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.)
The point in this series is that the non-dual message has long been widespread but has seldom been understood either then or now.
To continue:
THE NON-DUALITY MESSAGE AS OFFERED IN FILM
Today:
“The Tron Films,” “Field of Dreams,” “Vanilla Sky”
“The Tron Films”
It seems that there is no middle ground when it comes to sci-fi movies: the two polar-opposite views are that some love the genre and some do not. I have never cared for the genre, but millions do.
The original 1982 version of “Tron” deals with computer engineer Kevin Flynn who finds out that Ed Dillinger, an executive at his company, has been stealing his work. When Flynn tries to hack into the system to investigate, he is transported into a digital world where he has to face off against Dillinger's computerized likeness, Sark, and the imposing Master Control Program.”
Once “transported inside the software world of a mainframe computer, Flynn interacts with programs in his attempt to escape. Inside that digital world, he is forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program.”
Behind what were major technological advances used in the making of the film and its sequels and eventual remakes, the film shows individuals trapped inside the artificial (as in Artificial Intelligence), and the message that humans can be trapped inside artificiality while it appears that it is all 100% real is a non-dual message (though the film follows a long and winding road to make that point).
One critic wrote: “Though perhaps not as strong dramatically as it is technologically, TRON is an original and visually stunning piece of science fiction that represents a landmark work in the history of computer animation.”
Here, the form (the technology) is indeed far stronger than the substance (the message of the drama) which warns against falling into entrapment in the artificial.
“Field of Dreams”
While most see this movie as basically being a fanciful story about baseball, the real message focuses on the way that misery and suffering can manifest during the relative existence because the masses are driven by the agendas of their assumed identities and by those identities' concepts and beliefs and expectations which end up “breaking relationships.”
More to point, the film shows how, during the relative manifestation, so many relationships are destroyed by silly and absurd and even idiotic arguments which are rooted in ego-state-and-egotism-driven judgmentalism.
Moreover, history shows that ego-state-and-egotism-driven agendas drive relative existence arguments and fights not only on the “personal” level but also on local and state and national and international levels as well.
In the film, we learn that the central character Ray had broken relations with his father some thirty years earlier. We learn too that the final words he heard his son say to him before he left home, and ultimately the last words Ray said to him before John died, was that he did not respect him.
What was the root of that disrespect? “Non-dualists” will understand full well that all disrespect and the subsequent broken relationships which follow are rooted in assumed ego-states and the egotism which is used along with a host of other ego-defense mechanisms to protect their false identities.
But on the surface, the disrespect which inspired Ray to say to his father John as Ray left home at eighteen,
"I could never respect a man whose hero was a criminal"
involved "Shoeless Joe" Jackson.
Jackson was a major league baseball player who was implicated in a scandal in which members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox participated in a conspiracy to fix the World Series. Yet he remained John’s hero.
So Ray’s judgmentalism inspired him to end his relationship with his father over a damn baseball scandal, and Ray never even tried to re-established that relationship before his father died.
The movie invites viewers to reflect on their own past relationships which were broken and then find if that breakage might have involved something as silly as - or even sillier than - a damn baseball scandal.
Why? To abandon silliness. Likely, more misery and suffering among humankind has involved “relationships” (and ego-based silliness) than any other single issue.
Maharaj said: “The impersonal (avyakta) becomes the personal (vyakta) for the sake of happiness in relationships. I can look with equal eye on the impersonal as well as the personal. Both are one to me. In life the personal merges in the impersonal.”[Thus, I AM THAT and I AM.]
Ultimately, beyond even that?
Per Maharaj, it is ultimately to be seen that, "there are no 'relationships'.”
He said:
In the end it is seen that “There is no relationship. There is only 'one'”;
and
“Don’t separate and don’t look for relationship”
and
“No relationship is forever. Duality is a temporary state.”
“Vanilla Sky”
[Alert: This film is only for those who are still able to watch a movie starring Tom Cruise]
The title "Vanilla Sky" refers to the sky as painted by Claude Monet, specifically as in “The Seine at Argenteuil" (1873).
This film is an adaptation of an earlier film entitled “Open Your Eyes,” a piece of advice which many non-dual seekers have likely heard expressed in one of a host of ways.
One critic described the film as "an odd mixture of science fiction, romance and reality warp."
In the film, “David Aames - the owner of a large publishing company he inherited from his father - is in prison. Wearing a prosthetic mask, he tells his life story to a court psychologist."
Why the mask? His girlfriend, in a fit of jealousy, purposely crashes the car she is driving and in which David is riding. The wreck kills her and disfigures David. "Doctors cannot repair David's face using plastic surgery, forcing him to wear the prosthetic mask around others, causing him to become depressed."
The film includes being placed in cryonic suspension until medical advances can allow David’s face to be reconstructed; a lucid dream; a choice of either being put back into the dream or being awakened to reality; and opting to wake up.
Critic Roger Ebert saw in the film what he took to be “an explanation for the mechanism of our confusion," certainly a topic of non-dual discussion over the ages.
Another critic said: “It leaves behind the real world and begins exploring life as a waking dream.”
Another concluded that “David has simply lost his mind” or “he’s just imagining everything.”
While Maharaj warned against all that seekers imagine, he did endorse “losing one’s mind” (i.e., being freed from being driven by the nonsense stored in the 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
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% 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.
