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."
4. My assistant found two paperback copies of the book co-authored with Mark Houston, A Twelve-Step Journey to SELF-Transformation, a potentially-effective gift for someone struggling with an addiction to alcohol (or to anything else, really). The book lists for $19.95 + Priority Mail shipping. To purchase, you may use the donate button at the top right of this page and include a note that the $27.60 is for the Twelve-Step book. Regrets to international visitors but this is only available within the U.S. because international shipping rates are prohibitive and time-consuming and cannot be tracked.
Even after Maharaj declared that “it is enough to know all that you are not”
- an understanding which shifts seekers beyond the playing of such "good" roles as "The Religious One,” “The Spiritual Giant,” and “The Super Seeker” and which allows them to return to “The Child No-Knowing” fourth step -
some continued to ask questions which involved 5th, 6th and / or 7th step content.
Depending on the seeker, sometimes he answered those queries; other times, his responses redirected their focus back to abiding as a no-knowing child (and thereby abiding naturally).
The same happens here. For those seekers that are interested in all seven steps, discussion of that entire path are available in the first four books on this site;
or in The Advanced Seekers’ Series anthology which provides the same four books in one collection;
or by way of the retreat video available below today's post (in gold print).
After thirty years of offering non-dual pointers and after thirty years of working with those seeking the non-dual understanding, it has been seen that for many it is indeed enough for them to know who (or what) they you are not; however, it has also been seen that many seekers prefer the seven-step path (and it is has also been seen, of course, that billions of non-seekers could benefit from what could be revealed via either path, relatively speaking).
Why is it more vital than ever that those billions seek, even though they most likely will not?
Every human that has undergone programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination will either need . . .
the non-dual understanding in order to be free of all of that
or will need . . .
professional help (rather than help from amateur, armchair psychologists), that is, help from those professionals that have been properly and thoroughly trained to assist persons with treating their severe personality disorders as well as their neuroses and psychoses.
And those mental illnesses are not rare. They are now all-pervasive.
As George Bernard Shaw said when asked if he thought there might be life on other planets, he replied: “I know for a fact there is because they are using earth as their insane asylum.”
Or as Maharaj said: “Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare. Yet there is hope, because the moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity.”
Thus, the proper role of the guru, he said, is not to introduce seekers to spiritual principles and is not to require seekers to engage constantly in spiritual exercises but is “to dispel ignorance in the hearts and minds of disciples."
He advised, “It is only your ignorance that makes you say ‘I know.’ Begin with the admission that you do not know and start from there.”
He said: “There is nothing that can help the world more than your putting an end to ignorance.”
The obstacle?
He said: “An ignorant man is ignorant of his ignorance.”
Ultimately, he said, “I am only interested in ignorance and the freedom from ignorance.”
He said: “Humanity’s pain is caused by the abysmal stupidity of mankind.”
While discussing the Ultimate Medicine, Maharaj referred to it as “the remedy for a disease caused by obtuseness and stupidity.”
What is the rub with person's understanding and accepting that?
WHO (what ego-state) that is still trapped in ego and egotism (and who wants to find the way to becoming some “Supreme Self” or “A God” or “God”) wants to hear, “You do not need that”?
WHO wanting such aloof identities is going to be receptive to hearing, “You do not need to know more . . . you need to know less”?
WHO wanting a Greater or Higher or More Noble Identity is receptive to hearing, “You only need to be freed from the ignorance and insanity which were imposed on you by way of ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination”? Few.
The additional obstacle?
What persons that are so firmly trapped in ego-states and egotism that they think they are perfect or “turned out pretty damn good” can even consider that their parents could have been less than perfect? For the egotistical, they consider themselves to be the evidence of how wonderfully wise and great and adept their parents were at raising children.
Yet understand that there is no need for resenting parents. Nor is there a need to make excuses for them. Nor is there a need to blindly see them as having been wise and perfect in their child-rearing techniques. There is only a need to see one's present condition, to see the far-from-perfect results of being guided by the content of one’s mind, and to understand that there is no such thing as “your mind.”
There is only “their mind,” and the content of their minds - which has been rooted in myths and superstitions and nonsense and ignorance and insanity for generations - has become the content presently stored in the minds of their offspring. Arrogance will prevent persons from seeing that the content of “their programmers' and conditioners' minds” is bogus and always has been.
Hatred is not required to be free of it. Just enough clarity to see that what was passed down from "their minds" is not really working to humankind’s advantage is all that is required.
Originally, the human brain had no area for storing and recalling information. During the times when the human brain was at its pre-evolutionary, one-cup size, there was no mind. You are here now, so obviously that no-mind condition of your ancestors worked out okay in terms of the survival of the human species. After an evolutionary process, as the human brain expanded to its present three-and-a-half-cup size, it was still an asset, helping the members of the human species to perpetuate themselves.
Only after ignorance and insanity began to drive humans (who then passed on those liabilities via ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination) did the human mind become the liability which it remains to this day.
Over the years, I have witnessed thousands of persons who have admitted that they were insane but now claim that they simply had a spiritual malady and that their spirituality has freed them from being driven by ignorance and insanity any more. They claim that they have been restored to sanity by way of "the grace of God" or some other type of "Higher Power's" miraculous (that is, not actually real) intervention.
The question: "So if there is a loving and caring and all-powerful God of grace with real, higher power and an ability to intervene, why did he or she allow you to engage for years in ignorance-and-insanity-driven harm and self-harm in the first place? What's that you say? He loved you enough to give you free will? That is definitely not an impressive Parent skill, O Child of that God."
As a loving and responsible parent, I did not give my daughter when she was a child the free will to play in the street with other children who were playing in the street. I defined and imposed boundaries which actually guarded her safety. I heard a mother say recently, "My four year old child is 'very independent'."
What I saw - contrary to her self-perspective - was that she did not care enough to sacrifice the time and effort to discipline her now unruly and totally-out-of-control child. He was not "independent." He was so undisciplined that he was kicked out of a very expensive daycare within weeks of being enrolled. He was characterized by the owner as "being a danger to himself and being physically harmful to the other children." Hardly the product of a wise and loving parent.]
Those types who have been fooled and are now fooling themselves would do well to seek, objectively, a second opinion from someone other than those in their fellowship who are going along with their claim of sanity. To stop doing one specific destructive and self-destructive thing that was being done as a result of one’s insanity does not mean that one has been cured of insanity. The proof of their still-present insanity? The many other destructive and self-destructive things which are now being done by those making their bogus claims of being sane.
What stops ignorant behaviors is an understanding of cause and effect, an end to the insanity of not being able to differentiate between the false from the true, and the spontaneous willingness to abandon all destructive and self-destructive behaviors. That willingness only comes after truly being freed of the bondage of ignorance and truly being restored to sanity and really seeing truth.
What ends insanity is a true restoration to sanity, and that requires, first, seeing the remaining insanity and, secondly, taking the necessary steps to eliminate the root of insanity.
To shift away from the highest levels of psychoses and from extreme levels of neuroses requires being free of the personality disorders in which they were rooted. And freedom from personality disorders only comes if freed from all personality identification by being freed of any and every belief in any and every identity (and “Identity”).
Being free of what Maharaj’s called the “heavy burden” of personality and its effects requires “going back, reversing” at least as far back as “The Child No-Knowing State” which existed for the short time before ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination resulted in being trapped in ignorant and insane belief systems.
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.
