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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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.
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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
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); 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 sixty-two different nations have made contact here; therefore,
the invitation again is to see what ceremonies are being used in those
sixty-one other cultures to block freedom and peace and sanity 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 seven of the steps
that 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.
Again, one dictionary defines freedom as the absence of ceremony and the
ability to live naturally.
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.”
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");
"Consciousness / Awareness: The Nature of Reality Beyond SELF-Realization (Peace Every Day When Abiding As the Absolute)";
"From the Absolute to the Nothingness";
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“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.
