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 Fifty-three =
No Interest in Being Truly Free and Independent
THE MASSES PREFER DEPENDENCY AND CODEPENDENCY AND ATTACHMENT TO THE THINGS WHICH ROB PERSONS OF THEIR FREEDOM
Today there's a continuation of the discussion of ways that persons are robbed of their freedom by programming and conditioning people to participate in ceremonies which brainwash and indoctrinate them with the sharing of additional pointers from the book Overcoming the Fear of Being Totally Independent will be shared.
DEFINING FREEDOM - CONVENTIONAL SOURCES (cont.)
Again, at least one dictionary defines freedom as “the absence of ceremony and the ability to live naturally.”
The users of ceremony to indoctrinate and brainwash and control include a wide spectrum of institutions in many culture:
THE MILITARY'S USE OF CEREMONIES TO INDOCTRINATE AND BRAINWASH AND CONTROL
A commencement address delivered at the United States Naval Academy by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence included the following:
Next is orientation to authority. Nothing I have to explain to those of you sitting before me today. Follow the chain of command without exception. Submit yourselves, as the saying goes, to the authorities that have been placed above you. Trust your superiors, trust your orders, and you’ll serve and lead well.
RELIGIONS AND SPIRITUALITY’S USE OF CEREMONIES TO INDOCTRINATE AND BRAINWASH AND CONTROL
Similar comments intended to indoctrinate and brainwash and control are passed along regularly to the 97% of the planet’s population who claim a religious affiliation.
So-called “spiritual programs” offer up the same kind of messages, urging their members to “turn it all over to some Higher Power of your own conception and understanding.” (“Conception” indeed.)
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS’ USE OF CEREMONIES TO INDOCTRINATE AND BRAINWASH AND CONTROL
Similar comments intended to indoctrinate and brainwash and control are passed along regularly to students in public schools and to children being “home-schooled” by way of their course curricula and texts and study materials.
And who determines what in included in the courses offered to home-schooled students? The materials are written by right-wing Christian businesses, run by “extremists who have cornered the market and are running the conventions, publishing the curricula, setting up instructional blogs, etc.” Those curricula-writing companies are “supported by and approved by Christian fundamentalist sects.”
BIG BUSINESS USE OF CEREMONIES TO INDOCTRINATE AND BRAINWASH AND CONTROL
U.S. ad expenditure in 2017 amounted to more than $206,770,000,000. Persons are inundated with the same kind of repetition that is used in the ceremonies which other institutions use.
One person in the industry said that “repetition is used in advertising as a way to keep a brand or product in the forefront of consumer's minds.” Repetition can build brand familiarity and can implant a subconscious perception of a product and its supposed need which can control purchasing decisions at a later point.
In all of those instances, a component of the use of ceremonies and repetitions is to lull or bore audiences into a near-sleep state so that the participants will all do what they are told to do and say what they are told to say by rote – by unconscious mechanical repetition – so that the messaging is remembered without any consciousness or understanding involved.
That will usually assure that persons lulled into a sleep-like state will automatically and unquestioningly follow the orders or dictates which they heard time and time again.
* * * * *
If you look objectively at the ceremonies in your own culture, can you see how many of them involve the same kind of rigidity and stiffness and uniformity described earlier? Do you see that your culture would have you moving in unison, reciting in unison, standing in unison, and / or sitting in unison with all of the other elements in your culture?
Can you see how many of the rituals and ceremonies of your culture attempt to make people move about in a lockstep fashion, thinking in the same way, talking in the same way, all behaving in the same way in every circumstance, and all behaving in the same rigid and unbending and uniform manner?
Especially in the West, how often during your upbringing were you ever invited to question what you were told? How many times were you told that you did not have to blindly accept what leaders say, including religious leaders, government leaders, or big business leaders?
How much time was spent encouraging you to relax and take it easy vs. time spent programming and conditioning you to stay as busy as possible in order to accumulate as much as possible? If you answer honestly, is it not then also clear why persons become a slave to authority, become accustomed to blindness rather than to seeing clearly, and fall right into the go-do-zoom mentality of their culture?
Is it any wonder that in the U.S. that the "we'll teach you to relax" industry is now a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business? Is it any wonder that what they offer is a limited plan that can help you relax for fifteen minutes in the morning before leaving the house and entering the rush hour traffic that soon eliminates whatever degree of relaxation you might have experienced during your fifteen-minute "meditation time" or "quiet time"?
Is it any wonder that, in the East, a brief period in the samadhi state is touted? Some have said, "You just don't get it, mister. Fifteen to thirty minutes in the samadhi state has curative effects. Science can show you the actual, positive, physiological changes that occur."
One person said some time back, "If you would take a few minutes to Google 'health benefits + meditation,' you might learn something." And the reply was:
"If you might unlearn everything, you might fixate in a constant state of samadhi without all of that 'going into samadhi' and 'coming out of samadhi' that you presently experience. Then, whatever 'benefits' you speak of would come not like a light, occasional sprinkling of rain but would manifest more like a flood which would wash away once and for all whatever it is that you are seeking to be free of via your fifteen or thirty or sixty-minute sessions.
"But you do not want to be totally free. You want to engage in your religious-spiritual exercises, and many also want to be seen doing that. The draw of corporate worship or corporate meetings is that person can publicly display what they take to be their advanced level of spirituality."
Meanwhile, they open their services or meetings by singing or chanting words in unison, and they close their services or meetings by singing or chanting in unison. They rise in unison, sit in unison, bow their heads in unison, or raise their heads in unison;
among some whose religion is as far right as their politics, they pray in unison, then sway in unison, then swoon in unison, then fall about in unison, and they even roll around on the floor in unison.
And all the while, they think their activities and exercises are making them free, when their movements are actually limited to the narrow confines of group-think, group-talk, and group-behavior.
They will come here to explain how free they are ("free as a bird - flying, diving, turning, swooping as I please"), but they are totally blind to the fact that their flying, diving, turning and swooping is all orchestrated by the movements of the surrounding masses.
Thinking they are "individualized and unique," they are totally unaware of the fact that they are a part of a synchronized mass, moving up when the masses move up and moving down when the masses move down, just as some birds do as they move across the sky in a manner that parallels the movement of all others among the flock.
Certainly, a bird in such a mass of birds moving in unison - if it could think and believe - would think and believe that it is free, but the fact is that it is trapped in the prison of the masses. And in that state, every action will be determined by the shadowy masses - never by the light, never by the pure consciousness that allows the Realized to be free of the dark influence of the light-less masses.
Remain in sync with the domesticated and acculturated masses and to the way that they think and talk and behave and you will have no chance at all of finding the road not taken by the masses . . . the one path that leads to Truth.
And remain a part of the masses that will never find the Truth and you will - as is the case with the masses - never be totally free.
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.
