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.)
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How Dualistic Thinking Reinforces Ignorance, Justifies Inaction, and Prevents the Understanding of Causation
[Continued from yesterday]
The
author of the most widely-read book dealing with addiction treatment (discussed
earlier in this series) wrote that, when people looked thoroughly and honestly, “the
first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong.”
He knew, as Maharaj did, that the main problem with persons - all persons -
centers in the mind.
Search the internet for “peace of mind” and you'll get over 752,000,000 hits (a
number which has more than tripled since 2013) and which in itself reveals
several key points to understand:
1. Millions if not billions of persons are searching for peace of mind;
2. they think that the solution to their mind problem can be addressed with
their minds (as if bone cancer can heal bone cancer);
3. they obviously believe, since they are searching for “peace of mind,” that
there is such a thing; and what they do not know is that
4. there's no such thing as “peace of mind” and that there is only peace if you are out of your mind.
That means that peace can only come when one is no longer driven by the
false-belief, nonsensical content of the mind.
Maharaj saw the dualistic paradoxes of all non-realized persons with their
mind-centered problems, one being that they try to address their mind-centered
problems and their mind-driven existence with . . . their minds.
They love the content of their minds, and like arrogant spouses who believe
that they are always right and that their mates are causing 100% of the
problems in their relationship, the arrogant mind works the same way.
The last thing that a mind can conclude is that (as the author of the book
referenced above said) “it is often quite wrong” . . . that the content of
their minds is their problem.
The mind is forever looking outside itself to
find the cause of discontentment and pain and misery and suffering, blaming
everything but the actual source: the mind itself.
Being the storehouse of dualistic beliefs (and, therefore, being the source of
one paradox after another), then the result is this:
There is the paradox of ignorance, namely that the ignorant do not know that
they are ignorant, and if they do happen to become aware of that condition,
many flaunt their ignorance, wearing it as proudly as soldiers wear medals on
their chest to separate themselves from those with fewer medals.
Those walking and talking in their sleep have no idea that they are
asleep.
Those living in the dream of the planet feel certain that they are actually awake.
Similarly, the insane do not know that they are insane.
They do not know that they are retreating even as they are certain that they
are moving forward, succeeding, accomplishing, convinced that they are “normal.”
To that end, consider “Mary's plight.”
Mary (her real name) is institutionalized in New York City. Born in the early
50's, she has been in what some call “a mental hospital” since the early
1970's.
The “manifestation of Mary” in the 1950's brought with it a perfectly normal
brain; in fact, it was considered to be “above normal” in terms of IQ. Of
course her brain was formed with the sections that are required to store and
retrieve information . . . sections which - once filled - would be called “her
mind.”
But in the beginning, there was no mind to the degree that she had been taught
nothing during the Child No-Knowing Stage. Oh yes, there were archetypal
messages from day one, messages transmitted genetically via thousands of
generations of those who would be deemed her “ancestors.”
So, she would jump if someone created a loud noise near her face or ears; she
would avoid bright lights if possible; she would rest rather than feel as if
she were driven to go and do and zoom. That feeling would come later.
Those who knew her would report that Mary was normal early on, but her
environment was not. Much to the chagrin of those who hear this pointer, there
is no sane environment in which children are “raised” nowadays;
hence,
the formation of personality early on. Personality is merely a tool that
children use unconsciously to try to survive in the totally-dysfunctional
families which are the abnormal norm nowadays.
(All families are dysfunctional? Really? Yes, really. It goes like this: if
there is no dysfunctionalism, then there will be no personality. But is there
anyone that has no personality, no assigned ego-states, no adopted roles? No;
thus, there is the clear evidence of the all-pervasive dysfunctionalism in
families which every child must try to deal with.)
Mary from the ages of 0-5 did pretty much what most pre-school girls do; from
the ages of 6-12, she did pretty much what most elementary-age girls do; and
from the ages of 13-18, she did pretty what most high-school age girls
do.
And by the end of high school, she found herself reflecting on the boys and men
she had met (and “The One” she did not meet). She also reflected on the fact
that she no longer had either parent in her life, both having abandoned her
years before. And she reflected on the fact that she had no other relatives or
friends, either.
Any early and brief periods of joy had given way to adolescent shyness and
insecurity and instability and angst and uncertainty and doubt and fear and
unmet desires. And all of that was rooted in personality, of course.
Along the way, Mary experienced plenty of traumatic events, but fewer than some
and more than only a few. Yet what she experienced during those years took a
toll, and Mary reached a point where, by the age of twenty, the relative
existence had already lost its appeal.
Personality issues and chemical imbalances and dietary deficiencies - all of
which are experienced by all - took a greater than usual toll on Mary because
she had not been totally desensitized, though she could well have been,
understandably. By twenty, she had already felt more, hurt more, and suffered
more than most would because most her age had already been lulled to sleep 24 /
7.
In Mary's case, it was the laughter that went first; then whatever slight touch
of lightness that might seem to have been revealed by an occasional, tenuous
smile was really nothing more than a false reflection from a heart that was
growing increasingly dark.
She did consider suicide, but being the non-violent type, she did not choose to
escape via that method, even though the relative existence no longer had any
appeal at all. With little evidence of the Addictive Personality Disorder, she
did not use drugs or alcohol or shopping or work or sex or “love” or chaos or
control to try to escape.
Instead,
she merely retreated. See, now? That is what insanity is, among other things: a
retreat. And to where did Mary retreat?
Because what she had been programmed to believe was “this world” (and because “this
world” was a place of misery and suffering for her) she retreated to “another
world,” to one conceptualized within her mind.
Eventually,
it was via the mind itself that Mary left “this world” permanently to reside in
“that world” for the remainder of the manifestation.
Again, it is always the case with non-realized humans that the main problem
does truly center in the mind, and as one Norwegian writer explains it, that
movement from “here” to “there” allows people like Mary to go mentally to “a
place where one can entrench oneself anew.”
(Spiritual Giants do the same as Mary. They retreat from the realities of the
relative. Seekers who claim to be Fully Realized and abiding as THAT, while
having discounted the Is-ness completely, do the same as Mary. And they are as
unaware of what they are doing as Mary is.
The difference
between the actually realized vs. the not-actually realized is that those who
claim that they are abiding only as THAT - instead of overlaying that reality
on the relative - are “entrenching” themselves there rather than engaging fully
and sanely and logically in the relative even while functioning as “the
Original Nature of Awareness.”)
Where once Mary had sought - earnestly sought - a sense of lightness, now she
really did begin to experience a sensation of floating along, but not in the
fashion of a leaf on the surface of moving water that simply goes with the
flow.
No, her sense of floating was a result of being out of touch, and not just out
of touch with Reality but out of touch with reality, that is, with what was
happening during the relative existence. (Again, Spiritual Giants do the same
as Mary; those who now claim to be only THAT do exactly the same as
Mary.)
So this morning, like every morning for the last four decades or so, an
attendant entered Mary's room and helped her rise from her bed. The attendant
helped her bathe or shower or take a sponge bath, after which the attendant
helped Mary dress. Then Mary was marched to a hallway and stood in the queue
that leads to a Dutch door and a pharmacy. All the while, Mary did not speak a
single word.
There, the attendant raised Mary's arm and allowed the woman dispensing legal
drugs to scan Mary's barcode information from her plastic bracelet and into the
computer system. Mary was watched closely to be sure that she actually
swallowed her meds. Then, she was led to the dining hall in the hospital.
There she was seated, and the attendant slid her barcode bracelet from her too-thin
wrist and walked the serving line for Mary, gathering this and that breakfast
food and placing it on a tray and then allowing Mary's barcode to be scanned at
the end of the line.
Afterwards, Mary's tray was taken to the long table where she and her fellows
were seated and she was fed a few bites of food. She might have taken a sip of
water or milk through a straw, but more often a small glass is held to her lips
until she gives up her resistance and spreads open her lips and take a few
drops of liquid.
Then, Mary rose with some assistance and walked with some assistance to one of
the casements that allows her to look out on a not-especially-pretty section of
New York City that can be seen from the upper floor window of the hospital.
A chair
was slide over near her so she can sit if she so chooses. But she never so
chooses. At this very moment, Mary is standing at that window and looking out,
and that will continue until an attendant comes to her fifteen minutes before
lunch is to be served.
So far, Mary's case might seem extreme to some visitors reading this post, and
while there will be no argument here about that, the fact is that her state is
not rare on planet earth. It is the typical human condition among the
non-Realized around the globe.
The only difference is that the system found Mary. Unlike Mary, most of the
billions who are also sleepwalking through life and who are also insane to one
degree or another are nevertheless roaming about freely because they have not
been found out.
They are
almost as catatonic and almost as dissociated as Mary in their own non-realized,
Ultimately Sick way, but they have not been entered into the system.
A few might find The Understanding via non-duality; for those few, sanity might
be reinstated. For some, Advaita cannot provide the Ultimate Medicine now, but
they might be ready for that treatment at some point in the future. But for
most, no. Their condition will remain as it is, or worsen.
And they are the ones included in the hundreds of sets of “ten million” that
Maharaj referred to who will never realize and who will remain in ignorance or
will remain insane.
They will walk about in their sleep but will appear to be awake. They will
strut across the stage of “The Theatre of the Lie” and will play the roles that
they have been assigned or that they have assumed.
And,
like Mary, they will not have the slightest clue that they are totally out of
touch with reality and Reality.
As for Mary, more on her in coming posts.
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.
