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.
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)
