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-seven =
No Interest in Being Truly Free and Independent
THE MASSES PREFER DEPENDENCY AND CODEPENDENCY AND ATTACHMENT TO THINGS WHICH ROB PERSONS OF THEIR FREEDOM
". . . You are afraid of freedom!"
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Sharing other information from the book entitled Overcoming the Fear of Being Totally Independent, the discussion continues:
DEFINING FREEDOM - CONVENTIONAL SOURCES
(definitions, continued)
h. "Freedom" is the absence of interference by the use of coercion or aggression.
If you are attached to "The Lover" or "The Spouse" roles, then you will consider the words, "I'm leaving you" or "I want a divorce" to be aggressive words of coercion.
Attached to either role, you can be intimidated or oppressed by such words, forced to fight for "the life" of that role, often by acquiescing to never-ending demands or by pleading like a child that is fearing abandonment. Trapped in the false identification of an ego-state, there will be coercion and aggression, but there will be no freedom.
i. Freedom" is the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint; or, the right to enjoy.
Consider the outcomes of following the "path" in the manner laid out by a Realized guide, outcomes that were shared by a seeker from New York who, after years of trying to Realize by using "his way," has come back and agreed to take this "journey" as instructed, guided along the "path" in the exact order required for Full Realization - and, therefore, for total freedom - to manifest:
He said: "I just ordered the books and am finally reading them in the prescribed order. I am looking forward to continuing to challenge any crap still lying in my the mind. I have spent a sufficient amount of time reading and then considering the pointers. It really does feel like a fresh new experience with the material that I missed the first time going through in such a rush and not really considering any of it before.
"This time, there is no one any longer to try to impress. All the things that seemed to matter at one time really don't anymore. I was able to just walk around this morning and enjoy a chocolate doughnut and a cup of coffee and just be still without any worry or doubt in my head."
j. "Freedom" is personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery; or, the absence of or release from ties, obligations, etc.
As far as Advaita is concerned, "personal liberty" can only refer to liberation from the personality, total freedom from any belief in or any attachment to anything dealing with the relative . . . with the personal. Those ties end with Realization.
If you are attached to the personal, to anything relative (including the body and mind and personality "stuff") then if you hear the words spoken to "floyd" years ago - "cancerous colon polyps" - you will feel no sense of liberation. You will be tied to the body and thus tied to the panic and fear that comes with having to picture its finite nature.
If you are attached to the personal, to anything relative (including the body and mind and personality "stuff") and you heard the words spoken this week by a team of doctors who said "angina pectoris" and "lung shadow" and "less than 75% breathing function," you will feel as if those speakers are being most aggressive.
You might feel as if they are attacking you, and you may rightly conclude that they are trying to coerce you to follow their protocols without questions, especially with threats about the limited length of time remaining for the relative "unless you . . . ."
Consider the misery and suffering that come with the bondage and the slavery when tied to a desire for more years and months and days and hours and minutes, or even just a few more seconds, of the relative existence.
Note how many who are identified with the body and the mind and the personality and who are tied to having their desires fulfilled and who are tied to the avoidance of pain can become fixated on the notion of extending the manifestation of the consciousness and become willing to undergo any processes deemed necessary in order to have even a few more days or hours or, yes, even a few more seconds.
In an act of the persona-driven arrogance and hatred that so often can only come after years of logic-robbing religious programming and conditioning, a group of dogma-infested fanatics used airplanes to attack the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001.
As smoke and flames and intense heat began to take their toll on the nearly 3000 bodies that would be no more by the end of that day, approximately two hundred people broke out windows and jumped.
Most of their falls lasted ten seconds or so before the bodies struck the ground or metal overhangs at 150 miles per hour. Ten seconds. Just ten seconds more. And after ten seconds, no more pain. Just ten seconds more. The issue is not "By choice?" or "No choice?" The jumpers probably acted spontaneously but with coercion and aggression as mentioned above.
Jean Dunn was with Maharaj in the final days leading up to his taking mahasamadhi. How did she describe the way he handled the awareness that the Laws of Thermodynamics were at work and that the elements of the plant-food body that had come together were about to begin coming apart?
" . . . During the pain-filled days of the illness (cancer)," she said, "it was abundantly clear that although the body was in terrible pain, he knew he was not that body. We knew his body was suffering because he told us; yet we never heard a moan or a whimper from his lips. It was awe-inspiring simply to watch him."
That "awe-inspiring" simplicity cannot be displayed if there is not total freedom, that is, if total non-attachment to the personal has not happened . . . if there is no longer any "tie."
In most cases, the end of the manifestation will come far less dramatically than for those 200 jumpers on 9/11. For most who are dealing with hospitals and doctors or hospices or who have returned home knowing the end of the manifestation is near, the question becomes, "Will the end be allowed to come quietly and simply if there is a choice available, or will the fight for ten more seconds be fought?"
If the fight is for ten seconds more in those cases, then the level of bondage and enslavement to the body-mind-personality triad is obvious. So many are presently dabbling with Advaita but are also covering all bases by clinging to some vestiges of their formerly-held dogma. It often unfolds thusly:
"I know that neither energy nor matter can be created, so I know there is no 'creator.' Say what, Doc? I'm not going to make it? Excuse me for a moment: 'Dear God, you know that all along I had some doubts and some lapses in faith, but I want to say right now that . . . blah - blah - blah."
Or will You understand, right up until the end of the manifestation, what Maharaj taught:
"Just as you are not the clothes that you wear, similarly you are not this body. This is the most important step. You will slowly realize that you are just like space, because space is the beginning and the end of everything.
"Suppose you are sick: you want to know all about your sickness; the more serious the sickness, the more you would like to know about it. Similarly, this 'I Amness' is also like a sickness. Now you must begin to collect knowledge about that."
If you allow the false beliefs about the consciousness to go, then WHO could be left to be concerned at all with this consciousness or what happens with it?
Maharaj, speaking of conceptual consciousness and transcendent consciousness, said: "This consciousness is dead to me; it is gone. I have transcended that. So whatever it is, is that other consciousness, that one which is without concepts."
Realized fully, there is no duality, neither "I have always invited death to come" nor "I will always try to prevent death from coming, no matter what I have to do." The deer has no such thoughts; the one freed of the influence of the conceptualizing, fiction-filled mind has no thoughts about anything either, one way or the other. What is, is.
The doctors' games might be played for a time or not, but if played, there will be no attachment to outcome. All in the relative is finite. WHO wants to ignore that reality? Only he or she who is tied to the personal, the one who is in bondage, the one who is in slavery.
The end might come now, or might be delayed for another ten seconds, or might be delayed for twenty years. Freed from the bondage and slavery of body-mind-personality, conceptual time is no more an issue to the Realized than it is to a deer that has become ill, that is not feeling quite as well today as yesterday.
That deer might "die" in ten months or ten weeks or ten seconds; whatever period of time is involved, the time will pass without fear . . . without regret . . . without concern. So it is among those that are freed from the bondage of self, from the personal, from things relative. They, like the deer, are the only "living" naturally.
Then, whatever time remains, it can be passed with "no one any longer trying to impress" and with the assurance that "all the things that seemed to matter at one time really don't anymore" and with the ability to simply "walk around and enjoy a chocolate doughnut and coffee" and with the ability to "just be still without any worry or doubt" in your head.
To be continued.
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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.
