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.
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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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IF ONLY THREE HOURS OF MANIFESTATION REMAIN: The “Final” Talks of Floyd
RELIGION / SPIRITUALITY: Try It, But Don’t Buy It, Part Two
“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.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
To review, the point was offered in the previous chapter that much of the myth-and-superstition-based-nonsense that the masses believed in ancient days of fictional lore and widespread ignorance has fallen by the wayside;
however,
that is not the case when it comes to the myth-and-superstition-based-dogma
that continues to be shared via the religions that now exist around the globe -
all of which are merely modern versions of the ancient pagan religions that
were the product of the universally-ignorant masses who lived thousands of
years ago.
(Curious, is it not, that billions of persons on the planet now live their
lives via the dictates of ignorant men who lived thousands of years ago, who
understood nothing factual, who plagiarized the content of the dogma of pagan
religions, and who claimed that they were sharing their own “inspired words
that were received when they heard god speaking to them” - sometimes from
within a burning bush - when they were really just repeating the myth-based
tales that had been circulated for hundreds of years by their pagan
predecessors?)
Gone nowadays - it was noted - is the belief in Zeus and his troop of gods and
goddesses as well as his Roman counterpart Jupiter and his fellow fictional
deities. Yet the point was also made that the most outrageous legends and the
silliest fables (as well as symbolic parables and stories that are still taken
as fact) are being perpetuated by the “unquestioning faithful,” many of whom
are willing to die to defend their religion-and-spiritually-based falsehoods
and myths and superstitions.
Two more key points are now offered for consideration:
1. While hundreds and thousands of ancient, fallacious fabrications have gone
the way of the dinosaurs, religion-and-spiritually-based prevarications that
were dreamed up 2000 to 5000 years ago have survived all efforts by the
Realized to shine the dissolving light of wisdom onto widely-accepted deceits
and deceptions and distortions;
and
2. it is boggling to see how supposedly religious and / or spiritual venues
have so effectively institutionalized mythology and now disseminate ancient
non-truths that are readily and unquestioningly accepted as “The Truth.” The
result?
A decade-and-a-half ago, 97% of the people the people on planet earth claimed
to be affiliated with one religion or another, most of whom were members of one
of “the three religions of Abraham.”
One
recent study reports that now, 84% are claiming to be members of one of the
three major sky cults that are rooted in the words of Abraham (via Moses)
accept the religious-and-spiritually-based programming and conditioning that is
propagated via the beliefs that those sky cults hold sacred, as another 4
billion on the planet claim to be attached to the teachings of their religious
and / or spiritual leaders.
Again, the third of four steps from identification with the false “i” / false “i’s”
to an understanding of the Absolute is the religious / spiritual step. Along
the way - along the “path” - most will have to try one or the other or both.
The invitation here is this: try either or both, but do not buy into . . .
a. the belief that what is being taught in religious and / or spiritual venues is
truth
and do not buy into . . .
b. the belief that what either of those offers has anything to do with the
understanding that awaits at the actual end of the “path” to realization.
To believe that either of those can provide the truth and the Understanding is
to be trapped in the darkness of a relative existence that will be conducted
under the influence of the two venues which have generated more dualistic concepts
and ideas and beliefs than any other sources in the history of humanity.
ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
All human suffering is rooted in not living naturally, and all suffering persons (i.e., the non-realized) are living unnaturally or supernaturally. Those living unnaturally can be recognized by their self-destructive behaviors.
Those living supernaturally can be recognized by their magical thinking, by their belief in modernized versions of ancient gods, by their acceptance of ancient myths and superstitions as fact, by their disdain for scientific evidence, and by their belief in non-factual explanations for naturally-occurring events.
Unnatural living and supernatural living are both tiresome and exhausting, but natural living is easy.
The pointers here invite you to question everything. Faith in dogma requires that you question nothing. The “journey” only begins when questioning begins. The “journey” only continues if questioning continues.
Pray all the prayers that you think you need to pray; knell, bend over, stoop, or lie prostrate as much as you think you need to kneel, bend over, stoop, or lie prostrate; read all the “holy” books that you think you need to read;
visit all the “sacred” sites or “sacred” men that you think you need to visit; chant or hum every chant or hum you think you need to chant or hum; ring every bell you think you need to ring; and burn every stick of incense that you think you need to burn.
But when you are done with all of that, realize that you - and all persons who are fixated in a stage and are playing their religious or spiritual roles - are mistaking the dawn for the noon.
Realize that praying and knelling and bending over and stooping and lying prostrate and reading and visiting and chanting and humming and ringing and burning (and every other external thing you try to use to be more religious and / or spiritual or to try to demonstrate how religious and / or spiritual you are) will actually block you from finding the truth which can only be found within after certain pointers are taken into quiet and solitary consideration.
With the Ultimate Sickness being so widespread, persons must either find an effective version of the Ultimate Medicine or be doomed to adopt “their” ideology instead, and both the historical and current evidence show that nothing is more destructive, relatively speaking, than buying into “their” ideology.
It eventually had to be asked, “WHO wants to be a ‘Supreme Self’? Who is making the dualistic claims that ‘I am free of all concepts’ and ‘I am freed from assuming identities’ but then claiming as well that ‘I Am the Supreme’?”
Focusing on the “I Am” is a tool that is only effective after body identification is forfeited. Then, the “I Am” can be used to negate the mind which supports the personality that wants to add words after the “I Am”:
“I am spiritual”; “I am a teacher”; “I am good”; “I Am the Supreme.” The only reason for the pointer to “focus only on the ‘I Am’” is to divert the focus from the false identities that have been assumed, from the talk about “I am so-and-so.”
Once the last three personas (“The Religious One” and “The Spiritual Giant” and “The Super Seeker”) have been cast aside, the use of the “I Am” will also end, right along with the former belief in “The User of Spiritual Tools.”
Supernatural living leads to magical thinking which convinces persons that they can have access to power that will allow them to control.
The master addiction among persons is a desire to control, and the secondary addiction is the addiction to power, which they think will allow them to control. The result among persons is belief in the illusion of power / powers / A Power and an overwhelming desire to control others, to control their surroundings, or to control other nations.
When persons become religious or spiritual, they try to use their power (or superpower) to control their racing, variable, tortuous “minds” or to control the behavior and “minds” of others (all of which is impossible since what they are trying to control is a mirage).
The more they believe they have power, the more they believe they can affect when it rains, can influence who heals, can impact the paths of hurricanes, can control who wins wars and who loses, can control who receives blessings and who is cursed, ad infinitum.
Supernatural beliefs, therefore, are the compost from which spring the illusions of megalomania, egomania, and self-aggrandizement; therefore, while religion and spirituality are not to be avoided, they are to be transitioned. They are but one step along a “path” to the freedom that happens when the understanding of “natural” displaces unnatural and supernatural thinking.
In order to be reincarnated or to have a resurrection and life eternal, you would have to be a body and a mind and you would have to “have” a personality.
Here, the consciousness speaks to you of the no-self, no-Self, no-SELF Reality. All such pointers are just words and concepts that can guide you to an authentic state and then to the no-word silence and the no-concept bliss.
If your decades of religious effort and spiritual practices had resulted in the ability to understand the truth that cannot be stated, to be comfortable in the silence, and to be content in the awareness of wholeness and completion, then you would not be here.
Do not disparage, however, those decades of effort; instead, transition your religious and spiritual roles just as you must transition beyond your belief in all the other roles you’ve played.
Otherwise, you will continue to stand in the subdued light of dawn while insanely believing that you are being bathed in the full light of noon.
Again, in response to, “Floyd, millions of people who believe in Him can’t be wrong!”: Indeed, your notion is accurate; in truth, it is not millions who have been deluded in their beliefs. It is trillions upon trillions.
There are no “different persons” at “different levels” of enlightenment or at different levels of goodness or badness. There are quantities of manifested conscious-energy that are obscured by varying quantities of concepts.
Either way, ultimately, all of the manifested conscious-energy (obscured or not) will unmanifest and merge into the vast pool of conscious-energy which is not manifested, and that’s that / THAT.
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.
