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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DANCING LIGHTLY
“And
heavy is the tread of the living, but the dead returning lightly dance.”
(Edward Thomas)
“The
desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
Not to be born is the best for man.
The second best is a formal order.
The dance's pattern; dance while you can.
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy.
The tune is catching and will not stop.
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters.
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.”
W.H. Auden
YOUR ORIGINAL NATURE AND LIGHTNESS
(Continued)
The fear-mongering and desire-driven personas (not any relative conditions which are always guaranteed to be temporary) which are the enemies of lightness.
They will forever bring to the forefront the notions of choice - encouraging you to “decide whether to chose left or right; chose him or her; chose this course or that (even if all of the choices are senseless).
Just
choose something . . . anything . . . any port in this storm. But above all, do
not just stand there and witness what is happening without taking drastic,
panic-inspired action. Ignore the captain that is blowing the still and act.”
In the process, the always-self-destructive voices of the self / selves will
eliminate any chance to enjoy the ease and sanity of spontaneous living. The
antidote to feeling the stress of needing to choose, needing to make
attachments, needing to act, and needing, period?
1. Understanding this pointer offered to beginners by Maharaj: “All you need is
a quiet mind.”
2. Understanding this pointer offered to seekers that are farther along the “path”:
“There is no such thing as peace of mind; there is only peace if you are out of
your mind.” Leave the imaginary world of the mind and come home . . . come back
to Your Original Nature, to the only “place” where stability exists.
3. Returning to the center of the “path” now in order to reach that calm state
where you are abiding as Your original nature.
4. Returning to a state of non-action, which can only happen when there is
freedom from the pull of personality-driven desires and freedom from the push
of personality-driven fears.
5. Immersing yourself in the kind of spontaneity that can only happen when
witnessing prevails. The deer make no choices. They move about slowly, they
take only as much as is truly needed with no sense that “more” would provide
them something that is “missing,” and they merely witness humanity’s
surrounding strum und drang.
They never “think” that they must attach to that insane, anxiety-provoking,
depression-producing train of events.
You are invited to consider the truth behind these sharings from a speck called
“Maharaj”:
Questioner: “I am restless. How can I gain peace?”
Maharaj: “For what do you need peace?”
Questioner: “To be happy.”
Maharaj: “Are you not happy now?”
Questioner: “No, I am not.”
Maharaj: “What makes you unhappy?”
Questioner: “I have what I don’t want, and want what I don’t have.”
Maharaj: “Why don’t you invert it: want what you have and care not for what you
don’t have?”
Questioner: “I want what is pleasant and don’t want what is painful.”
Maharaj: “How do you know what is pleasant and what is not?”
Questioner: “From past experience, of course.”
Maharaj: “Guided by memory you have been pursuing the pleasant and shunning the
unpleasant. Have you succeeded?
Questioner: “No, I have not. The pleasant does not last. Pain sets in again.”
Maharaj: “Which pain?”
Questioner: “The desire for pleasure, the fear of pain, both are states of
distress. Is there a state of unalloyed pleasure?”
Maharaj: “Every pleasure, physical or mental, needs an instrument. Both the
physical and mental instruments are material, they get tired and worn out. The
pleasure they yield is necessarily limited in intensity and duration. Pain is
the background of all your pleasures. You want them because you suffer. On the
other hand, the very search for pleasure is the cause of pain. It is a vicious
circle.”
What about you? Have you succeeded? After years of taking action and
fluctuating between periods of happiness and unhappiness and creating chaos and
generating internal disharmony and external disharmony and making hundreds of
thousands of decisions to “Try this - okay, now try that - okay, give this a
shot” what is your present condition after all of that?
Have
you succeeded? If you do not see that all of the not-you’s combined have never
truly brought even one real success - one real result that permanently ended
your fears and desires and brought stability - then is it not time to stop?
Is it not time to stop taking action and fluctuating and creating chaos and
generating internal disharmony and external disharmony and making hundreds of
thousands of additional decisions of the type that have always failed to
produce what you desire and which in the end always failed to alleviate the
fears that rob you of peace?
More
often than not, the authentic is relegated to the darkness so early on that
most have no clue at all that there is something other than the chaos generated
by the false selves that mark and mar the relative existence.
If you glimpsed the authentic behind all the façades but have lost sight of that
(THAT) because of the smokescreen of your relative challenges, can you not look
back and see where you left you?
Can you not look back and see the consequences that began to accrue at that point? Do you not miss the stability that was enjoyed during that period of understanding the authenticity vs. the false and then functioning spontaneously as a result of the wisdom which can only be accessed via that contact with truth and authenticity?
Would
you be willing to stop listening to the voices of the false selves long enough
to try to hear the voice of truth and authenticity calling from the shore,
beckoning you back home? That “voice” is the pure, universal consciousness.
That has consistently been the offer here: come home. Follow the “path” in its
exact order to complete the “journey” so that you can come home to your
original nature and stay at home. Relax in the truly loving arms of pure
awareness.
Let pure
awareness wrap its arms around you and hold you. Feel the tension leave. Feel
the anxiety subside. Feel the depression being lifted. Feel the security of
those arms. Feel the relaxation. Feel the lightness return.
Feel that touch of lightness and Oneness and Love. Be still and know that in
those arms, you can witness the storms that roll in and roll out.
Know that the false not-selves can be caught in any of those storms. Know that the authentic alone shall forever provide the platform from which all storms can be witnessed.
Maharaj spoke of the “storm of desires and fears.” If you will find WHO is enticing you into the storm of fears and desires, then you need not ever again be pulled into those relative storms.
Be awake enough to see storms as they approach; stand aside as they come and go; do not attach to ships that are already in their own storm; and allow the peace to come and bring with it the everlasting sense of lightness that you deserve.
Finally, this:
As a youth, summers and
all school holidays were spent in the woods of east Texas with that Cherokee
Grandmother whose every word was a link in the long chain of wisdom she
offered. In past postings, this line from a song of the indigenous peoples - written
and sung by Buddy Red Bow - has been shared:
“Winds of life are blowing across the reservation and I can hear the voice of a
new generation . . . and it's time, yes it's time, to live.”
When the winds of change blow away the blockages that support the illusory,
inauthentic life, only then can that which is called "life" be
relished as the Absolute (and even the Nothingness) are overlaid on the
relative existence and allow authenticity and sanity and logic and reason to
take root.
Your original nature was similar to a cage-free, free-ranging speck of conscious-energy. In that form, it is incapable of knowing or understanding.
If it is caught up into a cycle which allows it to manifest in a confined, physical space (as can happen with acorns, and birds and fish and plants and humans, etc.) then it can come to understand and can can become aware of both itself and awareness.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
[An option: Though much of the vocabulary of the indigenous peoples is the opposite of that used in offering non-dual pointers, Buddy Red Bow’s song is entertaining enough that some might enjoying listening to it in its entirety.]
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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";
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"The Final Understanding."
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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”
and
“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.
