ANNOUNCEMENTS
[Walter Driscoll asked to interview me in order to preserve on video some of the latest modifications and evolutions in the versions of the message offered here since 1989. He would label the discussion, "Unlearning with Floyd Henderson."
Please note: For those who have a problem hearing what is being shared, the video offers a fairly accurate set of closed captions which some listeners might want to activate.
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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.)
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OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF BEING TOTALLY INDEPENDENT
“ . . . You are afraid of freedom!”
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
To review: Most will never seek, 97% believing that they have already found, via their organized religion, either
[a] the answers to all questions that can be asked or
[b] a way to explain away their religion's inability to provide all of the answers (viz., “He works in mysterious ways”).
Claiming that they have “been made whole and free,” they are actually slaves to
the (often contradictory) content of their supposedly holy texts and to those
persons who claim that they have been “chosen” to teach the lessons of the holy
texts and to tell all persons how they should think and talk and behave and
live and, yes, die.
Of the few who do claim that they are seeking freedom, most of them will never
find that because - as with pregnancies - there are no degrees of freedom and
because most are afraid of total freedom.
First, most will not seek total freedom because they are in denial about the
fact that they are imprisoned: “I have a great life”; “I have been blessed by
God - I have a truly blessed life”;
or,
“Hey, that's just the way the world is:
sometimes there's peace and sometimes there's war . . . sometimes it's good and
sometimes it's bad.”
Secondly, as Maharaj noted, persons do not want to let go of everything, of
every attachment. Specifically, they do not want to let go of their false
identities and the stroking of their egos; they do not want to let go of their
egotism-based hierarchies on which they have assumed a top spot;
they do not want to let go of the learned ignorance which they were taught
first by parents and then by relatives and friends and schools and by their
cultures in general;
they do not want to let go of the notion that they have
all of the answers or let go of the admiration they gain by sharing their
knowledge (a.k.a., learned ignorance).
Third, persons do not want to give up their quest for love, though the only
version of love they understand is the type that forms dependencies and
co-dependencies and though they are seeking love mainly from those who are
incapable of loving, incapable of understanding the Oneness,
and therefore,
incapable of knowing the difference in Real Love and the versions of (false) “love”
that the masses speak of. Too, the dependency and co-dependency that results
from that quest further blocks any aspiration for total freedom.
Fourth, most persons do not want total freedom because they would have to be
free of their desire for power, both “Unseen” and “seen” (the latter including
money;
possessions; men of god who persons think can help them both now and
later; and, witnessed recently, the doctors they worship, imploring and
employing those persons in the hope that they can prolong the body's existence . . .
even if that reaches such insane lengths that the adult-aged body once again
operates like that of a child who cannot control even its most basic bodily
functions while others stand by watching that travesty and talking in their
sleep, saying, “Life is precious”).
Fifth, most will never seek total freedom because they prefer their attachment
to the conceptualized consciousness rather than abiding as the transcendent
consciousness that
(1) allows the Absolute to be overlaid on the relative and that
(2) allows the somethingness to be abandoned totally and
(3) allows the total freedom of the nothingness to manifest.
Last, most will never seek total freedom because they are attached to their false identities associated with the body or the “mind” or the personality / personalities.
Attached to the false as they are and attached as they are to the illusory concepts of “longevity” and “continuity,” they will desire to have - and will fear not having - just one more year of this manifestation, or at least one more month, or even one more week, or even one more day, or even ten more seconds:
“Just keep everything hooked up, Doc, so you can give me ten
more seconds. Don't anyone pull the plug.”And when the plug is pulled or when
the consciousness unmanifests naturally or by accident, one will likely hear
such platitudes as: “He truly loved life” or “She died doing what she loved” or
“He lived a good, full life” or “She died before her time.”
But what will not be said is: “She / He reached a state of total freedom and,
post-realization, did abide to the end of the manifestation without attachment
or desire or fear or delusion or belief in false ideas and concepts or
ignorance or insanity or any of the host of personality disorders that drive
the masses.”
Maharaj would ask now: “What are you not willing to let go of?”
Here, you are asked, “How free do you want to be, especially knowing that
freedom comes in only one type or form or variety, namely, the total variety?”
To continue to look at the topic of freedom by using some of
the definitions offered in a variety of dictionaries:
DEFINING FREEDOM - CONVENTIONAL SOURCES (cont.)
k. “freedom” is independence; or, the ability to do at will whatever is done
rather than to have do something against your will.
Independence and freedom - and the lack thereof - can be discussed on a global
level or on a “personal” level. In either case, independence and freedom are
mostly myth. Look at today's headline alone to find how often independence and
freedom are stripped away from people around the globe:
PAST GLOBAL NEWS HEADLINES:
“Sex crimes in Sweden are decreasing but such crimes are still rampant.”
“A fugitive Rwandan clergyman wanted for his role in the 1994 genocide has been
arrested in Uganda. He led a group that sought out and killed Tutsis in the
genocide. Some 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in 100 days, many of them
brutally bludgeoned or sliced open with machetes.”
“The death toll climbed to 50 on Friday after a pair of suicide bombers
detonated their explosive vests at one of Pakistan's holiest shrines, police
said. An additional 200 people were injured in the blasts outside the Data
Darbar, a famous Sufi shrine complex.”
“A Sydney court on Friday sentenced an Australian Catholic priest to almost 20
years for sexually abusing two dozen boys over two decades, the official news
agency said.”
“Clashes between hard-line Islamists and government forces killed six people
and wounded 19 in Mogadishu on Friday as violence gripped the Somali capital
for a third consecutive day.”
“The June death toll for NATO-led forces in Afghanistan reached 101 on
Wednesday, the highest ever in a single month since the war began almost nine
years ago.”
Consider this exchange regarding the message behind those headlines:
Questioner: “The war is on. What is your attitude to it?”
Maharaj: “In some place or other, in some form or other, the
war is always on. Was there a time when there was no war?”
Of such circumstances, Maharaj said: “Those who abhor war must get war out of
their system. Without peaceful people, how can you have peace in the world? As
long as people are as they are, the world must be as it is.”
Visitors here know that every personality type had a basic desire and a basic
fear that subconsciously drive thoughts and words and actions. There is a
direct link between personality and fighting. Maharaj said: “Between desire and
fear anger arises, with anger hatred, with hatred passion for destruction. War
is hatred in action, organised and equipped with all the instruments of death.”
So independence and freedom are more often a pipe dream around the globe rather
than anything that has actually manifested, but what impact can you have on any
battles that are (as with all battles) man-made?
A Visitor to the Loft: “Look at the wars, the exploitation, the cruel strife
between the citizen and the state.”
Maharaj's answer was also that all of that is “man-made.” And all of that is
far easier to make than to un-make, which is impossible. A U.S. president
wanted to make war against Iraq and used bogus intelligence reports to justify
it. The Congress went along, but many years later, the persona-based war he
made had certainly not been un-made.
Next, consider the “headlines” that would apply far more often to “persons”
(that is, to the non-realized who are driven by their false identities).
Maharaj said that people don't really mind so much the wars that happen far
away from them, among people they do not know; what persons really do not like
are the wars next door or the ones that involve them directly.
Yet, as always, he brought the argument “back home”: “From the moment you were
conceived you started a war with your environment.”
Those “local” wars are the ones that have the greatest impact on the
non-Realized masses and are the ones that persons can be free of if they
complete, in their exact order, the seven steps to full realization. So
consider the headlines that apply to those “local” or “personal” wars:
PAST “LOCAL” / “PERSONAL” NEWS HEADLINES:
“Woman stays with abusive male 'for the children'.”
“Employees cringe as sociopathic boss approaches.”
“Priest re-located to five different parishes as church officials covered up
his sex crimes for twenty years - hundreds of children molested as their
parents looked the other way and continued to place money in church's
collection basket. Thousands of church members remain in denial, support the
priest and blame local authorities.”
“Link discovered between employment and violence in the home: wives of soldiers
and policemen are more likely to be beaten by their spouses than are the wives
of husbands in any other profession, but most of those wives remain loyal and
silent.”
“Suicides on the increase among those losing their job and their homes during
this extended recession.”
“Postal worker who lost job returns to job site, kills postmaster and wounds
five others” and “Fired employee returns to workplace, kills store manager and
wounds five fellow employees.”
“Driver cuts off another car on the freeway, shot by offended man in the car
that had to stop abruptly.”
Consider the personas involved in those “wars”: “The Fearful One”; “The One Who
Will Tolerate Anything for a Certain Lifestyle”; “The Employee”; “The Super
Catholic Who Will Blindly Support Priests While Ignoring Fact”; “The Homeowner”;
and “The Egomaniac Who Better Be Shown Proper Respect.”
Maharaj noted that persons who think they are in the world will of course be
trapped in the nonsense and ignorance and fighting that are associated with the
“world” and the non-realized. He said: “A man who moves with the earth will
necessarily experience days and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no
darkness.”
He spoke of the non-realized as “complex beings, at war within and without.”
But again came a statement from him that supports the thesis of this
discussion, namely, that most are afraid of total freedom and really are not
interested in it at all because it would require the abandonment of all false
identities, of all ego-states, and all egotism.
He said: “Were you really at war with your ego, you would have put many more
questions. You are short of questions because you are not really interested. At
present you are moved by the pleasure-pain principle which is the ego.
“You are going along with the ego, you are not fighting it.
You are not even aware how totally you are swayed by personal considerations. A
man should always revolt against himself, for the ego, like a crooked mirror,
narrows down and distorts. It is the worst of all the tyrants, it dominates you
absolutely.”
So the answer? More on that tomorrow.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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"From the I to the Absolute (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality");
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THE EXPLANATION
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"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
"There is no hell."
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
