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.
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU MIGHT BE AFRAID OF FREEDOM AND TOTAL INDEPENDENCE?
“ . . . You are
afraid of freedom!”
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
DEFINING FREEDOM - CONVENTIONAL SOURCES
(continued)
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
(continued)
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:
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.
Tomorrow we’ll consider the headlines that apply to those “local” or “personal” wars.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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Links for ordering are below with
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when it come to fulfilling orders for
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as opposed to delivering digital books.
[NOTE: Wherever you live, you can search for the books below by title with booksellers in your country. With 40,000+ retailers distributing my paperback books, you may order from U.S. stores or you may find someone nearer to you.]
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."
from BARNES AND NOBLE by clicking here
or (sometimes less efficiently nowadays in terms of paperback delivery)
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”
and
“When REALITY Is Overlaid on the RELATIVE.”
Order a PAPERBACK copy of The Blissful Abidance Series
from Amazon by clicking here.
SEND A GIFT BOOK TO SOMEONE
(1) 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.
Or,
(2) To make an arrangement for us to send in your name as a gift from you any of our books to someone you choose:
(a) Visit www.floydhenderson.com.
(b) Purchase the ebook you’d like to send.
(c) Contact us using the email below, tell us which ebook you just purchased, and provide the name and email address of the person you want to send the ebook to. (They will never be contacted again or solicited for any reason.)
Send your information to:
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.
If you prefer PAPERBACK copies
(collected in two anthologies).
Links for ordering are below with
BARNES and NOBLE presently providing better service
than AMAZON
when it come to fulfilling orders for
paperback and hardcover books
as opposed to delivering digital books.
[NOTE: Wherever you live, you can search for the books below by title with booksellers in your country. With 40,000+ retailers distributing my paperback books, you may order from U.S. stores or you may find someone nearer to you.]
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."
from BARNES AND NOBLE by clicking here
or (sometimes less efficiently nowadays in terms of paperback delivery)
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”
and
“When REALITY Is Overlaid on the RELATIVE.”
Order a PAPERBACK copy of The Blissful Abidance Series
from Amazon by clicking here.
SEND A GIFT BOOK TO SOMEONE
(1) 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.
Or,
(2) To make an arrangement for us to send in your name as a gift from you any of our books to someone you choose:
(a) Visit www.floydhenderson.com.
(b) Purchase the ebook you’d like to send.
(c) Contact us using the email below, tell us which ebook you just purchased, and provide the name and email address of the person you want to send the ebook to. (They will never be contacted again or solicited for any reason.)
Send your information to:
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.
