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.
The interview is available for viewing by clicking on video "NUMBER THIRTEEN" in the column to the right.]
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.)
4. Some prefer paperback books even if they have to wait a day or so to receive it and have to pay more for a printed book and its shipment. Now, 10 paperback books by Henderson are in print and available in two anthologies through Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and over 40,000+ booksellers around the globe including in the Americas, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Russia, China, Spain, Brazil and South Korea. See the end of this post in red text for details.
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OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF BEING TOTALLY INDEPENDENT
“...You are afraid of freedom!”
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
DEFINING FREEDOM - CONVENTIONAL SOURCES (cont.)
l. “Freedom” is the absence of ceremony and the ability to live naturally.
REVIEW:
A. For millions of years, humans lived naturally, in the absence of ceremony.
B. Persons become trapped in their delusions partly due to their ceremonies
which, practiced regularly, preempt almost all opportunity for realization to
happen because of the constant “reinforcement by ceremony” of the non-truths
which they have been taught and believe.
C. Ceremonies are used by cultures to keep people asleep, to
reinforce insane but widely-held beliefs, and to constantly re-program and
re-condition persons so they will question nothing and will follow instructions
from those who would control their thoughts and words and deeds by reinforcing
personality / personas.
D. The most commonly practiced ceremonies around the globe are those that
reinforce separation via myth-based religious beliefs (followed closely in
number by those that reinforce separation via nationalistic beliefs).
E. The realized, like the naturally-abiding deer, participate in no ceremony,
value nothing that is honored with ceremonies that are participated in by the
masses, and care not a whit for the ego-and-egotistically-based ceremonies that
are so cherished by the non-realized.
The discussion continues with the way that ceremony numbs the brain and blocks
realization and, therefore, also blocks the manifestation of freedom, focusing
first on the planet's number one source of ceremonies: organized religion.
The pointer was offered earlier that there are sixteen basic precepts that are
common to many of the world's religions and that all evolved from the killing
of virgins. “Wait a minute,” you might say.
“Are you claiming that, at their core, the main teachings of religion
originally came about as a result of raping and murdering and mutilating young
women and then eating their bodies and drinking their blood in the name of a
god (or gods) with the hope of making it rain?”
Yes.
The modern communion service is ghastly enough with its cannibalistic and
vampiristic eating of body and drinking of blood; but to understand that the
modern ceremony is actually a symbolic re-enactment of the earliest religious
ceremonies in which young women were raped, killed, and mutilated (with their
bodies then eaten and their blood then drunk) takes the sleepwalking insanity
of the masses who participate in such ceremonies to an entirely new level, does
it not?
Next, notice how the following teachings that are usually at the core of the
dogma of many organized religions and spiritual movements are accepted without
any questioning, without any awareness that the teachings evolved from
ceremonies that were intended to assure rain for crops, and without any
awareness of their ignorant and barbaric roots:
1. The priest offers a message of hope and a means of “saving you”;
2. Some people can hear the voice of a god better than others, it is claimed;
3. Followers are to be guided by one who is “holy.” (“Holy” originally meant “different”
- some claim they are different from others because they are in closer contact
with the gods);
4. Truth is best found by gathering together with a religious guide, for as
long as you live, rather than by being alone to tap into one’s own intuitive
inner resource;
5. There are “Supreme Beings” from other worlds that are directing every aspect
of our lives here on earth, down to whether it rains or not;
6. Each god chooses certain people on earth as representatives;
7. The gods can get very angry and when that happens, they will allow you to
die or will kill you;
8. Male gods value virginity, so strict controls must be placed on the sexual
conduct of followers (originally intended to insure a steady supply of virgins
for sacrifice);
9. God wants people to make sacrifices (including property and even your life);
10. Followers are to be under the control and influence of their priest,
obeying the guidance he receives from god;
11. Followers must adhere to the priest’s strict orders about sexual conduct,
must recognize the value of virginity, and must follow all commands that both
men and women abstain from having sex unless permission is granted by the
priest;
12. Followers must accept the assertion that one among them can communicate
directly with Beings from another world;
13. Followers must accept that killing in the name of a “Supreme Being” is
desirable and that the religious leader will decide who is to die, how they are
to die, and when they are to die;
14. Followers are to accept responsibility for meeting all of the priest’s
earthly needs in order to free him up to work for their benefit as he mediates
between those “Beings” from another world and “his people” - his flock - on
earth. (The analogy is appropriate, is it not, since sheep will follow the
leader anywhere, even to their own death?);
15. The idea of dying for a religious cause had thus been introduced to humans,
and the idea of death as something positive had been given and began to
circulate. The importance of the instinctive, natural desire to survive at all
costs had been challenged and the merit of self-destructive (insane) behavior
had been introduced and endorsed, as long as it had to do with one's religion.
Where all prior efforts by humans had been to endure and
survive at all costs, the priest had suddenly taught his followers that to die
for god is a noble, honorable, and deity-pleasing behavior; and
16. You can get what you want from god if you are willing to sacrifice, if you
have faith that the sacrifice will work, and if you are willing to go even to
the length of (a) killing for god or (b) suffering and/or dying for god.
Trace those beliefs back 5000 years, consider that they have been taught and
passed on billions upon billions of times in religious and spiritual gatherings
for thousands of years, and it becomes clear how those teachings have taken
such hold among those programmed first and foremost to question nothing from a
holy man, including the acceptance of rape and murder and mutilation and the
drinking of blood and the eating of human flesh in religious ceremonies.
So 97% of the people on the planet go regularly for their ceremonies that
program and re-program, and condition and re-condition, persons to accept all
that they are taught about a god / gods, and the precepts above are a part of
the dogma of most organized religions and spiritual movements.
The god of Abraham is now worshipped by over 50% of the 6.7 billion people on
the planet who claim to be either Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. In addition to
that 50%, another 47% of the people on the planet regularly attend religious or
spiritual ceremonies that program and re-program, and condition and
re-condition, persons to accept all that they are taught about their god or
gods.
In terms of a multiplicity of gods, the overall winner for having dreamed up
the highest number of supernatural beings - if all of their various traditions
are considered - are the Hindus with a total of 330,000 individual,
supernatural beings. Amazing specialization, yes?
During the typical religious ceremonies, people must sit and rise; bow; knell
and rise and knell and rise; sing; chant; recite in unison; burn this; smell
that; ring this; and wear special clothes, special shoes, or no shoes - all of
which is most unnatural while being considered “supernatural” or “spiritual.”
And in the process of making their ceremonies unnatural and supernatural, they
push their followers farther and farther away from what is natural, from what
is sane, from what is sensible, and from Reality; therefore, it can be seen
that ceremony is one of the most widely-employed of all of the tools that are
used by those who program and re-program, and condition and re-condition, persons
while robbing them of sanity and freedom.
“Freedom” is the absence of ceremony and the ability to live naturally.
Next: Nationalistic ceremonies that rob persons of freedom and reinforce a
sense of separation, all of which blocks the opportunity for realization,
blocks the chance to return to sanity, blocks total freedom, and blocks
uninterrupted peace.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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The Advanced Seekers' Series (344 pages) is an anthology of four books that share Advaita-based, non-duality pointers that can guide seekers to abide as their original nature. Included in the anthology are
"From the I to the Absolute (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality");
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“There’s No Such Thing As Peace of Mind (There’s Only Peace If You’re ‘Out of Your Mind’)”
“Liberation (Attaining Freedom from Personality via Realization)”
“Freedom from Shifting Between States of Happiness and Unhappiness”
“Why You Must Be Empty If You Would Be Full”
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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.
