep-walking and sleep-talking condition. It is the Nisargan that offers the invitation to cast aside all of the ignorance-generating and nonsense-perpetuating effects of indoctrination and programming and conditioning and acculturation and domestication and abide in a natural, AS IF fashion.

Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

Now you can receive for $40 a downloadable computer file version of the same 7-hour satsang that seekers receive when they visit for the Advaita Retreat with Floyd. You will be guided through the seven steps from identification with the false "I" to the Absolute (and beyond).
For more information or to order, click:
DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

SIX WAYS THAT SEEKERS HAVE REALIZED:

1. BY WATCHING the 4-Disk Video (DVD) Set, or the same retreat available as a downloadable file. Either will provide an entire seven-hour retreat / series of satsang sessions showing three seekers being guided through all seven steps by Floyd and can provide viewers with an “experiential,” step-by-step series of satsang meetings that will move the viewers from identification with the I to abidance as the Absolute and then to abidance as That Which Is beyond

Some seekers are already using the computer file version and the DVD sets for meetings in groups in homes, playing the retreat, pausing for discussion, etc.

To find out more or to purchase the DVD set or the downloadable computer file version of the retreat, click:
DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

Option “A” is for the downloadable file version, Option “B” is used to order the DVD set for delivery inside the U.S., Option “C” for international orders.

For the download, Paypal will send me a notice that payment has been received and then I will send by e-mail the downloading instruction, password, etc.

[It is recommended that you watch the video with pen and paper in hand. Write whatever you need clarified. You'll see that there are constant reviews and you might find an answer later in the seven-hour presentation. Then, after you watch it all, there will be a common ground for discussion. Purchase of the DVD’s or the file will include the right to clarifications and answers to your specific questions via e-mail.]

2. BY READING these books in this exact order:
IT'S ALL BULLSHIT (And Why Knowing It Sets You Free)
SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (Recovering What Religions Lost)
[Those two prepare the seeker to question it all]
THE MEDITATION GUIDES
[Provide a broad overview of the understanding]
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?
[Begins to free the seeker of body identification and the desire for body continuity]
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS "PEACE OF MIND" (There Is Only Peace if You're Out of Your Mind)
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of the false content of the “mind”]
LIBERATION
[Shows the seeker how to be free of the subconscious motivators of personas]
THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS
[Provides the final preparation for the seeker to be directed along the “path”]
FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)
[Directs the seeker along the “path”]
CONSCIOUSNESS/AWARENESS: The Nature of Reality Beyond Self-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding as The Absolute)
[Allows the seeker to understand the functioning of the totality, the manifestation, and what is involved with the un-manifestation]
FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO THE NOTHINGNESS
[Provides the seeker the wisdom to understand the Noneness as well as the Oneness]
Purchase an e-Book now and begin reading it in minutes (except with e-checks that can take 7-10 days). Trusting our clients as we do, all e-Books are provided to you in printable form.
SAVE IF YOU BUY ALL ELEVEN AT ONCE:
(You may order the books one at a time or you may use the following link to acquire the entire 11-e-Book set on sale for $99 if ordered at one time with the “Buy Now” button below. For this option, there will be no download links provided; once the near-instant notice of payment is received from PayPal, your e-Books will be sent to you as e-mail attachments. All are printable for your convenience.)

You may visit The Official Website of Floyd Henderson for information on each book.

3. BY ENROLLING in the Online Advaita Classes
For information, visit Information on the Advaita Classes on the Internet
To enroll visit Enroll in the Advaita Internet Course

4. BY ATTENDING an Advaitin retreat for satsang with floyd and being guided through all seven steps. For details of the retreats offered, please visit the retreat information site.

5. BY ARRANGING satsang by telephone in the U.S. or by Skype internationally:
Use the Contact link for details or for information on making arrangements for a session

6. BY ARRANGING for floyd to travel to your location and meet with you or your group. Use the contact link above to discuss details.