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.
5. Would you like to have us send to someone as a gift from you a copy of any ebook in our inventory? See the offer in purple text at the end of this post.
6. Or, you may purchase a Floyd Henderson Shopify Gift Card here for someone and offer recommendations for the books in Floyd's store which might be of assistance to them.
7. You may click here to visit Floyd's bookstore which offers both digital books and paperback books which deal with non-duality, non-duality-based fictional adventures, recovery, financial sanity, financial planning, and more.
SEEKING: WHY, WHAT AND HOW?
To review for those that are still inclined seek:
1. Seek to abide as all life-forms on the planet abide except for humans: naturally, not unnaturally and not supernaturally.
2. Seek not to find all that you supposedly are; it is enough to find who / what you are not. (Maharaj)
3. Seek to understand how you were programmed, conditioned, domesticated, acculturated, indoctrinated, and brainwashed resulting in you and all humans at some point ending up with no ability to use logic and reason but instead accepting anything from any authority figure as truth without questioning and based on blind faith alone.
4. Relatedly, seek to comprehend how phony personality identities subconsciously determine and control your every thoughts, words, and deeds, thereby eliminating the ability to make conscious choices.
5. Seek to find the real source of the Ultimate Sickness and then seek the effective version of the Ultimate Medicine which can treat the Sickness.
More on the MENTAL ILLNESS view: “There are many mental disorders, and professionals identify one of them as “the Addictive Personality Disorder.”
That disorder is as widespread as the Ultimate Sickness itself because all humans develop a primary addiction to control and a secondary addiction to power / Power, based in their desire to be able to control. All other addictions develop after those two basic ones.
Both the Addictive Personality Disorder and the Ultimate Sickness are mind and personality disorders. In severe cases, both usually require treatment by trained professionals or by those that have some mastery and understanding of what causes - and can sometimes address - psychological problems.
What the statistical findings of scientific research into the various methods being used to try to treat the Addictive Personality Disorder have shown is this: what does not work is the treatment offered by novices and by “over-night therapists” who join organizations that
(1) allow them to seek help on the first day they enter and then
(2) allow them to begin giving advice, offering treatment, offering help, and sharing their experiences the very next day to other sick people who come in seeking help.
It is now understood by trained professionals and by those with an understanding of the disorder that there is a prerequisite for the Addictive Personality Disorder to develop. The prerequisite is the experiencing of - and the continued suffering from and the lingering effects of - trauma.
Trauma? Really? Not a “dark soul”? No. Not a “spiritual malady” which can be treated by untrained, unqualified amateurs? No. A mental illness? Yes, and a mental illness that can be treated sometimes by trained professionals.
In a few cases, certain mind-based sickness can be treated by someone such as Maharaj after he came to understand that those suffering from the Ultimate Sickness needed to be freed from all of the distortions and delusions and insanity that come when identified with personas which have highly influential fears and desires and which have the ability to control persons’ thoughts and words and actions, subconsciously.
Near here, in Houston, Texas in the 1980’s and 1990’s, it was seen that a group became active, a group which is still functioning today all across the U.S. and in many other countries: they called themselves “Pray-Away-the-Gay Christians.”
My “EX” was one of the founding members of the North Houston group, and anything I said that disparaged their efforts moved her one step closer toward divorce, especially after the conversation recounted below:
Upon having to deal with a person who helped organize that group and who became obsessively active in “witnessing to gays” and who “confronted gays and told them that they are sinning” and telling them that “God was highly angry with them” and who handed out brochures to announce the details of the next “Pray Away the Gay” service in local churches and auditoriums, this question was asked of her:
F.: “You and I are obviously heterosexual, right?”
She: “Of course.”
F.: “So let me ask you. Have you ever been hit on - you know, 'approached' - by a lesbian who was attracted to you?”
She: “Several over the years, actually.”
F.: “So suppose one of those lesbians also happened to be religious.”
She: “Impossible!”
F.: “Then let’s just pretend for a moment. Pretending should definitely be easy enough. And suppose that, in order to fulfill her desires to be in a sexual relationship with you, she began trying to 'pray away your straightness.'
“Do you think there is any way at all that her prayers could have been answered and that they would alter your natural attraction to men and could cause you to suddenly become gay instead of straight?”
She: [After a long, narrow-eyed, hateful glare / stare down effort] “You have obviously fallen under the influence of Satan and you are obviously stupid too because you missed the key point in what you just said - my attraction to men is natural. A lesbian’s attraction to me is unnatural.”
F.: “Actually, homosexual behaviors occur in every species. There are eleven penguins in a zoo in New York that regularly engage in homosexual activities but engage in no heterosexual activities at all.”
Next, when did you choose to be “straight’?” Let me answer, please. Never. And when did gays choose to be gay? Never. The limbic brain - which often unconsciously impacts both behavioral and emotional responses in humans - does what it does; thus, attractions are attractions, and the limbic brain cannot be permanently flipped 180-degrees by any conscious effort or desire to do so.
End of conversation. Another nail in the coffin of that “relationship,” its heterosexual foundation notwithstanding. Another thing “lost” via my realization. Reflecting on that “relationship,” were I of her ilk, I’d say, “Thank God.”
Yet that exchange provided another necessary understand in my journey to realization - to being free of ignorance and insane beliefs. The realization? The only thing dumber that a religious or spiritual or any kind of fanatic is someone (in this case, "floyd") who believed that he could offer points to those fanatics while wrongly supposing that logic and reason can be used effectively when discussing anything with them.
But the key points are these:
Persons are trying to pray away the gay, but the gay is not going away
just as
persons are still trying to pray away droughts but the droughts are not going away
and just as
persons are praying to get every other kind of selfish thing that their ego-states / personalities desire or are praying to avoid every kind of selfish thing that their ego-states / personalities want to avoid, but are having little consistent success with either.
Many have tried to pray away “unchecked carnal behavior” and people's "germ of wildness" which they are appalled by in this excessively-puritanical nation. How much success have they had? None. Urges are urges and attractions and attractions and the limbic brain has neither an on / off button nor any toggle switches which can reverse urges and attractions.
A few years back, Governor Rick Perry of Texas tried on many occasions to pray away the drought, inspiring 15,000 to join him in a football stadium at one of his prayer meetings to do just that. The result: the drought continued for months after his religious prayer services.
(You might say, “How ignorant!” You bet. You might point out that “even the most ignorant persons on the planet know that you must accompany a pray-for-rain service with the killing of a virgin and the consuming of her body and blood if you are going to commune with, and really please, an angry Rain God.”)
To continue with the discussion of the trauma / addiction linkage:
In fact, many mental illnesses - not just the Addictive Personality - are rooted in trauma, and both the science of psychology and the science of therapeutic methods have advanced to the point that many professionally-trained counselors are highly competent at addressing unresolved trauma and unprocessed memories.
The best trained and most effective are sometimes bringing relief which, in turn, brings to an end many of the self-destructive tendencies which persons experience during the relative existence.
Moreover, no trained preachers, priests, etc. and no religious lay leaders and no untrained “spiritual persons” have the slightest clue about how to effectively address the Addictive Personality Disorder.
Got a water leak at your house or a stopped-up commode? Call a plumber. Got the Addictive Personality Disorder? Do not call a plumber. And do not call a carpenter, a realtor, a teacher, a salesman, a contractor, a builder, a waiter or waitress, a broker, nor a doctor specializing in something other than the Addictive Personality Disorder.
Do not call a doctor / psychiatrist who will spend fifteen minutes with you and prescribe 5-14 drugs for you to use as a substitute cocktail; instead, call a trained and experienced mental healthcare professional. (Just a suggestion.)
In the eBook entitled “Instability / Insanity: What the Advaita Teachings Can (and Cannot) Address,” it is made clear that the non-dual understanding in many cases can only be a part of that which can address the serious levels of psychic disintegration which the masses are now suffering.
Maharaj admitted that only a few would realize (that is, be freed from ignorance and insanity) via his sharing of non-dual pointers;
Eventually he would abandon not only the use of a religious approach but would also abandon the use of a spiritual approach in his efforts to address the Ultimate Sickness.
He eventually turned to the use of a psychological approach which can address with some sufferers the root cause of the Ultimate Sickness:
namely, the content of the mind, which is a result of nonsensical programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination as well as a result of the hidden fears and desires of assigned or / and assumed false personality identifications which are also stored in the mind.
He came to see that the main problem of humankind is centered in the mind, not in having too little religion or having too little spirituality. Whether one seeks help professionally or gives non-duality pointers a try, Maharaj made clear that the solution to most of the problems of humanity all around the globe calls for a treatment of persons’ mental condition, not the condition of a dreamed up “soul” or “spirit.”
He tried the latter and it did not work. Even as he continued to offer the non-dual teachings, he admitted that only a few would be restored to their original state of pure, unblocked consciousness and only a few would recover their sanity and be freed from ignorance for the remainder of the manifestation. His attitude:
Sure. Come on up the stairs and have a seat. Move in closer together - the available space is limited. Then, see if the psychology-based pointers offered here might bring some relief to your mind-and-personality-controlled existence. If not, then seek elsewhere for the proper treatment for your mental illness.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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For NON-DUALITY AUDIENCES
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");
"Consciousness / Awareness: The Nature of Reality Beyond SELF-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding As the Absolute)";
"From the Absolute to the Nothingness";
and
"The Final Understanding."
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This anthology (438 pages) contains the six books that make up what has been called The Blissful Abidance Series for those seeking to live blissfully and happily for the remainder of the manifestation, including:
“What BLISS is and what BLISS is not”
“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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“When REALITY Is Overlaid on the RELATIVE.”
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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.
