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." 

XX4. 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 a variety of non-dual topics recorded in my journal writings, blog writings, and book writings over what will be - as of July 2019 - a total of 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 (1989-2019)

 On "The Body" 

• You are that which is, was, and shall be, devoid of body or mind or personality when unmanifested and capable, via full realization, of being free of body identification and a corrupted “mind” and personas while manifested. You are invited to see how all desire and longing and fear can be transcended when you no longer embrace the limited identity of a physical body or the corrupted “mind” or any fictional personality. 

• If you would realize, then you must understand how this body came to be and where You were during the days prior to conception. Even more significantly, find what you are when nothing is because that which you truly are NOW is what you will truly be “then.” 

• [In response to one who claimed that he "has had the same body" for "his entire life"] "Trillions of cells have 'come and gone,' so with the exception of a few organs, a chain of bodies that you took to be you has 'come and gone.' It must be asked, 'Among all of those different body forms, which one of those 'me's' would any person claim to be 'the real me'? What 'me' would a 'mind' assume to be 'the one, real me'?" What a distortion to talk of a 'me.' 

• If you cling to the false identity of “husband,” you shall never find the true self (a.k.a., the temporarily-manifested pure witnessing), so peace will never happen consistently. If you find the true self, then “husbanding” or “not husbanding” can happen . . . and consistent peace will happen either way. 

• Understand that persons always take an illusion and either dualistically upgrade the illusion or downgrade the illusion. For example, consider the lie, “This world is real and after death, there is another world that will provide eternal continuity for the body-mind-personality.” Persons upgrade the illusion of “this world” with the promise of another world in heaven for the “good people” and they downgrade the illusion of “this world” with the threat of another world called "hell" that awaits the “bad” people. Similarly, “I am a man” can be an initial illusion. Egotism can generate the belief that “I am a spiritual man,” which is nothing more than an upgrade of the illusion. Guilt can take the initial illusion that "I am a man" and generate the belief that “I am a bad man,” which is nothing more than a downgrading of the illusion. 

• The gatekeeper of your prison is, surprisingly, realization. Realization can free you from the roles, and freedom from those roles will free you from the drama. Yet most persons are so addicted to the chaos, so lost in the drama, and so removed from reality that they will never search for a way out of their prison. They will move about within the confines of their prison and believe that they are free. Few will ever have any desire to be totally independent. Fewer still will take the seven-step “journey” to reality and know true freedom and absolute independence. Most will fight to the end in defense of nonsensical, magical beliefs that were dreamed up by uneducated men during ancient times. What about you? How free do you want to be? How soon do you want that freedom? 

• Frustration results from a sense of limitation. Frustration cannot end, therefore, as long as humans are identified with that which is limited: a physical body, a “mind,” and personality. The I Am is not personal; “I” have no individuality, so how could “I” have individual meaning or an individual purpose? For now, the consciousness is manifested, so whatever happens . . . happens. Nothing more is involved. 

On "The Mind" 

• Efforts to quiet the mind or to ignore thoughts cannot succeed with any consistency. Only when Full Realization strikes, only when the "Oh my gosh!" moment happens - only then does the mind dissolve. 

• What to consider meanwhile? It is true that, if you are instructed to "avoid thinking about an elephant," the only thing that you can think of is an elephant. So, what is the answer? The answer is not to try to be rid of a disturbing thought. The answer is to ask when a thought is interrupting the peace, “WHO is thinking that thought?” (That is, what ego-state is feeling so threatened or hurt or interfered with that the false identity can inspire the "mind" in which that false self resides to begin an endless flurry of thought-activity?) 

• Only by relinquishing belief in the false identities that inspire thoughts can the thoughts come to an end. Only by abandoning the "this" and "that" in such beliefs as "I am this" (role) or "I am that" (role) will the peace and quiet of only the "I Am" ever happen. 

• The "mind" is the instrument that supports your personality with thoughts, and those thoughts are the instruments that will forever prevent "peace of mind"; in fact, there is no such thing as "peace of mind." There is only peace if freed of the "mind."There can only be peace if you are out of your "mind." 

• Consciousness is rooted in the Absolute. The brain is rooted in the elements. The "mind" is rooted in wrong programming and faulty conditioning and perverted domestication and xenophobia-based acculturation as well as lies and concepts and ideas and superstitions and falsehoods. 

• You are in a play, playing a role, and believing that the role and the play are both real. Why would you believe such nonsense? Because "your mind" is the playwright, the author of every scene. 

• When Maharaj said, "You are not in the world ... the world is in you," what did he mean? He meant, "You are not in the world," that is, there is no "you" that is real or in any world. "The world is in you" means that the world is in your "mind" and is nothing more than a figment of your programming-and-conditioning-induced imaginings. 

• Everything that is said here is to be used to get rid of another false belief until all ideas and emotional intoxication and beliefs are gone and nothing remains but the unstated understanding. Only then can the constant churning and re-churning of the false beliefs of the corrupted "mind" finally cease. 

 • What is that inner resource, that inner guru? It is the vestige of pure consciousness that remains, deeply buried beneath the waste called “your mind.” 

• “Your mind” obscures the consciousness because that "mind" is so marred with its belief in lies and superstitions and all of its so-called "knowledge" (that is, its accumulation of learned ignorance), that it leaves you insane ... so insane that you don’t know "Your Self" and so insane that you believe the lies and dreams of the planet. 

 • If your body has disappeared, how can any person remain? And if no person remains, how can a mind remain? 

• In order to know (the great) Reality, you must be sane. In order to be sane, you must be out of your mind. 

 • For their suffering to end, persons must understand the functioning of the totality; must see that all suffering is rooted in the assumption of ego-states as false identities; must realize that they have no “mind” but instead are being driven by the “minds” of others (which they now think is their own "mind"); must be aware of the fact that a “mind” is nothing more than the storehouse of all the lies and beliefs and ideas and concepts that must be cast aside in order to end human suffering; and must see not only the limitations of doingness but the timelessness and limitless nature of beingness . . . and non-beingness as well. 

• In this relative existence, nothing is going on but a breeziness of play, but persons are caught up in a tornado of work, in a storm of seriousness, and in a tempest of drama. 

• So-called “life” in this sphere of consciousness is just a process of functioning, and while the “mind” of a person will dream up notions about separation or differentiation, none exists. The process just keeps on happening. 

• A belief or a concept, a religion or a philosophy, a state or a nation, a hero or a villain . . . all are just part of the process of functioning. All those are just dreamed up names, and all such dreamed up labels (dreamed up by that accumulation of corruptions called "the mind") generate a false sense of reality. 

• The "journey" aims to put you fully in touch with reality. To be out of touch with reality is to be insane. 

• This "journey" is about getting in touch with reality in order to be free of the bondage of the illusions and falsehoods of a "mind" exposed to years of enculturation. 

• Among religions and philosophies, there is no other means that can produce the necessary brain-flush save completion of the entire Advaita “journey” which invites the dissolution of all of the contamination that is “the mind.” 

• Ultimately, Advaita Vedanta is the Teaching that has the "goal" of becoming the non-teaching by way of un-teaching. 

 • You should see by now that there is no such thing as “your mind.” You were born with a brain and like all life-forms on the planet, it’s all you needed for the body / elements to function. To your detriment, your culture decided otherwise. 

• "They" decided you needed their “knowledge,” which is really nothing other than their learned ignorance (including "their" ideas and beliefs that were rooted in superstitious and mythical explanations for what they could not explain factually or scientifically). In pumping those lies into you, they created a “mind”—a repository of ideas and beliefs and non-truths. It contains what was put into their "minds" - which they never questioned even once - and then passed along faithfully and dutifully and, unfortunately, to you. Nothing in it came from you or from You. 

• "They" dreamed it all up, "they" forced you to accept their concepts as a child, you have internalized their beliefs into a “mind,” and you now allow their fiction to define your beliefs, your values and your “mind.” 

• In fact, most of the (dualistic) beliefs in your "mind" are the beliefs of the earliest self-appointed “religious or tribal or spiritual leaders” who dreamed up those beliefs, adopted them, and then passed them on. And all those values were based in duality, in terms of what those persons decided was “right or wrong” and “good or bad.” 

• Which terms they used to label other persons was determined by their agenda to control the masses and to gain benefit from that control. 

• Use the brain. Use the intuitive sixth-sense. Sense the fourth dimension beyond the three dimensions of a body’s height, width and depth. But abandon any notion that a mind is real or that you have a mind that is yours. It is "theirs," has always been "theirs," and shall always be "theirs" if you do not abandon it and then realize; otherwise, those persons can still reach forward—from millennia ago or from days ago—and control you via the compilation of that mass of learned ignorance and contamination called “your mind.” 

 • Religions want to "cleanse" your mind. Spiritual movements want to "purify" your mind or "heal" your mind. Many professionals want to “straighten out the thinking” of your mind. Many groups want to move you from “wrong thinking" to “right thinking.” Some want to guide you to your “right mind.” Some want to teach you to "halt the constant movement" of your mind. None of those have a clue that they are missing the point completely: nothing needs to be done to your "mind" and nothing needs to happen to benefit your "mind." The mind is illusion. The only thing to be done with the mind is to discard everything stored therein because it is all learned ignorance, just a conglomeration of nonsense, just an accumulation of false and illusory beliefs and nothing more than a large body of lies accepted as truth which have never been questioned.

• One may as well go to a desert and try to benefit and improve or cleanse or purify or straighten out a mirage. 

• How can anyone cleanse a mirage, purify a mirage, heal a mirage, straighten out a mirage, make a mirage that is wrong into a mirage that is right, or stop mirages? It is impossible. The mind will dissolve if you see every lie that is stored in it. 

• Then the brain, the sixth-sense and the intuition will move you through this relative existence, and you will live the remainder of it in a natural fashion rather than in an unnatural fashion or in a supernatural fashion that is dominated by magical thinking that results from a wrongly-programmed mind. 

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 x

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.