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 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”
[Excerpts from the book FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE which includes transcriptions of talks offered during one of the last series of satsang sessions that I led]:
From yesterday:
F. : “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.”
Continuing today:
F.: “On my ‘journey,’ when I turned too soon from the material and began focusing only on what I called ‘the spiritual,’ I merely developed a new persona: the role of a ‘Spiritual Giant.’ I did not move farther along ‘the path’ until my teacher’s words returned my focus to the material long enough to see every falsehood.
“Many want to see the truth before they have seen all of the false. It cannot happen. So far on this ‘journey,’ we’ve focused on nothing but the material—the false material body, the false mind concerned with the material, and the personality concerned with the material.
”As for the 'spiritualists' you mention, they are as dual-minded as the pious if occupied with material trappings and posturing. My teacher gave short shrift to those playing spiritual roles, showing up in his loft with saffron robes, wooden crosses, beads, gold crosses, special beards, restricted dietary plans to please gods supposedly concerned with gastronomic issues, drums, bells, crystals, rituals, whatever. They were often ‘asked out,’ so to speak.”
Q.: “I don’t see what any of that hurts.”
F.: “It’s diversionary, misdirecting the focus from the I Am and The Absolute, accumulating more material 'stuff' on what is supposed to be a journey toward de-accumulation, and thus halting the journey. It supports the false beliefs that 'I have arrived' and 'the path ends here' and 'this material stuff helps me be more spiritual' when, in fact, the journey is not yet even half complete.
“Some want to flaunt material evidence of their assumed spirituality. So be it. My words are for those who know they have not reached the destination. My teacher knew that nothing external could abet the process of knowing that which is within. Even the guru is within, he said.”
Q.: “Maybe those elements bring a touch of the material to the spiritual, but that doesn’t make the spiritual dualistic.”
F.: “Of course it does, along with many other aspects. All roles are dualistic as soon as a person assumes an identity and then assigns attributes to that false personality.
"By assuming a role-with-attributes as a new and improved identity, one takes that which claims to have transcended the material but then assigns material attributes—an act which immediately gives the role a phenomenal character. Duality is an inherent component of any role, but it especially marks these two limiting personalities that are the repository of all 'good-bad' concepts and all 'reward-deserver' and 'punishment-avoider' personas.
"While body identifications and mind identifications prevent taking the first two steps of this journey to Realization, these two dual-natured roles will bring any journey already begun to a halt if not transcended. Before anyone here who is assuming a religious or spiritual personality wants to rush to the defense of a false persona, let me make this point: an interesting shift can occur at this juncture. The remaining obstacles I’ll discuss can still separate travelers from reality, but they also have the potential to facilitate the journey to realization. The key lies in transcendence.”
Q.: “Transcendence meaning what, exactly?”
F.: “Meaning, if one transcends level three and the levels that follow, the stages can become stepping stones used to continue along 'the path.' The challenge is that along the way two hindrances usually appear.
“First, some encounter what they take to be a cool oasis of religion or spirituality, tempting places to stop, to abandon the journey, and to spend the remainder of one’s life; in fact, anything prior to reality is a mirage and ultimately offers no stability.
“Second, along other parts of the path, many obstacles appear and some become frustrated and abandon the journey. To continue, all roles must dissolve, including the limiting religious and spiritual personalities.”
Q.: “I see the problem with some of the roles you discussed earlier, like the way the ‘husband’ role or ‘employee’ role or ‘wife’ role traps people. But it just seems that the positive role of ‘spiritualist’ would have some benefit. It seems different from the others.”
F.: “So let's say that you're a patient in a study group among those dying of cancer. Your group is receiving the placebo and the other group is getting the real thing. You’re telling me that you’d be willing to stay in the placebo group of cancer patients and not get the real thing if the researchers will just give you another placebo that is ‘different from the other’ placebos that you've been taking . . . but a placebo nevertheless? [Q. frowns]
“All personas are false. Nothing false can help differentiate the true from the false.”
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.
