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.]
Yesterday:
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]
Q.: “You have a knack for turning around my statements in a way I don’t mean them.”
F.: “I’m not trying to turn statements around or even offer a different perspective. All perceptions are illusions, so I suggest their dissolution. The personas you’re trying to defend are just more states of being 'this' or being 'that.' Some want you to adopt all of their beliefs. I invite you to abandon all of your beliefs.”
Q.: “So you’re claiming that these two states have never helped anyone?”
F.: “What is ‘help’? [Pause] Let’s try this: can a canoe help one cross a river?”
Q.: “Of course.”
F.: “Then imagine that seven rivers separate you from a destination. Imagine also that at each crossing point is a canoe. I ask you, if you use a canoe to cross a river, do you need to drag that canoe along to the next river if a guide assures you that another canoe will be ready to help cross the next obstacle? Is there any reason you should carry along the first and second and third canoes as you approach the fourth river? Why drag with those three canoes the fourth, fifth, and sixth canoes when the seventh canoe awaits? Why burden yourself by dragging along all those canoes that can only inhibit free movement along the path? Now, did the canoes help? They were there and you used them. So be it. But to say, 'Well, I had to do everything I did on my journey' is a lie. The truth is that you could have crossed the rivers in other ways, and some of those other ways might have been much easier. Not far from the canoes were footbridges. In some places, the rivers narrowed to shallow streams that you could have walked across. Large traffic bridges crossed the rivers elsewhere. Did the canoes help . . . or hinder? The more relevant question now, since you've gone the canoe route, is 'Don't the canoes now need to be abandoned so you can move on effectively?' The answer to that is, 'Yes'.”
Q.: [Raises eyebrows]
F.: “I’ll take that look as an affirmation that you get the point. When I speak of transcending, I refer to the fact that you must transcend all body identity, all mind identity, and now . . . all religious or spiritual personalities as well. You might feel they have helped you along, but they are not the end and they need not be taken along after having served whatever purpose you think they served. All identities must dissolve between now and the end of the fourth degree of separation or you cannot go on and know the child ignorance and the witness, nor the True Self, nor the beingness, nor the non-beingness . . . much less be fully in touch with Reality and know the Absolute. It will be impossible. We have reached the point along the path where religious and spiritual roles must be transcended. Any benefit that you believe they might have provided up to this point, so be it. But in order to continue, these roles too must dissolve.”
Q.: “If all roles are dreamed up in the mind and played out by the body, why are these two in a separate category from the other mind identifications you discussed?”
F.: “Excellent question. The answer is, first, because in the vision in which these seven degrees came to me, these two roles were the third degree."
Q.: “What vision?”
F.: “The vision I’ll share later at a more appropriate time. That said, these personalities also deserve a category that allows for their thorough investigation since they have far greater impact in the relative existence than any other body or mind identifications. Look to yourself and see how they are 'fighting for their lives.' Typically, these personalities are the earliest to be planted in the conditioned mind. Being the oldest ego-states, these personas are the longest held. Like an obnoxious guest at a party, they are often the first to come and the last to go. Even if the roles are assumed during the adult years, their power to dominate the behavior of those with a conditioned mind is demonstrated daily.”
Q.: “So why do they have a greater impact than other roles?”
F.: “For several reasons. First, playing a religious role will either prevent the journey from beginning or will end a journey that has begun. This Teaching requires that we question everything. Faith in dogma requires that you question nothing. The journey only begins when questioning begins. The journey only continues if questioning continues. Second, having been told he has all the answers and having been trained to ask no questions, how could anyone so programmed continue the journey? Next, the programming and conditioning administered in such venues create minds with unwavering belief in dogma or theory, resulting in a rigidity that prohibits the consideration of opposing views. That I know from my years of being mired in both roles. Further, no other ego-states trigger more emotional intoxication. Also, most persons have had their entire phenomenal existence frustrated by the dualities of ‘good and bad,’ 'reward and punishment,' ‘heaven and hell’ and the struggle for their souls by 'dual gods': the god of good and the god of bad. These two personalities are the seat of those concepts of dualism that are so debilitating, but to suggest that the concepts are harmful and should be questioned will usually earn you a new label, maybe something like, ‘New Age Agent of Satan.’ [Loud laughter] Don’t laugh. That’s one I’ve actually heard. Ha. Next, imagine how difficult it is to shake off decades of such conditioning and programming. Finally, all roles are ego-states and thus foster egotism. Once the stance that ‘Our way is right and your way is wrong’ is taken, no room remains for facts or truth or opposing views. Fix bayonets . . . cock and load.”
Q.: “Your talk about moving beyond these roles is scary because I’ve always been taught this is my only hope.”
F. : “How’s that hope working for you? Can losing false identities harm your True Self, or would the loss of all false identities finally reveal your True Self? What you find ‘scary’ is not this talk. What you fear is the loss of continuity of the body and mind and personality. You want immortality for something that is temporary! Set the personas aside and your fear will be replaced with peace. See the immensity of the Totality, not the limited life of a body-mind-personality. Get free of your unachievable desire to make the transient into the permanent. Seeking the unachievable will assure you a lifetime of feeling separate and angry. You'll exhaust yourself with needless effort.”
Questioner 2.: “You really bother me, saying religion and spirituality aren’t the final answer. I’m only alive today because I found a spiritual solution to my problem.”
F.: “The best question I could ask in reply would be, ‘Who is bothered?’ but I’ll go with second-best and ask, ‘Who said to let religion or spirituality dissolve?’ I see no likelihood that either will fade from the screen. Each of you, on the other hand, has an opportunity to be free of two additional, limiting personalities. I identified the next two obstacles that must dissolve in order for the journey to continue: religious and spiritual persons. Personas are false. How can anything false progress? The journey halts when personalities believe they have arrived. Don’t consider the inseparable I Am / Absolute as ‘separates’ by believing that these ‘Seven Degrees of Separation from Reality’ are real. They are the illusions.”
Q. 2: “I think that I’m a spiritual creature having a human experience.”
F.: “I read that book too, so you now think what another person thought. Aside from what any human or religious or spiritual person thinks, what do you know . . . within?”
Q. 2.: “I know I have the power of faith, which it doesn’t sound like you have.”
F.: “Ha. Oh, I have faith . . . faith that the totality will function. Functioning will happen. My teacher said that there’s a current of energy that flows within the space when manifested. He suggested that I know that energy and its functioning. I do, so I have faith that happenings will happen, infinitely.”
Q. 2.: “I think your problem is that you must have been given a negative concept of God along the way. I came up with a God of my own conception. If you can’t like that God you were raised with, I suggest you come up with a God of your own understanding that you can be comfortable with.”
F.: “Yes, I’ve also read that book, but after making that suggestion to choose your own idea of God, it tells you to ‘cast aside all ideas.’ So which is it?”
Q. 2: “I don’t care what you say. The bottom line is, I have a Power that you don’t have.”
F.: “Actually, you’ve proved that your Power doesn’t exist.”
Q. 2.: “Hardly.”
F.: “You told us that you have chosen your own conception of god, that you 'came up with a god.' You created god. That itself is a very interesting twist in the dogma. But more to the point, you admit that your god is a concept—an idea fabricated by a conditioned mind. You’re admitting that you dreamed up a concept and now believe in the dream. If one dreams that he's sleeping with his favorite starlet, he's no less alone. If he awakes from that dream and still believes that she’s there, a delusion exists. We’re supposed to be moving away from the dream state and to the awakened state. All concepts are just notions or inventions or conceits. We’re on the path to no concepts, not more concepts.”
Q. 2.: [Raising voice] “I know for a fact that my Higher Power is real. He’s given me the power and peace I never had.”
[Note: “Q2” was in a Twelve-Step program. Few persons in any such program seem to be aware of what their founders had to say about the “Higher Power” and “God,” but what they said is relevant to all readers at this point . . . whether “Twelve-Steppers” or "Advaitins." In the appendix of their book, an appendix entitled “Spiritual Experience,” they make clear that though earlier in the text the writer used gender-specific pronouns such as “He” or “Him” to refer to a male god with personal attributes, that is not what most of the founders took the Higher Power to be.
Q2 had the same gender-specific concept of the power. The appendix in their book reveals that those founders who had a “spiritual experience” no longer saw the Higher Power as a male entity but saw it as an “inner resource,” to use their words. (That "resource" is, of course, the pure / unblocked universal consciousness.) The appendix goes on to say that it is only their religious members who speak of “God-consciousness.” So according to their own literature, most of their founders had a spiritual experience and were conscious of the consciousness within—of the “inner resource” as they called it or of the "inner guru" as many Far Easterners call it. Only the religious members continued to speak of a male “God.” The point made in their appendix is exactly in line with the non-dual understanding, as is their point that, after having had a spiritual awakening, they tapped into their “sixth sense” and “intuition” and lived in a fashion that was “automatic”—not unlike the “spontaneous living” of the Advaita teaching. Now the dialogue will continue.]
F.: “You seem to read a wide range of books. You find in your books what you don’t know and then you believe you know it. The content of all those books you’re quoting amounts to learned ignorance. I hear you quoting what you’ve read, but I hear no evidence that you have found what you already know . . . within. You and I both know what’s in the books you’re quoting, but do you know what is beyond those texts? If not, whatever peace you claim to have received is tenuous, vulnerable to being shattered with a few words, as your voice seems to be confirming. Fix bayonets . . . cock and load.”
Q. 2: [Frowns, shouts] “I wasn’t angry until you started talking blasphemy!"
F.: “Make no connections where connections don’t exist. That’s just more duality. A common reasoning fallacy claims, ‘I am unhappy; I am in your presence; you are making me unhappy.’ See the truth: one, you are unhappy; two, it just so happens that you’re also in my presence.”
Q. 2: “You’re a real piece of work.”
F.: “Let’s stay with your conception. You’ve created a concept in your ‘mind,’ and now you depend on that concept. My teacher cautioned against anything that makes one dependent. You also probably concentrate on that concept, you likely pray to that concept, you perhaps even try to model yourself after that concept, but you admit it’s just your conception—an invention of your ‘mind.’ Other ideas you've believed about that god were ancient concepts fabricated in the minds of other men. In the last session, you obviously didn’t grasp that the personal mind produces powerlessness, not power. The variable mind doesn’t provide peace. It robs you of peace. If you want lasting peace, abandon your mind, your concepts, and your ego-states. Then, seek within to know the Real."
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.
