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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MISTAKES OFTEN MADE BY SEEKERS
MISTAKING THINGS DONE WHILE UNCONSCIOUS AS BEING
CONSCIOUS CHOICES
From a site visitor: [Received
years ago] Today you said history shows religion leads to separation and
judging and even killing. That’s not true. For me, my religion leads to peace
and power. I stay in conscious contact with Him with prayer all day, every day,
and He empowers me and gives me guidance and peace so I can be happy for as
long as by His grace I am allowed to live. I hope you can find your way to Him
so that you can have peace in this life and joy forever. Signed, John (as in
3:16)--A Child and Agent of God
F.: It is suspected, John, that the “cutting the roast in half” example from
yesterday was not especially relevant to you; therefore, a second example with
be provided to show that, while you think you’re making conscious choices
around your religious practices, you really don’t have a clue about what you’re
doing or why you’re doing it. Your “Lord’s Supper” or “Holy Communion Service”
will serve as an example.
While you probably believe that the roots of that ceremony go back to one
particular meal 2000 years ago, the origin really goes back much farther.
And
while you believe that ceremony goes back to one special meal on the night
before a crucifixion, the body-blood ceremony was a common ritual being
practiced for thousands of years before Christ, was being practiced by many in
Christ’s day, and was being practiced by many others in various cultures.
And while you likely believe that the ceremony involved the symbolic
consumption of body and blood, it really involved the literal consumption of
body and blood throughout most of its history. Here’s the true origin of one of
the key elements of your “worship service” which is discussed in greater detail
in SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (Recovering What Religions Lost):
The first communion centered on a woman - not on a male savior. A group of
starving people faced death; their crops needed rain. They needed “saving.”
A self-appointed medicine
man/priest, claiming that he had been spoken to directly by an angry God who
was withholding rain, reported to the crowd that the male god could be appeased
if only he could have a virgin.
So the priest, being the self-appointed rep of god on earth, would be the one
to have her. He called for volunteers, but no females stepped forward.
Several fathers did step
forward, however, more than willing to make a sacrifice to god for the good of
all, and especially their own good since the priest asked neither for a
son-warrior nor for a son-worker, but only for one of the many daughters,
considered culture-wide to be of far lesser value than males.
Therefore it came to pass that many girls found themselves being pushed forward
by their fathers. The priest chose one, then took her into the temple and had
his way with her, brought her sobbing body out front, placed it on a make-shift
stone altar, and cut from her the beating heart within.
He then ate the body and drank the blood and then passed her heart among the crowd, inviting all to do the same. For centuries after that, worship services had three elements used by people trying to feel “At One” with god and neighbors: sexual acts, vampirism, and cannibalism.
Eventually, most religions evolved into talking about being at one with god and neighbors. Now, some drink pretend-blood and eat pretend-body during their communion services.
Other Christians believe
that, after the priest performs his act of transubstantiation, they are
drinking real blood and eating real body, just as the ancients did in their
original ceremony.
So there you are, John. Those are the roots of the “Communion Service” or “Lord’s
Supper” that you still re-enact to this day. Review what happened then
to understand what you are actually doing today: a man who chose to “enter into
the ministry” informed people that . . .
1. there is a god in another world that is controlling things in this world,
right down to when and where it rains . . . or not;
2. the priest told his followers that god could get angry at times (revealing
that god cannot control his emotions and that he is co-dependent since the way
he feels depends on others, on humans);
3. the priest also told the people that god wants sacrifices made to him, that
he wants to be worshipped, and that he wants women - and eventually all persons
- to dedicate themselves to him, including “body and heart and mind and soul.”
(That description would likely fit any woman’s idea of the “nightmare husband
from hell,” but it is the very concept of the god that is worshipped by six
billion people on the planet today);
4. then the self-appointed priest told people that god wanted someone killed,
and that he wanted people to have a worship service, and during that service he
wanted people to eat the body and to drink the blood of the person killed.
Remember the words of Maharaj in this regard:
First of all you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray to that God for something good to happen to you.
And, John, the masses back then unquestioningly believed every word of the fiction that was dreamed up by their religious/spiritual leader, just as you're doing today. More significantly, note that the worshipers did not have faith in god at all.
Instead, just as today, they had faith in a priest who dreamed up some lethal nonsense and shared it with a very gullible audience. And most today are just as gullible, just as misguided, and just as deluded and self-deluding as that audience thousands of years ago. Why?
Because even today, religious
and spiritual persons profess to have “faith in god” but really have faith in
the humans who claim that they're sharing religious and spiritual knowledge
with people.
When a leader says he “talked to God and God told him to bomb another nation”
and 50% of the population believes that, they are not showing faith in god but
are showing faith in that man.
When an imam says that he talked to god and god wants his followers to blow up themselves and others and they believe him, those followers are not showing faith in god but are showing faith in that man.
And when a rabbi says that god
flooded the entire planet and killed every human, save the members of one
family, they are not showing faith in that killer god but in the man who
repeated that ancient pagan tale in what they take to be a “holy text.”
And now thousands of years later, John, you are engaging in the same bloody “sacrament,”
thinking that you’re participating in a ceremony that is making you “closer to
God” while actually re-enacting a brutal, sadistic ritual that was dreamed up
by a sociopath / priest and that was blindly participated in by unquestioning
persons of “faith” who were led to believe that there was a god who wants
people to “make a sacrifice” (or, later, “give a tithe”).
And amazingly, John, when you were likely told as a child at church to “be
quiet and drink your blood and eat that body,” the insanity of that instruction
did not shock either you or your parents who were guiding you through that
process.
Such is the blindness - and numbness - that results from programming and
conditioning, and such is the reason that the members of the three religions of
Abraham are fixated with blood:
the Jews tell their tales of the blood of the lamb and the blood smeared over
the doors during Passover and the Nile turning into a river of blood;
millions of Christians display Christ bleeding from the head, from the side, from the feet and from the hands and claim they are drinking his blood regularly; and Muslim men beat themselves with chains and spikes in order to bleed on their “holy” days.
Is it any wonder that members
of those three groups are responsible for more blood-letting nowadays than any
other source? Blood is at the very core of the religious programming that
influences them more than any other beliefs they have.
Again, religion can serve as a step along the path to Realization, but
if that stage is not transitioned, it will trap persons in systems of beliefs
that can drive them to re-enact homicidal rituals that included elements of
cannibalism and vampirism;
it can inspire the invasion of lands and can lead to the decimation of 150,000,000 indigenous peoples in a “Manifest Destiny”-driven effort to establish “a Christian nation that will serve and honor God”;
it can inspire persons to
strap on bomb vests and blow up others who have different religious or
sectarian beliefs; and it can inspire a leader to claim that he heard a voice
telling him to drop bombs on another nation.
So it must now be asked, John: you wrote that if persons find the way to that
god of yours, then they can have “peace in this life and joy forever.”
The evidence to the contrary is extensive. What fact-based evidence can you present about religion leading to peace? On the “journey,” religious and spiritual knowledge was sought and attained but brought no peace or joy.
Peace and joy (or contentment) came when the non-dual understanding led to freedom from accumulating religious and spiritual knowledge (also referred to as, “learned ignorance”) and when de-accumulating in all ways took place, including the discarding of religious personas and spiritual personas and finally being free of all false, assumed roles.
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");
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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.
