Monday, February 06, 2023

DANCING LIGHTLY

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[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."

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DANCING LIGHTLY

“And heavy is the tread of the living, but the dead returning lightly dance.”

(Edward Thomas)

LIGHTNESS AND LAUGHTER

Yesterday’s post ended with this:

In the movie “Zorba the Greek,” dancing lightly is featured and provides another example of the central message in this series. More on that tomorrow.

In that movie, the lead character Alexis Zorba is what some would call “a non-attached loner,” described in the novel on which the movie was based as “a living heart, a large voracious mouth, a great brute soul, not yet severed from mother earth” (a.k.a., nisarga or “natural”).

Zorba, with his joyous, spontaneous manner and self-abandoned happiness that finds expression through his dancing (even sans “Partner”), provides a sharp contrast to his rigid, uptight boss who knows no joy.

Exposed to Zorba’s zest, elements of the boss’s rigidity begin to fade even as “losses” happen. By the end, the boss’s severity collapses entirely after extended exposure to Zorba’s joyous nature. He finally asks Zorba, “Teach me to dance, will you?”

In the final scene, sometimes Zorba dances with a “partner” and sometimes he dances without. In the case with the “ex-husband” above, his “mind” cannot consider such a possibility as continuing to enjoy the dance even without a partner.

Either way with Zorba, the joy is there. With a “partner” or without, happiness happens. In the case of that speck called “zorba” - ”not yet severed from” the natural - Wisdom Is, Joy Is, Happiness Is, Love Is.

The one assuming the role of “The Ex-Husband” was invited to the dance via these teachings. It is I - the Pure Consciousness - that extends the invitation to the dance.

He was told, “You danced with what you took to be a ‘partner.’ Now, during this period when you mistakenly believe that you are ‘alone,’ you are invited to continue the dance. Merely because the one you took to be ‘Your Partner’ has chosen to dance with you no more is no reason at all for you to stop the dance. So dance.

“If you would truly realize, you will come to understand that I can be your Zorba. I can teach you to dance even without ‘The Partner,’ and by enjoying the dance even without a ‘partner,’ you will find that you have never been ‘alone,’ that you cannot be ‘alone,’ that you shall never be ‘separated’ or ‘alone,’ and that the dance can go on . . . with joy.

“The concepts of ‘with’ or ‘without’ be damned. You can find that happiness and peace can manifest NOW and that freedom and joy can manifest whether dancing with a ‘partner’ or not. Just come to the dance.

“Then, you can know that you are Zorba and that even without a relative ‘partner,’ the dance can go on … with spontaneity, with joy, with happiness, with peace, with freedom. Dance, won’t you?”

LEAVING THE DANCE

So someone might see me ask a person to leave satsang or an non-duality seminar, as happened a few years ago. Less than five minutes into what was to be a fifty-five-minute-one-on-one session, the session was ended because the person sitting opposite me went into an anger-based, resentful rant about two co-workers.

As he reported the details regarding the ways that other persons had offended him, the volume of the voice and the physical twisting and shifting increased as the original emotional reaction was re-sent through the body and mind of the man via this re-telling of his tales.

That re-sending of the original effects of the supposed offenses drove him to re-experience and even magnify the original reactions via the re-telling. Consider the way that re-sending supported and renewed “resentment” by understanding the roots of the words involved:

the French sentire = “to feel” and the French resentir = “to feel strongly” and / or “to feel bitter or indignant about.” Resentment was supported and amplified by re-sending the effects throughout a body-mind-personality triad.

The man was interrupted and was informed that the session would have to end. It was explained that, as in the case of oil and water, this speck abides as THAT, so one abiding in his fashion (with such intensity and anger and histrionics that were being used to reinforce his sense of separation and better-than-ness) cannot be engaged in the dance of unicity.

Recall the earlier pointer: Maharaj taught that “what is Real can never combine with the unreal.”

FIXATING IN THE LIGHTNESS

“Dance is lightness in motion, but The Light must precede the lightness.”

(Floyd Henderson)

The realized perceive what is called “the world” - as well as all happenings that happen during the relative existence - by way of the luminosity of pure understanding; the non-realized see only what is reflected in a dim and flickering light.

Because the non-realized must, regretfully, suffer the slings and arrows of the ever-changing, unstable existence which they take to be the real, they can become attached to the relief and exhilaration of seeing “The Long-Awaited White Knight.”

They watch him arriving in his shining armor, perched high on his white horse and promising to put to an end the loneliness of being single or promising to bring to an end the vicissitudes of single parenting;

Yet when the visor is reaised, they see that it is actually “The Dark Knight of Unimaginable Suffering” underneath, thus forcing “The Rescued One” to experience the misery brought on as a result of finding out that another deception has been played out in consciousness;

or they can become attached to the happiness of paying off a car note, only to see the mortgage note increase on the house and then attach to that disappointment;

or they can become attached to the happiness of seeing a partner’s medical condition cured, only to learn that their child has an incurable disease and attaching to that misery;

or they can attach to the joy of a couple working for decades and finally retiring but then shortly afterwards discovering that greedy and extremely wealthy people have stolen 50% of the assets in their retirement fund, forcing both to begin seeking employment again.

Tossed into that mix are the yearly or monthly (and, eventually, daily) fluctuations of relationships, shifting from perfect at one point to just okay at another to finally being perceived as a total disaster.

Maharaj: “The mind that projects the world colours it its own way. When you meet a man, he is a stranger. When you marry him, he becomes your own self. When you quarrel, he becomes your enemy. It is your mind’s attitude that determines what he is to you.”

Of course his point was that the scenario above has nothing to do with Real Love. He said:

Maharaj: “Love is not selective; desire is selective. In Love, there are no strangers.”

It is those fluctuations of the “mind” which shift one’s view of another from “perfect” to “just okay” to “disastrous,” the type of fluctuations that were adumbrated in the sequence that Maharaj used to describe the typical movement in relationships:

He noted the all-too-frequent movement of going from stranger to acquaintance to friend to lover to fiancé / fiancée to spouse to wonderful spouse to not so wonderful spouse to horrible spouse to enemy to mortal enemy.

To be continued.

Please enter into the silence of contemplation.

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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.

THE EXPLANATION


If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.

Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of god in the past was of a weak god, an absentee god, A Santa Claus-type god, a mean, punishing, vindictive god, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring god whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."

The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a god that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").

Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring god,' any supposed god that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'god' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.

"That is, a non-narcissistic their god / their goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'god' and focus on the 'god as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you." 

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"

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and 


"Heaven and earth shall fade away."

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and 


"Heaven and hell are not geographic places

but are states of mind, nothing more than

concepts dreamed up by men."

--Pope John Paul II 

"There is no hell."

--Pope Francis, the current pope

in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,

a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record

teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.

[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.

And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?

Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?

The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit charge by the Bank); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)

With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.

The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.] 

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