TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. [See the offer in gold text 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 green text after today's 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." (See the details in the blue text after this post.)
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.
So, to reach the Fourth Step is to reach a point where one is freed of false identifications, beginning with being free of body and mind and personality identifications.
In upcoming posts, I’ll be sharing my take on those three, sharing quotations from my journal writings, blog writings, and book writings over what will be in three more months, three decades of sharing non-dual pointers.
Again, the early approach dealt with the seven-step approach and the later writings dealt with the four-step approach, so some quotes from both of those stages will be shared. (Later, quotations from Maharaj will be shared and then some quotations from a man I’ve known for many years, a non-dual writer in the U.K. that has reached an international audience for decades).
QUOTATIONS
from
Floyd Henderson
On “Religious and / or Spiritual Personalities / Ego-States played at the Third Step”
• All human suffering is rooted in not living naturally, and all suffering persons (i.e., the non-realized, i.e., the not freed from being driven by learned ignorance masses) are living unnaturally or supernaturally. Those living unnaturally can be recognized by their self-destructive behaviors. Those living supernaturally can be recognized by their magical thinking, by their belief in modernized versions of ancient gods, by their acceptance of ancient myths and superstitions as fact, by their disdain for scientific evidence, and by their belief in non-factual explanations for naturally-occurring events.
• Unnatural living and supernatural living are both tiresome and exhausting, but natural living is much easier.
• The non-dual understanding invites you to question everything. Faith in dogma requires that you question nothing. The "journey" only begins when questioning begins. The "journey" only continues if questioning continues.
• Pray all the prayers that you think you need to pray; knell, bend over, stoop, or lie prostrate as much as you think you need to kneel, bend over, stoop, or lie prostrate; read all the “holy” books that you think you need to read; visit all the “sacred” sites or “sacred” men that you think you need to visit; chant or hum every chant or hum you think you need to chant or hum; ring every bell you think you need to ring; and burn every stick of incense that you think you need to burn. But when you are done with all of that, realize that you—and all persons who are fixated in a stage and are playing their religious or spiritual roles—are mistaking the dawn for the noon. Realize that praying and knelling and bending over and stooping and lying prostrate and reading and visiting and chanting and humming and ringing and burning (and every other external thing you try to use to be "more spiritual" or "to try to demonstrate how spiritual you are") will actually block you from finding the truth which can only be found within after certain pointers are taken into quiet and solitary consideration.
• One must either find a working philosophy or be doomed to adopt "their" ideology instead, and both the historical and current evidence show that nothing is more destructive, relatively speaking, than buying into "their" ideology.
• It eventually had to be asked, “WHO (what persona or personality or ego-state) wants to be a ‘Supreme Self’? WHO is making the dualistic claims that 'I am free of all concepts' and 'I am freed from assuming identities' but then claiming as well that 'I Am the Supreme'?”
• Focusing on the “I Am” is a tool that is only effective after body identification is forfeited. Then, the “I Am” can be used to negate the mind which supports the personality that wants to add words after the “I Am”: “I am spiritual”; “I am a teacher”; “I am good”; “I Am the Supreme.” The only reason for the pointer to “focus only on the ‘I Am’” is to divert the focus from the false identities that have been assumed, from the talk about “I am so-and-so.” Once the last three personas (“The Religious One” and "The Super Seeker" and “The Spiritual Giant”) have been cast aside, the use of the “I Am” will also end, right along with the former belief in “The User of Spiritual Tools.”
• Supernatural living leads to magical thinking which convinces persons that they can have access to power that will allow them to control. The master addiction among persons is a desire to control, and the secondary addiction is the addiction to power, which they think will allow them to control. The result among persons is belief in the illusion of power/powers and an overwhelming desire to control others, to control their surroundings, or to control other nations. When persons become religious or spiritual, they try to use their power (or superpower) to control their racing, variable, tortuous “minds” or to control the behavior and "minds" of others (all of which is impossible since what they are trying to control is a mirage). The more they believe they have power, the more they believe they can affect when it rains, can influence who heals, can impact the paths of hurricanes, can control who wins wars and who loses, can control who receives blessings and who is cursed, ad infinitum. Supernatural beliefs, therefore, are the compost from which spring the illusions of megalomania, egomania, and self-aggrandizement; therefore, while religion and spirituality are not to be avoided, they are to be transitioned. They are but one step along a "path" to the freedom that happens when the understanding of "natural" displaces unnatural and supernatural thinking.
• In order to be reincarnated or to have a resurrection and life eternal, you would have to be a body and a mind and you would have to "have" a personality.
• Here, the consciousness speaks to you of the no-self reality and the no-Self Reality. All these Teachings are just words and concepts that can guide "you to you" and then to the no-word silence and the no-concept bliss. If your decades of religious effort and spiritual practices had resulted in the ability to understand the truth that cannot be stated, to be comfortable in the silence, and to be content in the awareness of Wholeness and Completion, then you would not be here. Do not disparage, however, those decades of effort; instead, transition your religious and spiritual roles just as you must transition beyond your belief in all the other roles you've played. Otherwise, you will continue to stand in the subdued light of dawn while insanely believing that you are being bathed in the full light of noon.
• In response to, "Floyd, millions of people who believe in Him can't be wrong!" the reply was: "Indeed, your notion is accurate; in truth, it is not millions who have been deluded in their beliefs. It is trillions upon trillions."
• There are no "different persons" at "different levels" of enlightenment or at different levels of goodness or badness. There are quantities of manifested conscious-energy that are obscured by varying quantities of concepts. Either way, ultimately, all of the manifested conscious-energy (obscured or not) will unmanifest and merge into the vast pool of conscious-energy that is not manifested, and that's that / THAT.
On “The Child Ignorance Stage / the Fourth Step”
• Among persons, only a child—existing in a pre-programming, pre-conditioning state—will witness without judgment, without thoughts, and without beliefs based in duality. For adults to be able to witness without judgment, without thoughts, and without beliefs based in duality requires a shift “back” to the state of child ignorance by casting aside all of the nonsense which has been generated by conditioning and programming and enculturation. Nothing is more at peace than a healthy child if its physical needs have been met and if it is free of contaminants. As long as health and food and shelter requirements have been met, perfect peace happens. Contentment can only happen in that pre-mind state of existence. Realized, contentment happens as a result of "returning to" that no-mind state. That is to say, contentment happens as a result of removing the layers of concepts that obscure consciousness so that it is as available as it was during the brief period of childhood that happened prior to the obscuring of the consciousness. Why should one who currently takes himself to be "an adult" settle for less contentment than that experienced by a child?
• That which the Childhood stage offers as the consciousness manifests and eventually deteriorates to identification with the "I" is nothing more than an opportunity to know that you exist; therefore, as you take the steps from the "I" to abidance as the Absolute, this stage is again nothing more than an opportunity for you know that you exist (that is, to know "I AM" and "I AM" only).
• A fictional mind had not yet resulted from hearing the lies about who or what you are and had not yet assumed any false role or identity or personality. All merely happened via natural instinct and body chemistry rather than programming and conditioning.
• Here is why worldwide ignorance has not been stamped out and will not be stamped out: persons believe that the planet-wide epidemic of ignorance could be solved if only people would acquire more knowledge. The Advaitin understands that the knowledge is the ignorance and that the ignorance is the knowledge. The ignorance is that which the masses have been taught and have learned, and their ignorance will only be compounded if more of the same type knowledge is injected into the equation. Ignorance could be stamped out if persons were to forfeit their revered beliefs and ideas and concepts and dogma. Since that happens so rarely but is a prerequisite for Realization, only a few will ever Realize (that is, be restored to sanity). There is no lever to pull or handle to push that can produce a brain-flush . . . nothing other than the process which leads to the non-dual understanding. (Were the brain to be flushed of all of the concepts and beliefs that make up the "mind," then the peace of the Child Ignorance Stage could happen. Unlike adult-age ignorance, the Child-age Ignorance Stage, which is really a misnomer, actually refers to the "no-mind," pre-programming, pre-knowledge, pre-ignorance state. Children early on don't really have the ignorance/knowledge that adults must be freed of if they are to return to this former, peaceful stage.)
• The level of peace which a child enjoys in that state of "ignorance," prior to programming and conditioning and being assigned false identities, is never realized again in its lifetime, in most cases. The exceptions are those such as you, the ones who take these steps and return to that "state" of peace that exists when we are once again free of learned ignorance and the influence of the illusions of the body-mind-personality triad.
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) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% charge by the Bank); 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.
