Friday, October 20, 2023

HOW SCIENCE AND THE NON-DUAL UNDERSTANDING CAN COMBINE TO ELIMINATE OR REDUCE STRESS, TENSION, WORRY, AND ANXIETY

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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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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.

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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.

THE EXPLANATION


If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.

Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of god in the past was of a weak god, an absentee god, A Santa Claus-type god, a mean, punishing, vindictive god, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring god whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."

The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a god that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").

Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring god,' any supposed god that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'god' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.

"That is, a non-narcissistic their god / their goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'god' and focus on the 'god as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you." 

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"

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and 


"Heaven and earth shall fade away."

--Yeshu'a (Jesus)

and 


"Heaven and hell are not geographic places

but are states of mind, nothing more than

concepts dreamed up by men."

--Pope John Paul II 

"There is no hell."

--Pope Francis, the current pope

in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,

a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record

teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.

[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.

And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?

Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?

The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit charge by the Bank); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)

With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.

The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.] 

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