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.)
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LIBERATION (Attaining Freedom from Personality via Realization)
“After the information given to you by the mother, that you are a boy or girl, all your further acquisitions [false identities] are by hearsay.”
--Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj
[From yesterday]
The editor of The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders was born in the Far East before coming to the U.S. She was well-versed in Eastern perspectives - both ancient and modern - and is highly-intelligent, so she was chosen to interview me regarding the non-dual messaging interwoven throughout the novel.
Her experience and language skills were most appreciated during the writing and publishing process and I express once more my gratitude to her.
Tomorrow I’ll begin sharing the transcripts of that interview.
It has been seen that much confusion exists over the actual meaning of some terms used during non-dual discussions, terms such as “liberation,” “realization,” “the unicity,” “oneness,” “love” and “Love,” “AS IF living,” “neti-neti,” “no-whoness” and “no-WHOness,” “enlightenment.” The following may clarify somewhat.
[Note: The interview continues with me speaking as if I am the novel’s lead character Kirk.]
EDITOR’S INTERVIEW
E.: Kirk, how is it that we get so lost, so separated from authenticity and so identified with the false self, with all of the false roles?
K.: It only takes two stages to get trapped but three to get out, so most won’t get out. The first stage is ages 1-20, when we get conditioned, indoctrinated, programmed to accumulate, to “get.”
Ages 20-40 we spend doing what we were programmed to do, repeating what we were programmed to say, and believing what we were programmed to believe.
Most will go to the grave or the crematorium in that rut. To get out, we enter the third stage and begin a thorough inquiry or inventory. Some wake up enough to say, ‘This life is shallow, hollow, unfulfilling. There must be more. I don’t even know who I am - who am I?’
If they realize that there in no who or WHO, only a what, they might begin to zen out and de-accumulate in the fourth stage. De-accumulation is the mark of one becoming free of programming. Liberation is the mark of one freed of belief in personality identifications. Realization is the mark of one becoming free of believing in the learned ignorance taught and from believing all of the cultures’ false beliefs.
After that, one can live AS IF, as if this life is the real, and can then enjoy whatever remains of this life, free for the first time - free of educational indoctrination, free of spiritual indoctrination, free of religious indoctrination, free of political indoctrination, free of economic indoctrination. Free. Independent. Period.
E.: We have a chance through this novel about your son’s murder to see how your freedom came. How can the readers’ realization, and thus their freedom, come?
K.: By realizing that there is no duality. There is no false self or false selves as opposed to that which is the authentic. The Real is all there is. The labels we accept, the roles we play, are the very constraints which imprison us.
Consider this, please: if you work during the week and are off on the weekends, and you have a job that is very challenging, even draining, then you might experience something like the following.
On Monday, the alarm on your clock goes off. You unthinkingly shut it off. Just gaining consciousness, you know ‘I am.’ The knowledge of existing in this body begins to come to you. As you awaken more, you remember you are ‘The Employee.’
You have to rise and leave the comfort of your bed, your room, your house or apartment, and go off to play that role and to try to meet all the expectations and demands that come with having accepted that role and believing it is you.
Quickly, the ego will promote you to ‘Super Employee,’ and eventually you’ll be convinced you’re not getting the money or the respect you deserve. Frustration will build as a result of accepting that role.
You take things personally, for you are playing a persona, a role, accepting a false identity. If you get fired, you might feel as if you’re dying. (To exist, ‘The Employee’ must have a job). Your very identity seems challenged, so your very existence seems at stake.
Watch the news and see what happens when people lose what is required for their false identities to exist: some get fired and go back and shoot up the workplace; ‘husband’ dies when ‘wife’ leaves, for husbands cannot be husbands without wives. Assuming the identity of ‘husband,’ soon promoted to ‘Super Husband,’ then ‘Super Wife’ is required for his imagined “being” to continue.
He’ll fight with her when she does not act like a super wife. If she leaves, ‘husband’ is finished. Thinking he’s under attack or being killed by her actions, he shoots her. People see it nightly on the news and just say, ‘He went nuts.’
Well, the insanity did not manifest with her leaving. It manifested when a man in a robe pronounced ‘You are now husband’ and he bought into that.
Human-like beings walked the face of the earth in varying states of male-female partnerships for 7.5 million years before anyone dreamed up the concepts of ‘marriage,’ ‘husband,’ or ‘wife,’ along with all the other labels that religious leaders dreamed up to identity those who did not play strictly by their system:
‘prostitute,’ ‘bastard,’ ‘whore,’ ‘illegitimates,’ etc. Isn’t it interesting that the ‘noble’ role of ‘wife’ and the ‘degrading’ role of ‘whore’ both came from religion? And in this culture still dominated by Anglo men, one label can set a person up for life while the other label can ruin a person for life.
We criticize other cultures that make women cover themselves with berkas, yet some in the U.S. culture cover the women with labels. And the same happens with men as well.
So covered, we
end up not having a clue about who / what we really are underneath all
the labels. Roles, always dependent on something else or someone else in order
to exist, leave vulnerable those who accept cultural labeling. Accepting a
label as an identity always leaves one living in fear, in misery, in perpetual
desire and need.
Consider that same ‘employee’ we spoke of earlier, now on a Saturday. No alarm goes off. The awakening comes slowly. As one gains consciousness, one knows ‘I am.’ Then, the fact that it’s Saturday settles in.
One does not have to go to work. One does not go into the mode of ‘The Employee’ but rolls over in bed and enjoys just being there. To stay in the ‘I am-ness’ prevents accepting false roles and identities. To stay in the knowledge that ‘I Am, period’ allows one to relax.
Free of that false identity for the day, one remains in the ‘I Am,’ in the ‘Is-ness’ only, and thus at ease. That same mindset, seven days a week, will allow the perpetual peace and the constant ease to manifest.
That person is not playing the role that day, is not trying to meet expectations and demands, and is free and feels free. What she / he is really free of is accepting the label.
How many who consider themselves to be a man or a woman are really nothing more than a bundle of concepts and labels and identities assigned by this culture? Is it any wonder that most, before making it to the grave, will wonder “Who am I?” or will state flat out, “I don’t even know who I am”?
To be free is to
be free of the false identities that jerk us around and jerk around the people
in our vicinity who allow our role-playing and role-demands to impact them.
Once we come to know who / what we really are and stay in the ‘I Am’
state, we accept no false roles as identifiers of who / what we are, no
false labels as identifiers of who / what we are, no dependencies as a
result of believing we are what we do.
We can take that understanding into each day of the week, and perform tasks AS IF we are that; but knowing we are not that, we do not attach to the roles, we do not fear for loss of our very existence, we do not have the co-dependencies that always come with ego-states or false identities.
I have been attacked as being an ‘Anti-Christ’ or even ‘THE Anti-Christ.’ In fact, I speak of exactly what Christ spoke of when he said, ‘When you speak of Me, speak of me as I AM’ and when he said ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’
How many preachers or priests have ever explained that I AM? How many even have the slightest clue what Christ meant? How many know that Moses (or the actual writer of the Jewish writings whose words are attributed to Moses) plagiarized the phrase ‘I AM THAT; I AM’ which had been discussed in the Far East for tens of thousands of years and was discussed in the Middle East in the days of Moses?
Where did that person first hear it before writing it down? Who taught Christ the non-dual pointers he would repeat, of the ‘I-Am’ message during the ‘Lost Years’ in his life before he began passing it on in his thirties?
It does not matter. It matters only to know that the teaching existed long before either Moses or Christ were ever conceived and born. Am I anti-Christ? Hardly. I am anti-distortion, I am pro-truth.
Those who refuse to admit that Jeshu’a was offering an old, established advaitic message of non-duality are the ones teaching something opposed to what Christ was really trying to get across to his listeners.
To be at peace, reside in the ‘I Am,’ alone, but know this too: That Which You Are is not the ‘I am-ness.’ The ‘I Am-ness’ is temporary. When the consciousness leaves the body, the body form ends permanently.
Asleep, you do not know that you are, right? So it is when you merge into the Absolute state of what you really are. The body loses consciousness, the body returns to dust, the breath joins the universal air, but the universe does not ‘lose’ consciousness. Conscious-energy cannot be destroyed, any more than it was created. It IS.
The interview continues tomorrow with this question:
E.: Then tell the readers the difference in the manifest state, in our case as energy-consciousness manifested in human form, and the Unmanifest state which you and others refer to as ‘That.’
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.
