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).
BEYOND BODY AND MIND AND PERSONALITY IDENTIFICATIONS AWAITS FREEDOM FROM EMOTIONAL INTOXICATION
from
Floyd Henderson
• To reach the fourth step (meaning freedom from body and mind and personality identification) is to also move beyond being driven by emotions even though feelings are still felt.
• When this topic was being discussed in the past, one site visitor said: “You say that you witness feelings but don't attach emotion to them. Seems to me that at the initial point of the feeling when someone makes "you" mad or hurts "you" that there is an instance of emotion that you must consciously will away.”
• The reply:
• If persons could consciously “will away” emotions, then the 59% of all women killed in the U.S. each year (killed, by the way, during the breakup of a "relationship") would still be alive today. If persons could consciously “will away” emotions, then persons would not be living minute-by-minute and day-by-day in the state of emotional intoxication that most live in.
• And if persons could consciously “will away” emotions, then they would not be carrying resentments for years or be experiencing pain from perceived loss or suffering for years.
Secondly, it is impossible to “attach” an emotion to a feeling. It would be like trying to attach a mirage to the road. Only ego-states emote and only personas experience emotional intoxication.
• Thus, the realized, functioning under the auspices of the pure consciousness, cannot “will away” anything since pure consciousness does not “buy into” the false belief that an attack on a false identity is an actual threat; therefore, it does not experience emotions or emotional intoxication.
• What persons typically emote over, the realized see as much ado about nothing. “Nothing” need not be “willed away.” It would be tantamount to screaming for someone to remove the coiled rope in the dark corner that you are certain is a threatening snake.
• Realization casts light on all the dark lies and delusions that persons take to be truth, and that’s why the realized would never be misled into trying to “will away” a mirage in the road ahead.
• Only persons, living in ego-states as they do, have such an experience (and they have that experience over and over, all their days and all their lives).
Those who want to continue with their emotions always insert into the "casting aside emotions” discussion the defense that they “don’t want to become robots.”
• Their argument is generated from their ego-states that are fighting for their right to continue to experience emotional intoxication, chaos, destructive behavior, and all the accompanying suffering while claiming that, for the most part, they "are living a good life and are happy most of the time.”
• It will be shown that those persons speaking despairingly of a robotic state are actually the ones who are already experiencing a robotic existence.
Persons (personas) can only emote while mistaking their emoting for “feelings.” Persons cannot feel. Their experiences, abuse, and suffering have deadened their feelings, so it is those who are not realized (that is, those who have not been freed of attachment to their learned ignorance) who can concern themselves with being robotic, not the realized.
• Robots move as if asleep. They have no consciousness. They are programmed and can do only what they are programmed to do. Persons, not the realized, move about as if asleep, as if unconscious because they have been programmed and are therefore powerless to make conscious choices.
The realize can feel, whereas persons (the non-realized) exist with brief periods of seeming happiness, followed by the misery of emotional intoxication. The realized witness feelings rise and fall.
• The difference in a person being angry and in the realized feeling anger can be detected in what follows: persons react and trigger a series of reactions while the realized observe whatever they feel as that feeling rises and falls.
• By witnessing rather than reacting, a feeling like anger can be seen by the realized, can be felt, and can then be seen to disappear.
Emoting will reverse the natural order of operation in the relative existence and lead persons to live unnaturally. When threats are perceived, the natural order of response is (1) flight first and then (2) fight only if necessary.
• The unnatural order is (a) fight first and then (b) flight as a second option.
• Feelings results from natural responses via the brain (e.g., the amygdala can trigger a natural, survival-driven, reactive response that results in flight as option one and fight as option two.)
• Emotions are unnatural responses via the “mind” and can trigger an unnatural, destruction-driven series of reactive responses that result in fighting being option one (to preserve the ego-state) and flight (escape) becomes option two.
Thus, if "wife" tells ego-state "husband" that she's leaving, he'll fight to preserve his identity by trying to make her stay. Often, he'll play “kind” and if that doesn't work, he'll play mean.
• The unnatural response can be destructive, killing her and / or himself. Or he may turn to drugs or alcohol or risky sexual behavior as option two . . . all methods used in trying to flee from, or escape, the perceived threat.
• Emotions result in emotional intoxication; conversely, feelings are felt, then witnessed as they rise and fall. The realized, living in an AS IF fashion, can still witness the sadness that is felt in natural responses to happenings in the relative existence, but only persons will be driven to take the type of actions that are generated from the emotional intoxication of ego-states that are perceiving threat.
• No such series of escalating reactions are triggered by feelings. Even deer—living naturally as they do—certainly seem to feel sad and seem to grieve for a time if their mates are found dead. But no grieving deer has ever gotten a good running start and rammed its head into an oak tree to try to kill itself. Eventually, it just moves on . . . without any harmful reaction.
• Feelings are natural; emotions are unnatural. Those who have completed either the seven-step “journey to reality” or even the first four steps of that "journey," will feel; it is persons (the non-realized) who are trapped in the chaos of their emotions.
• Two “paths” are clearly marked, but few are ever willing to abandon their addiction to chaos and follow the path to peace. In the militarized, war-like, ego-driven cultures of the West, the path to peace is anathema.
• Give the realized an option and they will walk away from a fight; give a non-realized man an army and he will eventually order them to attack.
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.
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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 has worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit 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.
