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 newer 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.
THE CURSE OF HUMANKINDS’ RELATIVE EXISTENCE: IDENTIFICATIONS
“The personality
is but a product of imagination.”
“It is the taking
yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to
exist on its own rights.”
“It is the [false] 'self' that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it.”
“Even to talk of re-uniting the person with the [false] 'self' is not right because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
[Continued from yesterday with the discussion I had with “Mark” the day before he would appear on The Dr. Phil Show.]
When I shared with Mark that it may well be enough for him to find out who he is not, a look of confusion crossed his face. I introduced him to the means by which we are assigned and by which we assume scores of false identities as well as the way that those determine our every thought and every word and every action.
[Some say Mark “consciously choose” to kill his wife as his child-age daughters looked on. Some might say that Mark was driven to pull the trigger because he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
Others - only a few - might say that (as is the case with almost all humans on this planet) his every thought and every word and every action were all controlled and determined by the ignorant and insane beliefs which he was taught and by the hidden agendas of the false personality identifications which he believed were real and truly defined him.
From the warped perspective which comes along with every false identification, Mark”s ignorant and insane belief was that he was being attacked, that he was the victim.
Such is the case when “The Super Husband,” “The Super Father,” “The Finance Man,” “The Lover,” “The Homeowner,” “The Family Man,” “The One Being Victimized” are among the driving force which is generated by belief in scores and scores of false identities which each have a basic fear and a basic desire.]
I explained to him the insanity of accepting as real the many false identifications which can be assigned by a culture and shared how the belief in those personas will lead to insane actions when the hidden agendas of those ego-states feel - to use the terms he had been introduced to - “hurt, interfered with, or threatened.”
I tried to show him just how insane one can become when driven by the fears and desires of a mirage - by a false identity or identities. A “husband” and “father” can turn the relative existence of a family into a nightmarish, hellish existence when a wife and children experience a man being negligent, unavailable, unreliable, and downright abusive . . . mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Mark was shown the irony of role-playing when an assumed persona will believe that he is the one being mistreated and “hurt and interfered with and threatened” though the fact is that it is his perspective that is 180-degrees opposite of the truth: that he is the one being hurtful; that he is the one interfering with them and their peace and their sanity; and that he is the one who was behaving in a threatening manner.
I asked: “How insane is it to believe that a mirage can be 'hurt, interfered with, or threatened'?” Then, I shared the following example to illustrate the insanity generated by personality-based perspectives (which are all the exact opposite of reality and truth). I invited him to do this:
Consider the encounters I had with two females. One was a bear. One was a wife who was soon to be an ex-wife.
I had traveled to the Northeast to New Jersey to meet with Tom Brown, Jr. (author of “The Tracker,” “Grandfather,” and dozens of other books) and to seek his advice on avoiding bears and what to do should I encounter one. Then I was off to the west for two weeks of camping in the woods.
I had spent the first night there at a lodge in Arizona and paid the owner the next morning for my lodging and for the right to park my car at the far end of his parking lot for the weeks that I would be backpacking through the forest. For his fee, he also agreed to start the engine occasionally in order to keep the battery of the car charged.
He warned me to be aware that female brown bears were moving about with their cubs and that they were especially defensive - and offensive - that time of year. I was told that some bears had been seen moving through the chest-high grass in the multi-acre field across from the lodge and was advised to stay on the paved roads until I reached the trailhead.
As I began walking away, feeling some sense of trepidation, I looked back and he waved the kind of wave one might give to a friend he knew he would never see alive again.
After two weeks, I left the forest and moved beyond the trailhead to the road leading back to the lodge. Goldilocks-like, I wanted a hot bath, a warm meal, and a soft bed.
Totally exhausted, I did what I was told not to do and turned to the field with chest-high grass in order to take a diagonal shortcut back to the lodge rather than following the roads all the way around.
About halfway through the fifteen-acre field, I heard a terrifying growl and say a mama bear stand up, sniff in several directions, and then aim her nose directly at me.
Then, standing erect, she raised her front legs and paws into the air. From claws to toes, I guessed that she was about forty feet tall, but ten to twelve feet might have been more accurate.
Suddenly, she dropped down and began charging. I saw her back rising and falling over the tops of the grass, and I watched a three-foot-wide section of the grass tumbling forward as she charged me.
I flashed back to the time spent with Tom in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey when he told me during one of our visits that if a bear ever charged me, the charge might be a warning only.
If not, he suggested I fight with all my might, saying something along these lines: “Punch the bear in its sensitive nose; try to gouge its eyes; fight the fight of your life. The alternative is to roll into a ball and pray if you believe in praying.”
Three overpowering instinctive options flashed through my consciousness and led to ill-serving confusion: Flight? Fight? Or freeze? Fall down into a ball, or fight for my life?
In nature, there is no more threatening posture than having so large a female charging at you, knowing that the typical human might run eight to ten miles per hour at a burst while a brown bear could run thirty to forty miles per hour during a charge.
I flashed back to Tom's words, then rolled into a ball but determined I would fight if the charge was not a warning but a real threat . . . a real attack.
My wait went on for months. Okay, maybe it actually went on for twenty seconds or so before I mustered the courage to raise my head to a level just over the top of the grass, but a slight bit of courage or not, there remained a sense of being drowned in a variety of emotions.
To my great relief, I saw three trails being formed in the grass, one large and two small, as the mama bear and her cubs moved in a direction to my left which was away from me - away from where I felt paralyzed, where I felt as if I might burst right out of my skin.
I fell back again on the grass and lay still except for my fast breathing while looking up at the sky. After ten minutes or so, the heart slowed, as did the respiratory rate.
Finally, I knelled, looking again across the field to see if the coast was clear. I slowly stood and then reassessed my “wants and needs”: now, I wanted a hot bath, a warm meal, and a soft bed, but now I also needed a laundromat or a cleaners . . . big time.
[The tale of floyd and the three bears and “a wife” continues tomorrow.]
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.
