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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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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
To continue with the answer offered yesterday in response to the editor asking: “Can you give the readers a hands-on analogy of this energy-consciousness as it applies to us?”
Back to the analogy you asked for. Energy must have something through which to manifest if its presence is to be observable. We do not create energy, but it can be channeled; it can manifest through forms.
So let’s take a blender and plug it into the outlet. With energy pulsating through it, the blender does what it was programmed to do. That operation of the blender, its ‘doing’ something, can continue if the energy is present and if the earth elements from which the blender is made do not corrode, rust out, and return to the earth some day.
But one day the blender will no longer physically exist. It will decay, as will your body and mine. The oxygen whipped through the blender will rejoin the pool of oxygen. The earth elements will rejoin the pool of earth elements.
The energy remains and will rejoin the field of consciousness, the Unmanifest, though ‘at rest’ until manifested into something else. In fact, it may never manifest again. Or, it might be manifested in a blender or through something else next time it is manifested.
This does not mean that grandma becomes a cow. Grandma’s form, once gone, is forever gone. Dust does not re-accumulate into some prior form with the brain / mind of that form also re-occurring. Please, give me a break.
As far as humans go, understand this: when manifested, I AM; when unmanifested, I AM THAT. So Are You. No end; no beginning. No destruction; no creation. Eternal cycling, or not.
Think of it this way: an ice cube is really just H2O. If it melts outside on a hot day, it can become vapor, ascend into a cloud, blend with the cloud, become a raindrop and fall back to earth. In each case, it might have a different form: solid, liquid, vapor, etc.
But it is still just H2O, though to observers it’s thought to be all these different things we dreamed up and gave labels to. We are lying to ourselves. H2O is H2O, not water, fog, steam, vapor, raindrops, oceans, streams, pools, puddles, etc. Now we cannot destroy the H2O though we can affect the visible form, proving my point that what you see is never the real.
And just because the H2O that was the ice cube in our example might be recycled and fall back to earth in the spot where the ice cube originally melted, it does not mean that the same ice cube will re-form. Nor does it mean that the same H2O will ever be in an ice cube again. It might, or it might not.
There is no controlling plan. The cycling just happens, as does the spontaneity and the diversity and the unpredictability. So it is with that which we call ‘humans’ and the elements that make up the body-mind’s form and shape.
That which is real, the energy-consciousness-life-force, will last; like the H2O of the ice cube form, the energy-consciousness-life-force may remanifest, and it may not. But it will not remanifest as the same form or with the same mind. So the current Pope is right: heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men.
One thinking he is his body can be said to be in hell now; one with the knowledge of what she or he really is can be said to be “in heaven now.” When the life-force and the breath leave the body, so ends the body form and so ends the body-mind. I AM THAT, that energy-consciousness-life-force that is eternal, without form or shape.
E.: Forgive me for pressing, but I suspect the readers might not consider that answer ‘hands-on’ enough. Is there anything applicable in all this that can help them in their relations, specifically?
K.: Fair enough. Let’s try this example from a couple I worked with. Her life-long dream was to be a flight attendant. The opportunity, coming at age forty, arrived for her at a later time in life than for most and came on the heels of her recent marital engagement.
She was thrilled about the job offer. Now, great pressure was being applied by ‘him’ to force her not to go to New Jersey for training for six weeks. He wanted her to give up this career opportunity, and their impasse was becoming a deal-breaker.
She asked if they could visit with me to discuss the effects that their role-playing was having on possibly destroying their relationship, since she had the understanding in this regard. I’ll give you the shorter version of what I did.
I took them back to when they first met and eventually first became intimate. He was also dating other women; she was seeing other men. He admitted that was fine, at the time. He was not trying to control her. He accepted her right to do what she wanted, when she wanted.
Then, they began to date exclusively. At that point, she no longer had the freedom, in his eyes, to go out with other men. Next, they became engaged, and she lost even more freedom. She became, in his words, my fiancée.
The possessive pronoun became the key identifier when he spoke of her: my fiancée, my wife-to-be, etc. I showed him how, as they shifted from the roles of ‘stranger’ to ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ to ‘lover’ to ‘fiancée’ that she lost more and more freedom.
I asked him if this is his current ‘reality’: that the deeper someone becomes involved with him, the less freedom she is going to have and the more demands and expectations she is going to have heaped upon her. Then, I asked if he thought that was ever going to work to create healthy relationships.
The more roles (the more false identities) she assumed with him, the more a co-dependency developed and the more a loss of freedom manifested because he had beliefs about the ‘right way’ a fiancée should act; the ‘right way’ a wife should act, the way people in public should see him being treated, etc.
And his beliefs are based in what was modeled for him, not in reality. I tried to help them see that each time they accepted new roles to define who they are (and each time they accepted a new identity to define the parameters of what is or is not acceptable in their relationship) then the further away they shifted from who they Really Are, from the freedom they should actually have.
Only by understanding authenticity and being authentic - and not falling into the role expectations as defined by this society - can they be happy. Let her be her; let him be him; and let ‘them together’ be only the parts where his circle and her circle intersect through mutual negotiation or understanding.
Get real. Forget roles and the old definitions of what your programming taught you that a fiancée should and should not do, what a spouse is ‘allowed’ to do or not do, etc. Since the couple had obviously shifted beyond the Stage One ‘Passion Level,’ the only alternative was to fixate in this ‘Battle Stage’ and allow the relationship to finally end or to get Real and move into the comfort of the ‘Unconditional Love Stage.’
That stage is reached through sharing, giving, accepting, loving, practicing Applied Tolerance, not judging, not controlling, and most of all, by understanding the difference in the authentic vs. the inauthentic and being able to differentiate between the false and the true and then experiencing the Oneness, the unicity.
Bottom line: one does not lose the role of being a ‘complete bastard’ or a ‘total bitch’ until they lose the role of being ‘an absolute saint.’ “Relevant?
E.” Absolutely.
Maharaj said, “If you want to sin, sin wholeheartedly and openly . . .
but
“Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end.”
He said: “Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is ‘good.’ As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace.”
“Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous person what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative.”
“To identify oneself with the particular is all the sin there is. The impersonal is real, the personal appears and disappears. ‘I am’ is the impersonal Being. ‘I am this’ is the person. The person is relative and the pure Being - fundamental.”
“I do not ask you to stop being - that you cannot. I ask you only to stop imagining that you were born, have parents, are a body, will die and so on. Just try, make a beginning - it is not as hard as you think.”
Again, “Relevant?’
E.: Absolutely.
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.
