TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. [See the offer following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all seven of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
2. Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns. See the end of the post for the full meaning and implications of that.
3. A new video ("Number Ten: Awakening Together Satsang, March 2018") has now been added in the far right column of this page, offering the opportunity to view a recent 2018 satsang session with Floyd being interviewed by Regina and Jacqueline of "The Awakening Together Group."
THE SEEDS OF DUALITY WHICH PRODUCE DUALITY'S PROGENY:
Offspring Number Forty-nine =
No Interest in Being Truly Free and Independent
THE MASSES PREFER DEPENDENCY AND CODEPENDENCY AND ATTACHMENT TO THINGS WHICH ROB PERSONS OF THEIR FREEDOM
Today we’ll look at the topic of freedom by continuing to use some of the definitions offered in a variety of dictionaries and shared in the book entitled Overcoming the Fear of Being Totally Independent.
". . . You are afraid of freedom!"
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
DEFINING FREEDOM - CONVENTIONAL SOURCES (cont.)
k. "freedom" is independence; or, the ability to do at will whatever is done rather than to have do something against your will.
Independence and freedom - and the lack thereof - can be discussed on a global level or on a "personal" level. In either case, independence and freedom are mostly myth. Look at today's headline alone to find how often independence and freedom are stripped away from people around the globe:
GLOBAL NEWS HEADLINES (during the time the book was being written):
"Sex crimes in Sweden are decreasing but such crimes are still rampant."
"A fugitive Rwandan clergyman wanted for his role in the 1994 genocide has been arrested in Uganda. He led a group that sought out and killed Tutsis in the genocide. Some 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in 100 days, many of them brutally bludgeoned or sliced open with machetes."
"The death toll climbed to 50 on Friday after a pair of suicide bombers detonated their explosive vests at one of Pakistan's holiest shrines, police said. An additional 200 people were injured in the blasts outside the Data Darbar, a famous Sufi shrine complex."
"A Sydney court on Friday sentenced an Australian Catholic priest to almost 20 years for sexually abusing two dozen boys over two decades, the official news agency said."
"Clashes between hard-line Islamists and government forces killed six people and wounded 19 in Mogadishu on Friday as violence gripped the Somali capital for a third consecutive day."
"The June death toll for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan reached 101 on Wednesday, the highest ever in a single month since the war began almost nine years ago."
Consider this exchange regarding the message behind those headlines:
Questioner: "The war is on. What is your attitude to it?"
Maharaj: "In some place or other, in some form or other, the war is always on. Was there a time when there was no war?"
Of such circumstances, Maharaj said: "Those who abhor war must get war out of their system. Without peaceful people, how can you have peace in the world? As long as people are as they are, the world must be as it is."
Visitors here know that every personality type had a basic desire and a basic fear that subconsciously drive thoughts and words and actions. There is a direct link between personality and fighting.
Maharaj said: "Between desire and fear anger arises, with anger hatred, with hatred passion for destruction. War is hatred in action, organised and equipped with all the instruments of death."
So independence and freedom are more often a pipe dream around the globe rather than anything that has actually manifested, but what impact can you have on any battles that are (as with all battles) man-made?
A visitor to the loft: "Look at the wars, the exploitation, the cruel strife between the citizen and the state."
Maharaj's answer was also that all of that is "man-made."
And all of that is far easier to make than to un-make, which is impossible. A U.S. president wanted to make war against Iraq and used bogus intelligence reports to justify it. The Congress went along, but many years later, the persona-based war he made had certainly not been un-made.
Next, consider the "headlines" that would apply far more often to "persons" (that is, to the non-Realized who are driven by their false identities).
Maharaj said that people don't really mind so much the wars that happen far away from them, among people they do not know; what persons really do not like are the wars next door or the ones that involve them directly.
Yet, as always, he brought the argument "back home": "From the moment you were conceived you started a war with your environment."
Those "local" wars are the ones that have the greatest impact on the non-Realized masses and are the ones that persons can be free of if they complete, in their exact order, the seven steps to Full Realization. So consider the headlines that apply to those "local" or "personal" wars:
"LOCAL" / "PERSONAL" NEWS HEADLINES:
"Woman stays with abusive male 'for the children'."
"Employees cringe as sociopathic boss approaches."
"Priest re-located to five different parishes as church officials covered up his sex crimes for twenty years - hundreds of children molested as their parents looked the other way and continued to place money in church's collection basket. Thousands of church members remain in denial, support the priest and blame local authorities."
"Link discovered between employment and violence in the home: wives of soldiers and policemen are more likely to be beaten by their spouses than are the wives of husbands in any other profession, but most of those wives remain loyal and silent."
"Suicides on the increase among those losing their job and their homes during this extended recession."
"Postal worker who lost job returns to job site, kills postmaster and wounds five others" and "Fired employee returns to workplace, kills store manager and wounds five fellow employees."
"Driver cuts off another car on the freeway, shot by offended man in the car that had to stop abruptly."
Consider the personas involved in those "wars": "The Fearful One"; "The One Who Will Tolerate Anything for a Certain Lifestyle"; "The Employee"; "The Super Catholic Who Will Blindly Support Priests While Ignoring Fact"; "The Homeowner"; and "The Egomaniac Who Better Be Shown Proper Respect."
Maharaj noted that persons who think they are in the world will of course be trapped in the nonsense and ignorance and fighting that are associated with the "world" and the non-Realized. He said: "A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience days and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no darkness."
He spoke of the non-Realized as "complex beings, at war within and without." But again came a statement from him that supports the thesis of this discussion, namely, that most are afraid of total freedom and really are not interested in it at all because it would require the abandonment of all false identities, of all ego-states, and all egotism.
He said: "Were you really at war with your ego, you would have put many more questions. You are short of questions because you are not really interested. At present you are moved by the pleasure-pain principle which is the ego.
"You are going along with the ego, you are not fighting it. You are not even aware how totally you are swayed by personal considerations. A man should always revolt against himself, for the ego, like a crooked mirror, narrows down and distorts. It is the worst of all the tyrants, it dominates you absolutely."
So the answer? Consider:
Questioner: "I find that the various aspects of myself are at war between themselves and there is no peace in me. Where are freedom and courage, wisdom and compassion? My actions merely increase the chasm in which I exist."
Maharaj: "It is all so, because you take yourself to be somebody, or something."
Those in the fighting-and-war-prone cultures that have historically been among the warrior societies (EX.: Germany, the U.K., the U.S.) and those that are newcomers to the ranks of the fighting cultures have an especial challenge, having been programmed and conditioned so that they now normalize conflict.
Yet even persons in those societies have available a process that can move them beyond the effects of such programming so that they can be free and independent and then be truly at peace.
The key questions are, "Are you really interested in total peace?"
and
"Are you really interested in total freedom?"
To be continued.
THE NEWEST OFFER:
Watch an updated seven-hour streaming video of a retreat with Floyd Henderson which can be viewed by anyone with internet access. (In this video, all seven of the steps on "the path" as taught by Maharaj are explained and discussed.)
If interested, click the button below to pay the fee via PayPal. You will then receive an email which includes the link for you to view the private, unlisted video via an arrangement we have made with YouTube, Inc. You do not have to have a YouTube account to watch this privately streamed video.
(If you do not receive the link promptly, your computer or email provider may have high filter settings. Check your spam and trash folders because some providers automatically transfer emails containing links to those folders.)
To access the seven-hour streaming video of a retreat and begin watching right away, click this "Buy Now" button:
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE: The four most recent posts are below. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]
In addition to the five non-duality books made available without charge by Andy Gugar, Jr. (see “FREEBIES” above), you can now access nearly 3,300 posts for any topics of interest to you.
Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns.
THE EXPLANATION
If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.
Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of God in the past was of a weak God, an absentee God, A Santa Claus-type God, a mean, punishing, vindictive God, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring God whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."
The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a God that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").
Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring God,' any supposed God that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'God' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.
"That is, a non-narcissistic god / goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'God' and focus on the 'God as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you."
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
but are states of mind, nothing more than
concepts dreamed up by men."
--Pope John Paul II
"There is no hell."
--Pope Francis, the current pope
in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,
a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.
And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?
Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?
The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)
With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.
The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.]
Here's
the direct link to the VIDEO VERSION
of the "Awakening Together" satsang session with Regina and Jacqueline referenced earlier, 18 MARCH 2018
If preferred, here's
the direct link to the AUDIO VERSION
of that session.
