TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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To continue with the reply to the question, "So what else is this deal all about?" some answers have already been offered in the eBook WHEN ONLY THREE HOURS OF MANIFESTATION REMAIN (The "Final" Talks Of Floyd Henderson)
Today, the continuation of answer #12 to the question "What is this non-duality deal all about anyway?" is this:
It is about coming to realize that on the "journey" away from body and mind and personality identification on reaching a state of full realization (which Maharaj said is "nothing more than being freed of all learned ignorance") that most seekers seem to need to play for a time the supposedly "good" personas associated with the religion of their parents and need to play for a time the supposedly "good" personas associated with whatever they take "spirituality" to be but that, in the end, all personalities / roles / false identities / false "Identities,' etc. must be abandoned in order to be freed of all ignorance and distortion and delusion.
RELIGION / SPIRITUALITY: Try It, But Don't Buy It, Part Two
To review, the point was offered that much of the myth-and-superstition-based-nonsense which the masses believed in ancient days of fictional lore and widespread ignorance has fallen by the wayside; however, that is not the case when it comes to the myth-and-superstition-based-dogma that continues to be shared via the religions which now exist around the globe.
All of that dogma is merely a modern version of the ancient pagan religions which were the product of the universally-ignorant masses who lived thousands of years ago.
(Curious, is it not, that billions of persons on the planet now live their lives via the dictates of ignorant men who lived thousands of years ago, who understood nothing factual, who plagiarized the content of the dogma of pagan religions, and who claimed that they were sharing their own "inspired words that were received when they heard god speaking to them" - sometimes from within a burning bush - when they were really just repeating the myth-based tales that had been circulated for hundreds of years by their pagan predecessors?)
Gone nowadays - it was noted - is the belief in Zeus and his troop of gods and goddesses as well as his Roman counterpart Jupiter and his fellow fictional deities. Yet the point was also made that the most outrageous legends and the silliest fables (as well as symbolic parables and stories that are still taken as fact) are being perpetuated by the "unquestioning faithful," many of whom are willing to die to defend their religion-and-spiritually-based falsehoods and myths and superstitions.
Two more key points are now offered for consideration:
1. While hundreds and thousands of ancient, fallacious fabrications have gone the way of the dinosaurs, religion-and-spiritually-based prevarications that were dreamed up 2000 to 5000 years ago have survived all efforts by the realized to shine the dissolving light of wisdom onto widely-accepted deceits and deceptions and distortions;
and
2. it is boggling to see how supposedly religious and / or spiritual venues have so effectively institutionalized mythology and now disseminate ancient non-truths which are readily and unquestioningly accepted as "The Truth." The result?
[Note: The following was reported when this book was originally written:
"More than 3.6 billion persons who claim to be members of one of the three major sky cults that are rooted in the words of Abraham (via Moses) accept the religious-and-spiritually-based programming and conditioning that is propagated via the beliefs that those sky cults hold sacred, as do another 3.8 billion on the planet who are buying into the teachings of their religious and / or spiritual leaders as well."
Update: Research shows that of the 7.6 billion persons now on the planet, 97% claim an affiliation with one religion or another and millions more brag that they "are spiritual . . . not religious!"
There has been a trend in the U.S. over recent years of many leaving religion. Twenty percent most recently reported that they have left religion during the interim since the previous research, turned off by the "anti-this" and "anti-that" policies of ultra-conservative, ultra-evangelical politicians on local, state and federal levels who are attacking "the other" and in some cases even tapping into ancient Jewish law and calling for the killing of those whose sexual orientation differs from their own.
(The current president announced recently that his current Christian vice-president believes that gays should be hanged. Coincidentally, of the 20% who report they have left religion, well over 1/3 of those went on to report, "I'm now spiritual.")
The point: Some here are moving away from organized religion, but a significant portion of those are replacing religion with whatever they think "spirituality" is. And often, their version of "spirituality" is a mirror-image of religion. Consider the parallels:
Supposedly-super-spiritual Twelve-Step group members gather before their meetings for coffee and fellowship. Then they go into a special room and have an opening prayer. Next, they discuss God and what God has done for them and what God can do for others. Halfway through, they take up an offering, passing a basket around for a collection of money.
At the end, in the U.S. and in many other Western nations, they stand in a circle and hold hands and recite a Christian prayer in unison ("The Lord's Prayer") to close. Yet many of them claim not to be religious but to be spiritual instead, the fact that they just spent an hour mimicking a religious service in exactly the way planned by the two Christian preachers who set up the model for their program notwithstanding.
That example is offered to illustrate this point:
When persons have been put to sleep via programming, conditioning, etc., they can buy into all sorts of delusions and distortions and self-deceptions, right down to claiming that they "are spiritual but not religious" even though they are thinking and talking and behaving exactly as religious persons think and talk and behave.
Or persons can claim that they are loving and caring while behaving the same way that all unfeeling sociopaths and psychopaths behave. Or they can claim that they "love their fellow man" while secretly praying that some of those men or women will die. Or they can claim that they are delighted you have joined them until the first time you reject one of their prejudicial beliefs, etc., etc., etc.]
Again, the third of seven steps from identification with the false "i" / false "i's" to an understanding of the Absolute is the religious / spiritual step. Along the way - along the "path" - most will have to try one or the other or both. The invitation here is this: try either or both, but do not buy into . . .
a. the belief that what is being taught in religious and / or spiritual venues is Truth
and do not buy into . . .
b. the belief that what either of those offers has anything to do with the understanding that awaits at the actual end of the "path" to Realization.
To believe that either of those can provide the Truth and the Understanding is to be trapped in the darkness of a relative existence that will be conducted under the influence of the two venues which have generated more separation and more dualistic concepts and ideas and beliefs than any other sources in the history of humanity.
To be continued.
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