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
[Continued from yesterday]
“ . . . You are afraid of freedom!”
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
DEFINING FREEDOM and LOSING FREEDOM through CONVENTIONAL SOURCES (cont.)
To review: One dictionary defines freedom as the absence of ceremony
and the ability to live naturally.
Ceremonies are intended to inspire the masses to recite in unison; to knell and
rise in unison; among some religions, to drink blood and body (symbolically for
some, “actually” for some, inexorably linking dogma with cannibalism and
vampirism for nearly 2000 years); and to march in lockstep - including
physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually.
Cultures find anathema those who take the road less traveled, who march in a
relaxed manner to the beat of a different drummer, or who look widespread
insanity and mass ignorance in the eye and shout: “NO!”
In cultures around the globe, uniformity is rewarded, phoniness is rewarded,
participation in ceremonies is rewarded, acceptance of commonly-held (but
false) beliefs is rewarded, form over substance is rewarded, the unnatural is
rewarded, and the supernatural is rewarded. Spurned are authenticity,
genuineness, substance over form, realness, and that which is natural.
Visitors from over sixty-two different nations have made contact here;
therefore, the invitation again is to see what ceremonies are being used in
those cultures to block freedom and peace and sanity even as the discussion
here deals with the adverse effects of U.S. ceremonies.
Consider the part of the definition above which suggests that freedom involves
the ability to live naturally rather than ceremonially and unnaturally.
Consider the difference in the relative existence as lived by those who are
restricted, uptight, retentive, and unnatural vs. the unrestricted, the
relaxed, the free and the natural.
For example, how natural is it to engage in ceremonies that require persons to
walk the way soldiers walk: to be stiff, to be anal-retentive, to think and
talk and walk and behave in a lockstep fashion? By contrast, see how, in
nature, such stiff and uptight and inflexible and laborious and anal behavior
does not happen at all.
Would sane people want to gather together and participate in ceremonies which
endorse cookie-cutter-type dressing and walking and thinking and behaving in a
stiff and rigid and inflexible manner, as soldiers and police and others do? Or
would sane people rather gather together and relax and take it easy?
Could stiff and rigid ceremonial behavior ever be considered
natural, or would relaxing be more “according to nature”?
Could taut and inflexible ceremonial behavior, by any stretch of the
imagination, be considered natural?
In each of the pairs of options above, the first illustrates the way that the
non-realized move through the relative existence; the second shows the natural
way, the way that the “realized Nisargan” functions throughout the remainder of
the post-realization relative existence.
Of course the Nisargan manner is not only about lying back, sleeping and
relaxing; however, no matter what happens - working, husbanding, wifing, driving,
walking, parenting, whatever - it happens in that same relaxed, non-retentive,
laid back fashion.
Why do cultures dream up such stiff and rigid ways of walking / marching?
Because if they can encourage some persons in the culture to look alike, dress
alike, and walk alike, then they can train then to think alike, talk alike, and
behave alike.
Then, the leaders in the culture can report that those people are heroes
because they follow orders exactly and without question and are willing to die
(but preferably kill) for whatever the culture defines as valuable and
necessary.
Afterwards (after programming and conditioning), they can put those persons on
display in local and national ceremonies and parades as they model, for all to
see, their rigid and stiff and retentive manner, subliminally giving widespread
credibility to their totally unnatural way of functioning / performing.
The leaders / programmers / conditioners can have those persons put on public
display and demonstrate the way that the onlookers should also think in unison,
talk in unison, and behave in the same rigid and unbending and uniform manner,
questioning nothing and following orders and never relaxing.
How interesting that the term “standing at attention” actually requires a
rigidity that removes all ability to pay any attention at all as some lock
their knees and cut off circulation and faint. And that is a metaphor for the
way that the masses function:
they are programmed and conditioned to be rigid, to be puppet-like, to be clones
of each other and turned into automatons by their leaders, to become “locked up”
(i.e., not free and not natural) and to lose the ability to circulate freely
and actually lose all consciousness in the end.
How long can the difference in “free and natural” vs. “locked up and unnatural”
be ignored? For most, until the end of the manifestation. For you, the
difference can be understood if you complete in order all of the steps which
can shift the consciousness from identification with the false to an understanding
of the Absolute and the natural functioning of the totality.
Then, you can be free and abide is the nisarga (natural) fashion.
If you look objectively at the ceremonies in your own culture, can you see how
many of them involve the same kind of rigidity and stiffness and uniformity
described earlier? Do you see that your culture would have you moving in
unison, reciting in unison, standing in unison, and / or sitting in unison with
all of the other elements in your culture?
Can you see how many of the rituals and ceremonies of your culture attempt to
make people move about in a lockstep fashion, thinking in the same way, talking
in the same way, all behaving in the same way in every circumstance, and all
behaving in the same rigid and unbending and uniform manner?
Especially in the West, how often during your upbringing were you ever invited
to question what you were told? How many times were you told that you did not
have to blindly accept what leaders say, including religious leaders,
government leaders, or big business leaders?
How much time was spent encouraging you to relax and take it easy vs. time
spent programming and conditioning you to stay as busy as possible in order to
accumulate as much as possible? If you answer honestly, is it not then also
clear why persons become a slave to authority, become accustomed to blindness
rather than to seeing clearly, and fall right into the go-do-zoom mentality of
their culture?
Is it any wonder that in the U.S. that the “we’ll teach you to relax” industry
is now a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business? Is it any wonder that what they
offer is a limited plan that can help you relax for fifteen minutes in the
morning before leaving the house and entering the rush hour traffic that soon
eliminates whatever degree of relaxation you might have experienced during your
fifteen-minute “meditation time” or “quiet time”?
Is it any wonder that, in the East, a brief period in the samadhi state is
touted? Some have said, “You just don’t get it, mister. Fifteen to thirty
minutes in the samadhi state has curative effects. Science can show you the
actual, positive, physiological changes that occur.”
One person said some time back, “If you would take a few minutes to Google ‘health
benefits + meditation,’ you might learn something.” And the reply was:
“If you might unlearn everything, you might fixate in a constant state of
samadhi without all of that ‘going into samadhi’ and ‘coming out of samadhi’
that you presently experience.
Then, whatever ‘benefits’ you speak of would come not like a
light, occasional sprinkling but would manifest more like a flood that would
wash away once and for all whatever it is that you are seeking to be free of
via your fifteen or thirty or sixty-minute sessions.
But most do not want to be totally free. You want to engage in their
religious-spiritual exercises, and many also want to be seen doing that. The
draw of corporate worship or corporate meetings is that person can publicly
display what they take to be their advanced level of spirituality.
Meanwhile, they open their services or meetings by singing or chanting words in
unison, and they close their services or meetings by singing or chanting in
unison. They rise in unison, sit in unison, bow their heads in unison, or raise
their heads in unison;
among some whose religion is as far right as their politics, they pray in
unison, then sway in unison, then swoon in unison, then fall about in unison,
and they even roll around on the floor in unison.
And all the while, they think their activities and exercises are making them
free, when their movements are actually limited to the narrow confines of
group-think, group-talk, and group-behavior.
They will come here to explain how free they are (“free as a bird - flying,
diving, turning, swooping as I please”), but they are totally blind to the fact
that their flying, diving, turning and swooping is all orchestrated by the
movements of the surrounding masses.
Thinking they are “individualized and unique,” they are totally unaware of the
fact that they are a part of a synchronized mass, moving up when the masses
move up and moving down when the masses move down, just as some birds do as
they move across the sky in a manner that parallels the movement of all others
among the flock.
Certainly, a bird in such a mass of birds moving in unison - if it could think
and believe - would think and believe that it is free, but the fact is that it
is trapped in the prison of the masses. And in that state, every action will be
determined by the shadowy masses - never by the light, never by the pure
consciousness that allows the Realized to be free of the dark influence of the
light-less masses.
Remain attached to the domesticated and acculturated masses and to the way that
they think and talk and behave and you will have no chance at all of finding
the road not taken by the masses . . . the one path that leads to Truth.
And remain a part of the masses that will never find the truth and you will -
as is the case with the masses - never be totally free.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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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.
