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.)
Maharaj’s advice to those who would be free of believing in false identifications and who would understand where one was in the days prior to manifestation and how persons come to be mistakenly identified with false identifications was to "go back," to "reverse," and to take the same “path” by which persons manifest except in the reverse manner in order to undo all of the ignorance and insanity which was passed down during the process.
So far in this series, seekers have been offered understandings regarding the ways that persons become "separated from Reality” by accepting a body as an identity and by accepting the false content of their human minds as truth.
Also stored in the minds of humans are a host of false identifications variously referred to as “personal identities,” “personalities,” “personas,” “roles,” “characters,” “stage names,” “guises,” “facades,” “masks,” “fronts,” etc.
The Advaitin Shakespeare said the following in regards to the kind of phony game-playing and acting which adult-age humans engage in all day, every day:
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and [persons] in their time play many parts, their acts being 'seven ages'.”
Shakespeare was only one of hundreds of thousands throughout the ages that have written plays or movie scripts or novels or songs or poems, etc. and noted how willingly humans are to be imposters and fakes.
The second act of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” begins with the ensemble descending a grand staircase and singing a song which mocks humankind’s affinity for playing false, phony roles:
CHORUS
Masquerade!
Paper faces on parade . . .
Masquerade!
Hide your face,
so the world will
never find you!
Masquerade!
Every face a different shade . . .
Masquerade!
Look around -
there's another
mask behind you!
Flash of mauve . . .
Splash of puce . . .
Fool and king . . .
Ghoul and goose . . .
Green and black . . .
Queen and priest . . .
Trace of rouge . . .
Face of beast . . .
Faces . . .
Take your turn,
take a ride
on the merry-go-round . . .
in an inhuman race . . .
Eye of gold . . .
Thigh of blue . . .
True is false . . .
Who is who . . .?
Curl of lip . . .
Swirl of gown . . .
Ace of hearts . . .
Face of clown . . .
Faces . . .
Drink it in, drink it up,
till you've drowned
in the light . . .
in the sound . . .
RAOUL/CHRISTINE
But who can name the face . . .?
ALL
Masquerade!
Grinning yellows,
spinning reds . . .
Masquerade!
Take your fill -
let the spectacle
astound you!
Masquerade!
Burning glances,
turning heads . . .
Masquerade!
Stop and stare
at the sea of smiles
around you!
Masquerade!
Seething shadows
breathing lies . . .
Masquerade!
You can fool
any friend who
ever knew you!
Masquerade!
Leering satyrs,
peering eyes . . .
Masquerade!
Run and hide -
but a face will
still pursue you!
(The ENSEMBLE activity becomes background, as certain characters come to the fore and engage in dialogue. Then the singing continues)
ALL
Masquerade!
Paper faces on parade
Masquerade!
Hide your face,
so the world
will never find you!
Masquerade!
Every face a different shade
Masquerade!
Look around,
there's another mask
behind you!
Masquerade!
Burning glances,
turning heads
Masquerade!
Stop and stare
at the sea of smiles
around you!
Masquerade!
Grinning yellows,
Spinning reds
Masquerade!
Take your fill,
let the spectacle
astound you!
(Voices fade and turn to gasps as the lights dim and the Phantom appears at the top of the stairway)
Moreover, few have spent as much time and energy making clear the toll taken when phony roles are played than those versed in the non-dual understanding.
After body identification is rejected, and after beginning to reject belief systems, the next step is to look specifically at the conglomeration of false personality identifications stored in the mind which must also be rejected if freedom from ignorance is to come and if sanity is to be restored.
Yet merely to suggest that persons should be free of the influence of personality / personalities or that they should simply stop being driven by the subconscious agendas of personalities which control and govern and affect and ultimately determine unconsciously every thought that is thought and every word that is spoken and every action that is taken of humans can be seen to have most assuredly not been enough.
Again, if one does not understand the way that personality is never an “asset”; and if one does not understand that personality leads in every case to the manifestation of personality disorders and that personality disorders lead to neuroses and psychoses and insane thoughts and insane talk and insane behaviors;
and if one does not understand exactly what the specific consequences are of each personality disorder, then why would one even consider (much less act upon) the sages' advice regarding personality or Maharaj’s advice regarding personality?
Obviously, most have never heard and will never hear such advice, and based in Maharaj’s guesstimates, even those who do hear the advice have not acted upon it in any significant numbers. Here, therefore, more information about personality and its consequences is shared in order to provide facts about why personality must be discarded if realization (simply meaning “being freed form ignorance,” according to Maharaj) is to happen.
THE THIRD DEGREE OF SEPARATION FROM REALITY:
False Identifications with the Last to Go Being
“The Super Religious One,” “The Spiritual Giant,”
and “The Super Seeker”
This discussion includes excerpts from
[The content of FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE includes transcriptions of talks offered during one of the last series of satsang sessions conducted by Floyd Henderson]
F.: “I’ll mention before we begin that you might want to buckle your seatbelts. If this session is typical, we may be in for some turbulence. Ha. [Light laughter] Our ‘journey’ has reached the third stage. It is here that the broad highway narrows to a tapered path.”
Q.: “And why is that?”
F.: “Because a narrow, tapered path will handle the low volume of traffic from this point forward. Most will not move beyond the obstacles discussed in this session. The majority who quit abandon this seven-step journey at level three. Early on, my teacher guessed that one in ten thousand might make it to the ‘end’; later, he predicted one in a million. He was only guessing, but he might have been close.”
Q.: “Not very good odds.”
F.: “Indeed.”
Q.: “Maybe we need better teachers.” [Laughter]
F.: “Indeed.”
Q.: “No fight? Ha.”
F.: “None. The variable is not only the teacher. The readiness is key. Are you ready?”
Q.: “Yes.”
F.: “We’ll see.” [Laughs] Let’s move to the Third Degree of Separation from Reality: assuming roles, such as Religious Roles or Spiritual Roles, as actual identities. Note, please, that I speak of religious or spiritual roles as obstacles. Why are they obstacles? Two reasons: first, they are personas. They are just new personalities adopted to replace other roles or to 'co-exist' in a conditioned mind with other states-of-being this or being that. Secondly, religion and spirituality—by their very nature and by virtue of the manner in which they are practiced by most—foster duality. They are steeped in duality.”
Q.: “I disagree completely. The ultimate message of both religion and spirituality deals with atonement and oneness and that can't do anything but help all mankind. How can a message of oneness be ‘steeped in duality’?”
F.: “You speak in suppositions; I speak of actualities. You dream of a bountiful yield; I see the fruit already in store.”
Q.: “None of that supports your claim that religion and spirituality foster duality.”
F.: "In the earlier sessions, did you not see how the phenomenal existence of everyone in this room has been made miserable as a result of being trapped in your debilitating preoccupation with trying to earn the 'good’ label and avoid the ‘bad' label and earn a reward and avoid a punishment?”
Q.: “Yes. That was clear. I got it.”
F.: “I disagree. If you truly 'got it,' why would you defend roles that supports the 'good-bad' duality now? Why would you assume personalities that are preoccupied with the 'good-bad' duality's companions—‘reward and punishment’—and strive for some earthly 'reward' now and some 'ultimate reward' that you want to experience eternally? Only because of your faulty conditioning and wrong programming. How has living in that duality worked for you so far? And ‘who’ would experience the benefits now and the reward forever? Your body-mind-personality. The sources of so much mental anguish in this temporary existence—that body-mind-personality triad and that ‘good-bad-reward-punishment’ quartet—you have been invited to discard in order to see truth and to be at peace, now. Instead, you want to assume and defend two false identities that will perpetuate the effects of those dualities in this existence and then seek to extend them for eternity. And that's only a fraction of the duality that dominates these two false personalities.”
Q.: [Pause. Begins to speak. Doesn’t.]
F.: “Would being occupied with the material while claiming an occupation with the spiritual constitute dualism?”
Q.: [Pause] “Go ahead.”
F.: “Then look to the practice rather than the words. If we are speaking of ‘abandoning the material to deal with that beyond the material,’ are you going to suggest that the pious have abandoned the material? Or do they require a constant influx of the material to operate? Can creeds be practiced without material churches, temples, mosques, material accouterments, money, etc.? All of those material elements are required to sustain dogma and spread doctrine. That is material-spiritual duality, but only the beginning of the duality we'll see.”
Q.: “I don’t do all that any more. I focus only on the words of Christ.”
F.: “As you will. Then look to his history and see that it reinforces my point. He began in the temples, talking about the content of holy texts; later, he left organized religion and its temples, spoke on hillsides and in homes, and offered talks that were beyond the texts. He had been exposed to the Advaita Vedanta Teachings during his ‘lost years’ and tried to shift his audience away from traditional religion with its dualistic nature by offering the message of non-duality that I’m speaking of now.”
Q.: “Christ had a non-dual message?”
F.: “He said, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM’ and ‘When you speak of me, speak of me as I AM’ and ‘Heaven and earth shall fade away’ and ‘No one shall ever see heaven—it is within’ and ‘A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.' That manifestation called ‘Christ’ tried to offer the Advaita Vedanta Teachings. But how many who assume the persona of his followers have a clue of the Advaita content?”
Q.: [Pause] “Hummm. No one ever pointed it out to me. [Another pause] Alright, granted that organized faiths have to mix the material with the spiritual, but spiritualists have no churches or budgets. Why group the two together? You’re spiritual, aren’t you?”
F.: “I am neither spiritual nor material.”
Q.: “Are you a sage?”
F.: “Ha! Do I sound like any of the authentic sages you’ve heard or read?”
Q. : “Not really.”
F. : “So, there you have it; however, my teacher was a sage. I'm but a voyager who listened to the words of a sage who knew of what he spoke. He spoke of That Which He Truly Is, and I read his words and first came to know all that I am not. And that facilitated my coming to know exactly That Which I Am, but the Vision was also required in addition to his words. Like the early explorers of the earth, I embarked on a journey following a sage’s directions, I have seen that which is at ‘the end’ (a sighting facilitated with the Vision), and I have returned to tell you of its wonders. Now I can guide you 'there' as well, should you be ready to follow the same path. There is no difference in you and me. The appearance of any difference is merely a result of the fact that What I Am … I know. What You Are, your questions and comments show me you do not know. So let’s continue with the journey. You used the word ‘spiritual.’ What do you take ‘spiritual’ to mean?”
Q.: “Spiritual to me simply means abandoning the material to deal with that beyond the material.”
F.: “Good enough. We’ll use your definition for our discussion, but let me ask first, ‘What might be the detriment of shifting one's focus to the spiritual and abandoning the material before having thoroughly examined all of the 'material'?”
Q.: “I don't think there can be any detriment.”
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 the picture link which has now been added for 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.
