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 with the interview included in the back of The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders:
EDITOR’S INTERVIEW OF FLOYD (con't.)
E.: Tell the readers the difference then in the manifest state, in our case as energy-consciousness manifested in human form, and the Unmanifest state which you call ‘That.’
F.: While manifested, I AM; I Am energy-consciousness that happened to ‘find’ its way into a human form via plants eaten, plants turned into sperm cells, sperm cells that fertilized an egg, etc. The same manifesting happens in non-human forms, but energy manifested is energy manifested, period. The energy-consciousness in an acorn knows how to make a forest, eventually. All manifest forms have energy-consciousness.
A bird is quite aware that ‘It is,’ so it knows the ‘I Am.’ And it knows that its existence, its ‘I-Amness’ or consciousness, can be ended by dangerous humans or by other creatures, so it flies away to try to protect its ‘am-ness’ when threatened. After the threat disappears, it returns to normal behavior. It holds no grudges or resentments since it is playing no role. It knows only the ‘I Am,’ so it truly is as free as a bird.
My friend the heron is a master of living, and that all happens effortlessly for him since he has no ego-states to maintain, no ego to defend, no false roles to ‘protect.’ We can be masters of living when we model his example. He does not know he is a heron. It is a label someone provided for him. He does not accept it, so he is not limited or frustrated or defensive or offensive. He just IS.
These are the bars of the prison of the thinking mind: ‘I am a spouse’; ‘I am a worker’; ‘I am a boss’; ‘I am a parent’; ‘I am a homeowner’; ‘I am a lover’; ‘I am a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc.’; ‘I am a spiritual person’; ‘I am a good person’; ‘I am a bad person’; ‘I am a supporter’; ‘I am an alcoholic’; ‘I am a member,’ etc., ad infinitum.
This is the tool of the working mind that will cut away the bars of the thinking mind and free you: ‘I Am.’ No words follow that phrase. Just the two words only. Not ‘I am . . . a husband’ and not ‘I am . . . a wife,’ but only ‘I Am.’ You need do no exercises; you need attend no meetings; you need read no books; you need give no money to anyone or anything for this truth and to remain at peace.
Once you sit with these words, and understand them fully, and give up all body identifications and false roles and false ideas and false dogma, you are done. You know that you are not this body. You know that you are not this mind, for it is their mind, not yours, filled with their teachings and beliefs adopted by you, but not yours. Know that; then, their ideas are abandoned and your work ends. Living fully begins.
I offer to help no one get anything; to the contrary, I destroy all. Most people—because of programming—want to get, to accumulate. My invitation is to get rid of, to de-accumulate. Do not get; rather, get rid of. Begin by getting rid of ideas and concepts that were ‘theirs,’ never yours to begin with.
That beginning also becomes the end—the end of suffering, of worry, of fear, of co-dependency, of attachment. That is what was meant when a certain piece of advice was offered in the religious or spiritual writings of many groups in the past (it did not appear only in the Christian Bible but had been written in many books prior): ‘Hate your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters and, yes, even your own life.’ That means, hate the labels and role-playing of ‘father,’ ‘mother,’ etc.
A man once admitted to my teacher that he attached himself (his false self) to his family and wife and children. My teacher answered him by saying, in so many words, ‘Your ego-states are so entrenched through your concepts that when you recognize the real, fear manifests and you return to those concepts and roles again to define who you are.’
Peace comes when we give up all roles and identities, knowing that we are not this body. Only then can we give up all attachments. As long as we focus on what we think was a ‘loss,’ (an ‘ex,’ for example) then we cannot be open for a ‘gain.’ Believing we lost love when we lost only an illusion of love, we cannot receive True Love when it is offered.
Once we see that all ‘loss’ is an image of our wrong perceptions, then even the loss of one’s own life becomes inconsequential. Does that mean you become suicidal? Hardly. It means you live life fully, unattached, unencumbered, anchorless, tied to no docks. You are free—free of their ideas and their teachings that cause such anal conduct and restrictive living.
At one time in an Oriental culture, the practice was to bind the feet of women so that they could not grow. The process left many crippled and in pain. In W.A.S.P. societies, the mind is bound, so it cannot grow. And that binding leaves many crippled and in pain. I offer to remove the binding. All can be set free, if they but see that their bindings are made of the concepts of an insane culture. I suggest that each ask: ‘Isn’t it time to live?’
Is it not time to live freely, freed of all of the restrictive, controlling, anal dictates of a very old set of Aryan values and beliefs that have a long, arduous history of failure in personal relations, in community relations, in national relations, and in international relations? The change begins with each individual, becoming aware of the lack of growth and the crippling, painful effects of her or his false beliefs. One individual at a time can receive awareness of the false . . . and become free.
Only the ship with no restricting anchor sails freely. The ship attached to a dock goes nowhere. My heron friend has no strings attached. It goes where it pleases; it goes when it pleases; it goes how it pleases; or it does not go at all, and that pleases it too. For now, in this manifestation, he is perfect peace, with form and shape; consciousness, with form and shape; energy, with form and shape. So am I. So are you. Ultimately, he is That—That Which Was, Is, and Shall Be. No duality.
E.: Can you give the readers a hands-on analogy of this energy-consciousness as it applies to us?
F.: OK. Let’s consider electrical energy, ‘resting,’ ‘dormant’ at a plug. You cannot see it. You cannot know it is there except to be told by someone who knows. Or you can be shocked and know that some power unseen is present.
I know, so I can tell people what I now know about manifested energy-consciousness, but I usually don’t, because most will not care to know. To be awakened can be shocking also, and who wants to wake up, really, much less be shocked in the process! Ha.
They killed Christ because he broke the advaitic rule: ‘share this message privately, not in public.’ They’ll kill you for challenging them to question their programming, their ‘values,’ their ‘faith,’ their ‘beliefs.’ The Orthodoxy has always reacted violently, bloodily, towards those who challenge their beliefs. Say that something is a part of one’s ‘religion’ and it gets a free ride in this society.
If a major corporation perpetrated the same harms done to people by the religions in this world, the company headquarters would be shut down tomorrow morning, surrounded by pickets and protestors and rock throwers and legal teams to boot.
Back to the analogy you asked for. Energy must have something through which to manifest if its presence is to be observable. We do not create energy, but it can be channeled; it can manifest through forms. So let’s take a blender and plug it into the outlet. With energy pulsating through it, the blender does what it was programmed to do.
That operation of the blender, its ‘doing’ something, can continue if the energy is present and if the earth elements from which the blender is made do not corrode, rust out, and return to the earth some day. But one day the blender will no longer physically exist. It will decay, as will your body and mine. The oxygen whipped through the blender will rejoin the pool of oxygen. The earth elements will rejoin the pool of earth elements. The energy remains and will rejoin the field of consciousness, the Unmanifest, though ‘at rest’ until manifested into something else. In fact, it may never manifest again.
Or, it might be manifested in a blender or through something else next time it is manifested. This does not mean that grandma becomes a cow. Grandma’s form, once gone, is forever gone. Dust does not re-accumulate into some prior form with the brain/mind of that form also re-occurring. Please, give me a break. As far as humans go, know this: when manifested, I AM; when unmanifested, I AM THAT. So are you. No end; no beginning. No destruction; no creation. Eternal cycling, or not.
Think of it this way: an ice cube is really just H2O. If it melts outside on a hot day, it can become vapor, ascend into a cloud, blend with the cloud, become a raindrop and fall back to earth. In each case, it might have a different form: solid, liquid, vapor, etc. But it is still just H2O, though to observers it’s thought to be all these different things we dreamed up and gave labels to.
We are lying to ourselves. H2O is H2O, not water, fog, steam, vapor, raindrops, oceans, streams, pools, puddles, etc. Now we cannot destroy the H2O though we can affect the visible form, proving my point that what you see is never the real. And just because the H2O that was the ice cube in our example might be recycled and fall back to earth in the spot where the ice cube originally melted, it does not mean that the same ice cube will re-form.
Nor does it mean that the same H2O will ever be in an ice cube again. It might, or it might not. There is no controlling plan. The cycling just happens, as does the spontaneity and the diversity and the unpredictability.
So it is with that which we call ‘humans’ and the elements that make up the body-mind’s form and shape. That which is real, the energy-consciousness-life-force, will last; like the H2O of the ice cube form, the energy-consciousness-life-force may remanifest, and it may not. But it will not remanifest as the same form or with the same mind.
So the current Pope is right: heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men. One thinking he is his body can be said to be in hell now; one with the knowledge of what she or he really is can be said to be in heaven now. When the life-force and the breath leave the body, so ends the body form and so ends the body-mind. I AM THAT, that energy-consciousness-life-force that is eternal, without form or shape.
E.: Forgive me for pressing, but I suspect the readers might not consider that answer ‘hands-on’ enough. Is there anything applicable in all this that can help them in their relations, specifically?
F.: Fair enough. Let’s try this example from a couple I worked with. Her life-long dream was to be a flight attendant. The opportunity, coming at age forty, arrived for her at a later time in life than for most and came on the heels of her recent marital engagement. She was thrilled about the job offer. Now, great pressure was being applied by ‘him’ to force her not to go to New Jersey for training for six weeks. He wanted her to give up this career opportunity, and their impasse was becoming a deal-breaker.
She asked if they could visit with me to discuss the effects that their role-playing was having on possibly destroying their relationship, since she had the understanding in this regard. I’ll give you the shorter version of what I did.
I took them back to when they first met and eventually first became intimate. He was also dating other women; she was seeing other men. He admitted that was fine, at the time. He was not trying to control her. He accepted her right to do what she wanted, when she wanted. Then, they began to date exclusively. At that point, she no longer had the freedom, in his eyes, to go out with other men.
Next, they became engaged, and she lost even more freedom. She became, in his words, my fiancée. The possessive pronoun became the key identifier when he spoke of her: my fiancée, my wife-to-be, etc. I showed him how, as they shifted from the roles of ‘stranger’ to ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ to ‘lover’ to ‘fiancée’ that she lost more and more freedom.
I asked him if this is his current ‘reality’: that the deeper someone becomes involved with him, the less freedom she is going to have and the more demands and expectations she is going to have heaped upon her. Then, I asked if he thought that was ever going to work to create healthy relationships.
The more roles (the more false identities) she assumed with him, the more a co-dependency developed and the more a loss of freedom manifested because he had beliefs about the ‘right way’ a fiancée should act; the ‘right way’ a wife should act, the way people in public should see him being treated, etc. And his beliefs are based in what was modeled for him, not in reality.
I tried to help them see that each time they accepted new roles to define who they are (and each time they accepted a new identity to define the parameters of what is or is not acceptable in their relationship) then the further away they shifted from who (actually, what) they really are, from the freedom they should actually have.
Only by being the real—and not falling into the role expectations as defined by this society—can they be happy. Let her be her; let him be him; and let ‘them together’ be only the parts where his circle and her circle intersect through mutual negotiation. Get real.
Forget roles and the old definitions of what your programming taught you that a fiancée should and should not do, what a spouse is ‘allowed’ to do or not do, etc. Since the couple had obviously shifted beyond the Stage One ‘Passion Level,’ the only alternative was to fixate in this ‘Battle Stage’ and allow the relationship to finally end or to get Real and move into the comfort of the ‘Unconditional Love Stage.’
That stage is reached through sharing, giving, accepting, loving, practicing Applied Tolerance, not judging, not controlling, and most of all, knowing the real and experiencing the Oneness, the unicity, that follows knowing what is real and what is not. Bottom line: one does not lose the role of being a ‘complete bastard’ or a ‘total bitch’ until they lose the role of being ‘an absolute saint.’ Relevant?
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.