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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A KEY FEAR AMONG THE NON-REALIZED MASSES: THE FEAR OF TOTAL FREEDOM
“ . . . You are afraid of freedom!”
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
While most persons would probably prefer not to be incarcerated, there are plenty of cases where some people desired exactly that:
One man had himself intentionally arrested so he could smuggle drugs in an orifice into a jail and sell them at a much higher prices than he was getting on the streets.
In 2012, a woman in Sacramento, California was arrested for slapping a county deputy outside the county jail so she could be arrested because she wanted to quit smoking and felt a jail term would give her the time to break the habit.
Similarly, a man in Lorain, Ohio claimed he intentionally violated a temporary protection order so he could go back to jail and kick his heroin habit.
Some inmates have admitted that they violated the law in order to be arrested and obtain free health care while locked away.
An unfortunate reality for homeless people is that sometimes, it may seem more appealing to spend the night in jail than on the streets.
That was the case for Lance Brown, a homeless man from Columbus, Georgia, who in 2012 hurled a brick through the town courthouse building and spent nine months in jail awaiting his trial.
In Japan, some people are getting arrested because they are lonely and want the company they can get in jail. “I enjoy my life in prison more. There are always people around, and I don’t feel lonely here,” one female inmate said. “When I got out the second time, I promised that I wouldn’t go back. But when I was out, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic.”
Many might believe that such
cases are rare, but the fact is, there are nearly eight billion humans on the
planet and most of them are choosing to be locked away behind bars. How's that?
As noted, Richard Lovelace said: “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”
What is the prison which billions of persons are locked away in right now and are willingly continuing to remain locked up? The prison is the mind.
John Milton explained: “The mind . . . in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
Again, it is the mind - after having been unnaturally programmed, conditioned, etc. - which is a storehouse of all which imprisons persons. Each belief is a brick used to form the walls. The bars are also made of concepts and ideas and faith and convictions.
If you allow the false beliefs about the consciousness to go, then WHO
(what false identity) could be left to be concerned at all with this
consciousness or what happens with it?
Maharaj, speaking of conceptual consciousness and transcendent consciousness,
said: “This consciousness is dead to me; it is gone. I have transcended that.
So whatever it is, is that other consciousness, that one which is without
concepts.”
Realized fully, there is no duality, neither “I have always invited death to
come” nor “I will always try to prevent death from coming, no matter what I
have to do.”
The deer, abiding naturally, have no such thoughts; the persons freed of the influence of the conceptualizing, fiction-filled mind have no thoughts about anything either, one way or the other. What is, is.
Post-realization, there is a position of neutrality which exists. When complaints were make to my Cherokee grandmother and she was asked about weather extremes and how they seemed not to register with her, she replied as the indigenous people have replied for centuries: “When it is hot, it is hot; when it is cold, it is cold.”
“Poor grandmother,” we whispered. “She has been a fount of wisdom all her
life, but she’s finally lost it.” How little we understood.
As for those transitioning toward realization, games might be played for a time
or not, but if played, there will eventually - if full realization comes - no attachment to outcome.
All
in the relative is finite. WHO wants to ignore that reality? Only he or she who is tied to the personal, the one who is in bondage, the one
who is in slavery, the one who is imprisoned and not inspired to change that
circumstance.
The end might come now, or might be delayed for another ten seconds, or might
be delayed for twenty years. Freed from the bondage and slavery and
imprisonment of body-mind-personality identifications, conceptual time is no
more an issue to the realized than it is to a deer that has become ill, that is
not feeling quite as well today as yesterday.
That deer might “die” in ten months or ten weeks or ten seconds; whatever
period of time is involved, the time will pass without regret . . . without
concern.
So it is among those that are freed from the bondage of self, from the
personal, from things relative. They, as is the case with the deer and all other non-human,
mindless life-forms, are the only ones “living” naturally.
Then, whatever time remains, it can be passed with “no one any longer trying to
impress” and with the assurance that “all the things that seemed to matter at
one time really don’t anymore” and with the ability to simply “sit on a bench in a park and
enjoy a croissant and coffee” and with the ability to “just be still without
any worry or doubt” in one’s head.
Again, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj explained: “ . . . You are afraid of freedom!”
To review: Most will never seek, 97% believing that they have already found, via their organized religion, either
[a] the answers to all questions that can be asked or
[b] a way to explain away their religion’s inability to provide all of the
answers (viz., “He works in mysterious ways”).
Claiming that they have “been made whole and free,” they are actually slaves to
the (often contradictory) content of their supposedly holy texts and to those
persons who claim that they have been “chosen” to teach the lessons of the holy
texts and have been chosen to tell all persons how they should think and talk
and behave and live and, yes, die.
Of the few who do claim that they are seeking freedom, most of them will never
find that because - as with pregnancies - there are no degrees of freedom and
because most are afraid of total freedom.
First, most will not seek total freedom because they are in denial about the
fact that they are imprisoned: “I have a great life”; “I have been blessed by
God - I have a truly blessed life”;
or, “Hey, that’s just the way the world is:
sometimes there’s peace and sometimes there’s war . . . sometimes it’s good and
sometimes it’s bad.”
Secondly, as Maharaj noted, persons do not want to let go of everything, of
every attachment. Specifically, they do not want to let go of their false
identities and the people playing the co-dependent, counterpart identities which
reinforce their belief in the lie that their false identities are real;
they do not want to give up the stroking of their egos; they do not want to
let go of their egotism-based hierarchies on which they have assumed a top spot;
they do not want to let go of the learned ignorance which they were taught
first by parents and then by relatives and friends and schools and by their
cultures in general;
they do not want to let go of the notion that they have all of the answers
or let go of the admiration they gain by sharing their knowledge (a.k.a.,
learned ignorance).
Third, persons do not want to give up their quest for “love,” though the only
version of love they understand is the type that forms dependencies and
co-dependencies and though they are seeking love mainly from those who are
incapable of loving, incapable of understanding the Oneness, and therefore,
incapable of knowing the difference in Real Love and the versions of (false) “love”
that the masses speak of.
Too, the dependency and co-dependency that results from that quest further
blocks any aspiration for total freedom.
Fourth, most persons do not want total freedom because they would have to be
free of their desire for power, both “Unseen” and “seen” (the latter including
money; possessions; men of god who persons think can help them both now and
later;
and, witnessed recently, the doctors they worship, imploring and employing
those persons in the hope that they can prolong the body’s existence, even if
that reaches such insane lengths that the adult-aged body once again operates
like that of a child who cannot control even its most basic bodily functions
while others stand by watching that travesty and talking in their sleep,
saying, “Life is precious”).
Fifth, most will never seek total freedom because they prefer their attachment
to the conceptualized consciousness rather than abiding as the transcendent
consciousness (or the pure, universal consciousness) which
(1) allows the Absolute to be overlaid on the relative and which
(2) allows the somethingness to be abandoned totally and which
(3) allows the total freedom of the nothingness to manifest.
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";
and
"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.
