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.
AN INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD HENDERSON BY THE EDITOR OF TWO OF HIS BOOKS
The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders
and the sequel
The Board of Directors of Wars
The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders offers the non-duality message by way of a mystery-adventure novel, discussing the movement from pain to healing to awakening to peace.
From Dr. R.F. Maley, Ph.D, Professor Emeritus and former Head of the Department of Psychology, University of Houston:
"Floyd Henderson's book, The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders, is a fun read and an interesting mystery, but perhaps more importantly it serves as a vehicle for blending Eastern Philosophy and Native American Spirituality to make an intellectually challenging novel.
The book's insights into both relationships and authoritarian conditioning of people in our society make it a must read, tracing the roots of narcissistic, sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors to the very core of the culture.
This truly witty and politically-incorrect study of the aggressive nature of 'the American character' offers not only a diagnosis but also a treatment plan, making the book an excellent supplemental reading in courses such as psychology, anthropology, philosophy, sociology and counseling."
Regarding a passage from the The Board of Directors of Wars - the sequel to that book, the following was shared by Jerry Katz and Dustin LindenSmith:
Regarding a passage from the The Board of Directors of Wars - the sequel to that book, the following was shared by Jerry Katz and Dustin LindenSmith:
From Jerry M. Katz, the founder of a highly popular non-duality website and author of the book ONE: Essential Writings on Nonduality:
“I think we may be seeing the emergence of the first literary nonduality novel. Not of all times, but the first one fed by the teaching of nonduality as set forth in the last ten years. That kind of fiction is going to be different from any other kind of nonduality fiction. Here are a couple of tastes. Excerpt from a nonduality novel: The Board of Directors of Wars, by Floyd Henderson.”
Dustin LindenSmith is a bilingual blogger and jazz musician with experience in music performance, marketing research, and IT project management. He came across the same excerpt which Jerry posted on his site, and Dustin offered these comments to his readers in regards to the same passage in a second unsolicited review:
From Dustin LindenSmith: “My old friend Jerry (Katz) has never been a fan of fiction that tries to be nondual. Too often, it's written by people who may have nondual insight, but who are terrible writers of fiction. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive, but anyone whom he'd read that had tried to meld the two had been unsuccessful. Until now, maybe. In "Issue #2800" of "The Nondual Highlights," Jerry provides an excerpt from a novel by Floyd Henderson called The Board of Directors of Wars. It's a passage of dialogue, but the portion I'm including just has one character making a little speech to another. When taken out of context like I've just done, the passage sounds a bit like the proverbial discourse between a spiritual teacher and a student."
The excerpt which Jerry and Dustin both shared:
“You seem at peace in the middle of this chaos. I want that peace,” Brett almost demanded.
“Brett, you’ve been shown the answer all your life. It was there for you to see in every play, in every movie, in every mystery you’ve ever read. Shakespeare borrowed the dramatic technique from the Greeks,” Kirk began. “Today, it’s the basis of all mystery and suspense stories, and it’s also the basis of realization.”
“I’m lost,” Brett confessed.
“Well look at every drama you’ve ever seen. The main character, who represents you and me and everyone, runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. He is confused and in the dark. Those who are in a position to sit back and witness the drama objectively can see that he’s just an actor on the stage and that none of the drama is real. But for entertainment’s sake, he and the witnesses can pretend it’s real. Both, in fact, can get so absorbed in the role that they take it to be the real for a time.
“But even amidst all of the drama, a time comes, that moment in the play when even the actor finds out the truth. It is called the peripetia in drama—that moment in the play or the movie when the lead actor finds out that everything he thought to be true is really false; when he sees that he was being misled at every turn; when those he thought he could trust the most, and who thought they were telling him the truth, were also wrong.
“It’s the moment of freedom that comes when one finds out that everything he ever thought or believed or held sacred (or thought worth fighting for) was a lie. The freedom comes when he gives up all of the concepts he bought into, drops his head in relief and amazement, shakes his head back and forth, wonders for a moment at how he had bought into all their crap, smiles at how easily he was duped, watches how all of the rest of the play unfolds automatically until its end, and leaves the stage after saying to himself, ‘Well, sonofabitch. I’ll be damned.’ And then he laughs. He laughs at it all. And then he’s done with it, once and for all.”
Here’s the interview included in the back of The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders which will be shared in full during a few upcoming posts:
EDITOR’S INTERVIEW
Editor: Floyd, how is it that we get so lost, so separated from the Real Self and so identified with the false self or all the false roles?
Floyd.: It only takes two stages to get trapped but three to get out, so most won’t get out. The first stage is ages 1-20, when we get conditioned, indoctrinated, programmed to accumulate, to get. Ages 20-40 we spend doing what we were programmed to do, repeating what we were programmed to say, and believing what we were programmed to believe. Most will go to the grave in that rut.
To get out, we enter the third stage and begin Self-Inquiry. Some wake up enough to say, ‘This life is shallow, hollow, unfulfilling. There must be more. I don’t even know who I am—who am I?’ If they find authenticity, they begin to zen out and de-accumulate in the fourth stage. De-accumulation is the mark of one becoming free of the programming and all learned ignorance.
After that, one can live AS IF, as if this life is the real, and can then enjoy whatever remains of this life, free for the first time—free of educational indoctrination, free of spiritual indoctrination, free of religious indoctrination, free of political indoctrination, free of economic indoctrination. Free. Independent. Period.
E.: We have a chance through this novel about your son’s murder to see how your freedom came. How can the readers’ realization, and thus their freedom, come?
F.: By realizing that there is no duality. There is no "false self" or "false selves" as opposed to some "Real Self." The Real is all there is. [All concepts and beliefs which assign some elevated status to a "Self" are as fictional as the status given to all of the "false selves" which people accept as personal identifications.]
The labels we accept, the roles we play, are the very constraints that imprison us. Consider this, please: if you work during the week and are off on the weekends, and you have a job that is very challenging, even draining, then you might experience something like the following. On Monday, your alarm goes off. You unthinkingly shut it off. Just gaining consciousness, you know ‘I am.’ The knowledge of existing in this body begins to come to you. As you awaken more, you remember you are ‘The Employee,’ and you have to get up and leave the comfort of your bed, your room, your house or apartment, and go off to play that role and to try to meet all the expectations and demands that come with having accepted that role and believing it is you. Quickly, the ego will promote you to ‘Super Employee,’ and eventually you’ll be convinced you’re not getting the money or the respect you deserve. Frustration will build as a result of accepting that role. You take things personally, for you are playing a persona, a role, accepting a false identity. If you get fired, you might feel as if you’re dying. To exist, ‘The Employee’ must have a job. Your very identity seems challenged, so your very existence seems at stake.
Watch the news and see what happens when people lose what is required for their false identities to exist: some get fired and go back and shoot up the workplace; ‘husband’ dies when ‘wife’ leaves, for husbands cannot be husbands without wives. Assuming the identity of ‘husband,’ soon promoted to ‘Super Husband,’ then ‘Super Wife’ is required for his very existence. He’ll fight with her when she does not act like a super wife. If she leaves, ‘husband’ is finished. Thinking he’s under attack or being killed by her actions, he shoots her.
People see it nightly on the news and just say, ‘He went nuts.’ Well, the insanity did not manifest with her leaving. It manifested when a man in a robe pronounced ‘You are now husband’ and he bought into that. Human-like beings walked the face of the earth in varying states of male-female partnerships for 7.5 million years before anyone dreamed up the concepts of ‘marriage,’ ‘husband,’ or ‘wife,’ along with all the other labels that religious leaders dreamed up to identity those who did not play strictly by their system: ‘prostitute,’ ‘bastard,’ ‘whore,’ ‘illegitimates,’ etc. Isn’t it interesting that the ‘noble’ role of ‘wife’ and the ‘degrading’ role of ‘whore’ both came from religion?
And in this culture still dominated by Anglo men, one label can set a person up for life while the other label can ruin a person for life. We criticize cultures that make women cover themselves with burquas, yet some in this culture cover the women with labels. And the same happens with men as well. So covered, we end up not having a clue who we really are underneath all the labels. Roles, always dependent on something else or someone else in order to exist, leave vulnerable those who accept cultural labeling. Accepting a label as an identity always leaves one living in fear, in misery, in perpetual desire and need.
Consider that same ‘employee’ we spoke of earlier, now on a Saturday. No alarm goes off. The awakening comes slowly. As one gains consciousness, one knows ‘I am.’ Then, the fact that it’s Saturday settles in. One does not have to go to work. One does not go into the mode of ‘The Employee’ but rolls over in bed and enjoys just being there.
To stay in the ‘I am-ness’ prevents accepting false roles and identities. To stay in the knowledge that ‘I Am, period’ allows one to relax. Free of that false identity for the day, one remains in the ‘I Am,’ in the ‘Is-ness’ only, and thus at ease. That same mindset, seven days a week, will allow the perpetual peace and the constant ease to manifest. That person is not playing the role that day, is not trying to meet expectations and demands, and is free and feels free. What he is really free of is accepting the label.
How many who consider themselves to be a man or a woman are really nothing more than a bundle of concepts and labels and identities assigned by this culture? Is it any wonder that most, before making it to the grave, will wonder “Who am I?” or will state flat out, “I don’t even know who I am”? To be free is to be free of the false identities that jerk us around and jerk around the people in our vicinity who allow our role-playing and role-demands to impact them. Once we come to know the real and stay in the ‘I Am’ state, we accept no false roles as identifiers of Who We Are, no false labels as identifiers of Who We Are, and no dependencies as a result of believing we are what we do.
We can take that knowingness into each day of the week, and perform tasks AS IF we are that; but knowing we are not that, we do not attach to the roles, we do not fear for loss of our very existence, we do not have the co-dependencies that always come with ego-states or false identities.
I have been attacked as being an ‘Anti-Christ’ or even ‘THE Anti-Christ.’ In fact, I speak of exactly what Christ spoke of when he said, ‘When you speak of Me, speak of me as I AM’ and when he said ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’ How many preachers or priests have ever explained that I AM? How many even have the slightest clue what Christ meant?
How many know that Moses - the supposed but unlikely author of certain Jewish writings which are also included in the "Christian Bible" - plagiarized the phrase ‘I AM THAT I AM’ which had been discussed in the Far East for tens of thousands of years and was discussed in the Middle East in the days of the Moses?
Where did he first hear it before writing it down (and he did only hear it because he did not know about the presence of the vital, clarifying semicolon used by those who understand the summative statement of non-duality, "I AM THAT; I AM").
Who taught Christ the teachings of non-duality, of the ‘I-Am’ message during the ‘Lost Years’ in his life before he began passing it on in his thirties? It does not matter. It matters only to know that the teaching existed long before either Moses or Christ ever walked the earth. Am I anti-Christ? Hardly. I am anti-distortion, I am pro-truth. Those who refuse to admit that he was teaching an old, established advaitic message of non-duality are the ones teaching something opposed to what Christ was really trying to get across to his listeners.
To be at peace, reside in the ‘I Am,’ alone, but know this too: "The Real" is not the ‘I am-ness.’ The ‘I Am-ness’ is temporary. When the consciousness leaves the body, the body form ends permanently. Asleep, you do not know that you are, right? So it is when you merge into the Absolute state of what is real. The body loses consciousness, the body returns to dust, the breath joins the universal air, but the universe does not ‘lose’ consciousness. Consciousness-energy cannot be destroyed, any more than it was created. It IS.
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
or
You can click on video "Number Ten" in the upper right-hand column on this page.
If preferred, here's
the direct link to the AUDIO VERSION
of that session.
