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.
HOW SCIENCE AND THE NON-DUAL UNDERSTANDING CAN COMBINE TO ELIMINATE OR REDUCE STRESS, TENSION, WORRY, AND ANXIETY
“Primates include lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, gorillas, humans and more than 500 other species as well. With few exceptions, all OF those primates form hierarchies.”
--floyd
“Hierarchies are systems or organizations in which group members are ranked one above the other according to status or authority, making hierarchies one of the top generators of duality and, therefore, the bane of the existence of human primates.”
--floyd
“Hierarchies are a blight upon humankind’s existence because they are the surrogates which reinforce such duality-based beliefs as ‘different-from’ and ‘better-than’ and which carry ego-states to term where they will all upgrade themselves or downgrade all others. For example, “The Spouse” will eventually upgrade itself to ‘Super Spouse’ and will downgrade its co-dependent counterpart to “Lousy Spouse’.”
--floyd
“Hierarchies are the ‘au pairs’ of duality-based beliefs and false identifications, feeding them, caring for them, and catering to their desires and whims, forever supplying and resupplying groups with fresh supplies of believers of such concepts as special, self-important, ‘different-from-ment’ and ‘better-than-ment.’ They also program and condition minds to believe in learned ignorance and in stupidity-and-insanity-based ideas.”
--floyd
The narrator of the documentary and Sapolsky differentiate in legitimate physiologically-based stress and illegitimate ego-state-based stress and even enjoyable stress, if limited:
Narrator: “Stress is the body’s way of rising to a challenge, whether the challenge is life-threatening, trivial or fun.”
Sapolsky: “You get the right amount of stress and we call it ‘stimulation.’ The goal in life isn’t to get rid of stress. The goal in life is to have the right type of stress because when it’s the right type, we love it.” [The film shows people screaming but having fun on a scary ride.]
“We jump out of our seats to experience it. We pay good money to get stressed that way. It tends to be a moderate stressor, where you’ve got a stressor that’s transient. It’s not for nothing roller coaster rides are not three weeks long.]
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Yet the people who have come here and are still angry over a divorce from fifteen or twenty years earlier have been, not on a three week ride, but on a two-decade ride that has been anything but enjoyable.
The clarity that comes with the non-dual understanding can pull one out of that roller-coaster-ride-lifestyle and allow the excessive, unhealthy stress to finally come to an end.]
Sapolsky: “And most of all what they’re about is this: you relinquish a little bit of control in a setting that overall feels safe.”
Narrator: “But, in real life, for so many of us primates, including Robert’s baboons, control is not an option.”
[NON-DUAL NOTE: The author offers occasional reminders that every non-Realized person is an addict, addicted to two things specifically:
(1) the primary addiction of humanity, which is a desire to have control;
and
(2) to the secondary addiction of humanity, which is a desire to have power / Power in order to be able to control.
That is the root of all religious dogma and spiritual beliefs: there is a desire to be in conscious contact with some Power that can be tapped into in order to have that Power bring about an outcome desired or to allow feared consequences to be avoided:
“Dear God, please do not let Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast” or “Dear God, please do not let Katrina hit the south Texas coast.”
And when Katrina went between those two areas and hit the people of New Orleans, Louisiana instead of the people of south Texas or South Mississippi, guess who could almost be heard releasing a collective sigh of relief, followed by:
“Thanks to our mighty and caring and loving and protecting God.” And the people of New Orleans all said, “Say what?!”
And the praying ones answered, “Oh, right, okay. Uhhhh, God, also bless the people of New Orleans who have been devastated.” Yet the Dalai Lama did not even cut that much slack, claiming that “the people of New Orleans were hit by Hurricane Katrina because of their negative karma.” So basically, they asked for it . . . they had it coming.
And the people of New Orleans replied,
“Say what?!”
And that is what the realized Advaitin or the realized Nisargan says 99.99% of the time when she or he hears constantly the “psychological babble that generates tumult” and the “psychological babble of false ego-states” and expressions rooted in the “psychological nonsense that humans are falling for.”]
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Can the non-dual understanding really help reduce or eliminate stress? Definitely, based on what was experienced here and on the experience of others. In terms of addressing what the documentary has so far revealed via Sapolsky’s latest research, there are two areas where the understanding can lead to greater freedom from stress and to more peace:
The first area deals with what Sapolsky referred to as “real physiological threats” vs. “unreal psychological threats” (the latter being threats perceived by false personalities / personas as being real though they are not). The non-dual understanding has been seen to address cases where persons have not been able to differentiate true from false.
As Sapolsky has shown, one of the main sources of stress nowadays among humans is rooted in the fact that they cannot differentiate between true or “real” physiological threats and false, unreal psychological threats whereby false identities perceive false threats as being real threats.]
Is there anything that the non-dual understanding can provide to reduce or to eliminate stress in a moment of crisis that involves a “real” and pending and imminent physiological threat? No. As for the Nisargan understanding, that is all about what is natural, and stress under those conditions would be natural;
therefore, no realized Nisargan would ever suggest that anything natural should be eliminated or avoided. Is there anything that the non-dual understanding can provide to reduce or to eliminate stress in a moment of “supposed crisis” that involves a false, unreal psychological threat? Of course. Absolutely.
So to review: the documentary makes clear that (a) humans “are being stressed by social and psychological tumult invented by their own species” and then adds (b) “if a zebra escapes [an attack], its stress response shuts down, but human beings can’t seem to find their ‘off’ switch. We turn on the exact same stress response for purely psychological states.”
“Psychological states” involve ego-states, dreamed up identities that have been assigned or assumed and that all have hidden agendas and hidden fears and hidden desires that control every non-realized person’s thoughts and words and actions. There is no “control” or “power” at all under such circumstances. There is only ignorance and insanity under such circumstances.
Imagine one lives in a desert and drives through a stretch of road each day at 3 P.M. Imagine that every sunny, hot day that a mirage appears along that same stretch of road. If a driver were to swerve to avoid an imagined collision with an imagined mirage, then one might end up wrecked in a ditch.
(How many humans have experienced a relative existence that has amounted to little more than a total wreck because of things that were imagined but not real, because of the mirages - the false identities - that they take to be real?)
Next, imagine being angry on a day with intermittent clouds - convincing you that the mirage you are attached to is coming and going, is not secure. That would be stress-invoking, yes?
And imagine the feelings on rainy days when the feelings go beyond a sense that your mirage is being threatened and you become convinced that it is being destroyed completely. Being attached to a mirage and loving a mirage can be nothing short of being trapped in delusion, ignorance, insanity, and stress.
If one is highly stressed and that stress is rooted in the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, wouldn’t that be evidence of ignorance? Yes. Of insanity? Yes.
The so-called “true self” is not the Pure Witness - that’s an identity. It is Pure Witnessing which is merely a process, a temporary happening, and most certainly not a person at all. It sees clearly and can differentiate between what is true and what is false.
As Sapolsky has shown, one of the main sources of stress nowadays among humans is rooted in the fact that they cannot differentiate between true or “real” physiological threats and false, unreal psychological threats whereby false identities take what is only a perceived threat to be a real threat.
The second area where the understanding can have an effect on stress levels involves the desire for “control” (and that extends to all species). Stress is generated when desired control is not attained and one is trapped in the lower echelons of one of the billions of hierarchies that exist all around the globe.
Baboons will never attain the understanding, so those at “the lower end” will never be as stress-free as their human counterparts who Realize.
By the way, dissociation and denial of stress do not eliminate it. “Religion” and “spirituality” and “praying” and “faith” have been seen to serve as placebos for some who are trying to be free of the stress that comes with the Ultimate Sickness, but any “placebo effect” is short-lived.
Their effects are mainly “psychological” (per Sapolsky) and the unreal cannot cure the unreal. That is, “not-real psychological medicines” cannot cure “unreal psychological threats.” The non-dual understanding can actually address that issue.]
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
THE NEWEST OFFER
If interested, click the button below to pay the fee via PayPal. You will then receive an email which includes the link for you to view the private, unlisted video via an arrangement we have made with YouTube, Inc. You do not have to have a YouTube account to watch this privately streamed video.
(If you do not receive the link promptly, your computer or email provider may have high filter settings. Check your spam and trash folders because some providers automatically transfer emails containing links to those folders.)
To access the seven-hour streaming video of a retreat and begin watching right away, click this "Buy Now" button:
In addition to the five non-duality books made available without charge by Andy Gugar, Jr. (see “FREEBIES” above), you can now access nearly 3,300 posts for any topics of interest to you.
If you prefer PAPERBACK copies
(collected in two anthologies).
Links for ordering are below with
BARNES and NOBLE presently providing better service
than AMAZON
when it come to fulfilling orders for
paperback and hardcover books
as opposed to delivering digital books.
[NOTE: Wherever you live, you can search for the books below by title with booksellers in your country. With 40,000+ retailers distributing my paperback books, you may order from U.S. stores or you may find someone nearer to you.]
SEND A GIFT BOOK TO SOMEONE
(1) 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.
Or,
(2) To make an arrangement for us to send in your name as a gift from you any of our books to someone you choose:
(a) Visit www.floydhenderson.com.
(b) Purchase the ebook you’d like to send.
(c) Contact us using the email below, tell us which ebook you just purchased, and provide the name and email address of the person you want to send the ebook to. (They will never be contacted again or solicited for any reason.)
Send your information to:
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.
