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.
5. Would you like to have us send to someone as a gift from you a copy of any ebook in our inventory? See the offer in purple text at the end of this post.
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.
7. You may click here to visit Floyd's bookstore which offers both digital books and paperback books which deal with non-duality, non-duality-based fictional adventures, recovery, and financial budgeting.
“There is no such thing as mind. There are ideas . . . .” and “Abandon the wrong ideas, for they are false and obstruct your vision . . . .” and “The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom” and “To know that you are a prisoner of your mind - that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation - is the dawn of wisdom” and “I have no mind . . . .”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Consciousness is rooted in the Absolute. The brain is rooted in the elements. The "mind" is rooted in wrong programming and faulty conditioning and perverted domestication and xenophobia-based acculturation and warped indoctrination and distorted brainwashing as well as learned ignorance and lies and concepts and ideas and superstitions and falsehoods (a.k.a., “beliefs”).
---Floyd Henderson
“Realization is nothing more than a process which results in a person being freed from believing in all learned ignorance.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Hierarchies are the epitome of dualistic thinking at play.”
--Floyd
Recently I once again met my daughter and her husband and my two granddaughters at an Italian restaurant in a nearby city which has outdoor tables set up in back at the edge of a park they have set in in a shady location where children can play.
What I noticed during the
four occasions when we visited there was that none of the children ever “met a
stranger.” Bonding occurs not over a period of years but in seconds.
The city where the restaurant is located has an international population with people from around the planet moving there to work and to live.
At one moment my granddaughters might be holding hands with a white child, at the next moment holding hands with a child whose parents relocated from Asia, at the next moment with a child whose parents moved there from one African nation or another, at another moment with the children of people from nations south of the border . . . well, you get the picture.
Neither skin color nor economic status nor religious affiliation (or no affiliation) nor any other imaginary, otherwise divisive “differences” registered. There were simply fellow humans, crossing paths in peace and playing together and enjoying each others’ company.
That’s the way children “come in,” arriving with a non-dual perspective and enjoying peace and harmony. Yet in the U.S. culture, it does not take long for parents and relatives and the leaders of religious hierarchies and political hierarchies and business hierarchies to set up a duality-based, competitive mindset which focuses on differences rather than commonalities.
Once that mindset is set
into place, then the essence of dualistic thinking prevails with such basic
beliefs as . . .
“Differences exist and should be noted and reacted to”
and
“We are different from and better than those ‘others’”
and
“Being better than, we are the ones who should have power and be in control.”
In fact, the history of blood-shedding and bloodletting parallels the history of dualistic thinking and believing and talking and behaving and separating and segregating;
and at the core of dualistic thinking and believing and talking and behaving and separating and segregating is one of the most egregious of all dualistic constructs, namely, hierarchies.
The constructing of hierarchies and the denial or granting of rights or opportunities based on one's arbitrarily-determined place on a hierarchy is nothing new. Consider these examples:
And reinforcing the widespread acceptance of duality has been the formation of hierarchies by rulers and politicians and religious leaders and spiritual leaders and all other sorts of authority figures;
additionally, perpetuating and legitimizing and normalizing the abnormality of dualistic thinking and believing has been the espousal and backing and defense and widespread acceptance of hierarchies - at all costs - by those in the upper economic and social and political and religious levels of almost all societies and cultures throughout much of human history.
Consider the levels of absurdity which are reached when
(A) leaders come up with outrageous categories which they use to classify - and differentiate between - the members of any given community or culture and when
(B) the masses blindly and unquestioningly go along with such duality-based methods of separating the members of such cultures.
One term can provide a clear example of the absurdity of categorizing persons and dividing them into different “levels” in a social hierarchy. Consider the label “untouchables” which was used in India up until 1949.
The name “untouchable” was the name assigned to any member of a wide range of “low-caste” Hindu groups and to any person outside their rigidly-defined caste system, and the use of the term and the imposition of the social and economic disabilities associated with it were totally legal.
Legal, too, in the U.S. was the right of a high-ranked human to own a low-ranked human; as was the legality of denying women the right to vote until 1920; as is the right nowadays to pay women less than men are paid for doing the same job; as is the right to enact discriminatory laws which deny some citizens the right to vote; etc., etc., etc.
And all of that is based in beliefs regarding hierarchies which separate persons into categories and which give rights and opportunities to some “high level” people but which deny the same opportunities and rights to other “low level” people.
Per Maharaj, what is considered key among the contributors to the Ultimate Sickness and to its symptomatic evidences of arrogance and a sense of being different-from and being better-than and believing that one deserves privilege and that one has the right to determine who is “good” and who is “bad” and who, therefore, is “deserving” and who is “undeserving”?
What is key? Ignorance and personality disorders and the insanity and neuroses and psychoses which personality assumption and personality disorders often lead to.
The espousal of hierarchies - and the establishment and espousal and backing and defense and widespread acceptance of hierarchies - is all under the control of those who would preserve their own status quo and who are determined to deny to those whom they think are “below them” the right of an opportunity to rise in any given society as a result of all persons being provided equal access to opportunities.
For such equality to manifest would require an understanding of non-duality and a sense of unicity and an understanding of what the Transcendentalists pointed to with the phrase “the unity beyond the multiplicity.” Not likely to happen, is it?
Because of such hierarchies, the end result has been, historically, this: in all cases, eventually, suppressed and trampled and abused persons have risen up and rebelled; then, conflict and in-fighting and social chaos and civil wars and bloodshed have followed.
The pointer here: nothing is more rooted in duality than hierarchies and the subservience and chaos and bloodletting and bloodshed to which dualistic concepts and beliefs always lead.
To be continued.
Please enter 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.
