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 STAGES WHICH MUST ALL MUST PASS THROUGH BEFORE THE ACTUAL “JOURNEY” CAN BEGIN
The seven “reverse, going back” steps to realization which are discussed in detail in the book FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE
will be alluded to here, but those are really a sub-set of the "bigger
picture," but there are four stages discussed in the book THE ULTIMATE SICKNESS / THE ULTIMATE MEDICINE which most must transition during
the relative existence to be ready to begin the “reverse,” the “going back
out” journey.
Would that a child, as soon as the Ultimate Sickness is introduced via programming, conditioning. etc., could begin receiving the Ultimate Medicine to counter the effects. Yet it does not work that way.
When it comes to the Ultimate Sickness, humans seemingly welcome the programming, conditioning, etc. which is making them so Sick. Why? Because it is so prevalent that humans normalize the symptoms of the Sickness. Everyone around them is behaving in the same Sick manner so it does not appear to be Sick at all.
Add in the high tolerance for the pain and misery and suffering which the Sickness brings and it usually takes twenty years of such pain and misery and suffering before a few humans recognize that they have "had enough" that they begin asking a few questions and being seeking relief.
When it is said here that "the readiness is all," that is what is being referred to. It usually takes four decades before true readiness manifests.
Stage I: Being Programmed to Accumulate (Ages 1-20)
From very early on, children (especially in the West and in countries that are arrogantly labeled as being "developed") are programmed to "get," to accumulate.
For example, "Get a good education so you can get a good job and then get a good mate and then get a nice home and fill it with nice things and have a lot of children and then buy the bigger house you will need for all of that and lease a storage building to hold the excess possessions that cannot fit in the house and then expose two cars worth $80,000 to nature's elements by parking them in the driveway because you have filled your garage with boxes contained $500 worth of junk."
Stage II. Accumulating (Ages 20-40)
Once persons who have been programmed to accumulate, asking for things throughout their childhood and teen years, they typically accelerate their effort to collect and gather and amass and add and hoard by the age of twenty.
For the next two decades, they will try to massage the ego by buying and then showing off what they have bought. That will include things and places and even people who are willing to sell themselves. It should be obvious that such programming to accumulate will automatically block the receipt of any message that invites such persons to consider de-accumulation as a means to a lighter, happier existence.
By the age of forty, many reach the fork in the road that was mentioned in the last series, and one of two possibilities often occurs:
1. With some persons, a brief but lucid moment flashes across the otherwise blocked consciousness. A lucid interval interrupts the otherwise continuous talking in their sleep and walking about in their sleep, actions that mark the existence of the non-Realized after years and years of programming and conditioning and acculturation and domestication.
Some few might begin to ask, "Is this all there is?" or "Who Am I?" Some might express the wonderment in the fashion of an e-mail received several weeks ago with the inquiry, "What the hell is this all about?" and the admission that "I'm forty-two years old and would be considered 'a success' -- someone who has it all. But I still feel empty in spite of everything I've gained."
That "beginning to question" is one possibility. The other is . . .
2. No such moments or ponderings occur. That is the "fork in the road."
If no such questioning happens, the effort to accumulate and treat the inner emptiness with more stuff, more people, more sex, more drugs, etc. can continue to the end of the manifestation.
If such questioning or wondering happens, then "the search for something else" might begin. "The Seeker" role might be adopted. At that point, some enter Stage III. During this stage, some activities might legitimately move seekers along the "path," but most do not.
Stage III. The Forest Dweller Stage
[PLEASE NOTE: The stages as identified in certain Hindu traditions differ slightly from the four stages taught here and in other books by the author.]
A visitor to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's loft made reference to one of those stages:
Visitor: "Living the worldly life and being a person of the grihastha ashrama (The "Householder" stage of life) drudging, working, sleeping, laughing, mixing with people of all nationalities, is it possible just to be, and not identify oneself entirely with the body?"
In certain Hindu traditions, four successive ashramas or stages of life are sometimes prescribed: brahmacharya (celibate disciple), grihastha (householder and family man), vanaprastha (forest dweller) and sannyasa (wandering monk, renunciant). While Maharaj tried the approach as outlined in those stages, he found that they did not provide the answer he sought. They do not provide for natural abidance.
G.K. Damodara Row reported on Maharaj's "experience" with Stage III and showed why Maharaj abandoned that phase (or transcended that chapter in his "journey" to full realization):
" . . . He took Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj as his Guru and clung to him till his Guru attained Mahasamadhi in 1936. The following year, Maruthi (later, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj) suddenly decided to abandon his family and also his prosperous business, and wandered about aimlessly visiting temples and places of religious interest. His mind was restless. He travelled north, determined to spend his time in the Himalayas and never to return home.
"It is said that he walked barefoot in the Himalayan region. There he happened to meet a fellow-disciple of his Guru who told him that such wandering was of no avail and was really not necessary for a spiritual aspirant. He suggested that Maharaj should go back home and live an active life as a house holder. He advised selfless service to the poor which was far more meaningful.
"After deep thought Maruthi returned back to Bombay. He found all his shops taken away except one, but he was not in the least perturbed and got reconciled to the situation and calmly decided that one shop was enough for his worldly needs.
"After some time when his son was able to look after the shop, he retired to his small loft room in the house, which later became an ashram to the devotees, both Indian and foreign who came to him. He lived in this small room, till his final Nirvana in 1981."
On the "journey" in "floyd's" case, the Forest Dweller Stage lasted twenty-five months. With few exceptions, time was spent on a daily basis in the forest, having gone there with the intent described by Henry David Thoreau who also participated in "Stage III activities" on Walden Pond:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
During that period of silent contemplation, many Stage III awarenesses came forth. Thoreau wrote, "Most lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them"
and
"Many go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after"
and
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
When Thoreau transcended Stage III and returned to a home outside the village, his abidance there was still governed by the joy of independence that he came to understand during the Forest Dweller Stage. He wrote, "I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls."
Note that Stage IV is the De-Accumulation / Actual "Journey" Stage, but beginning tomorrow, “The Forest Dweller Stage” will be discussed in detail because it is there that so many seekers (and even non-seekers) fixate.
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 their god / their 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.
