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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THE REASON THAT “NON-DUALISTS” SHOULD
UNDERSTAND PRIMATE CULTURES ON THE AFRICAN SAVANNAH
“Again, primates are primates are primates. The basic behavior of one primate will usually adumbrate the basic behavior of all primates. Apes mirror humans; humans mirror apes; moreover, what happens in Vegas might stay in Vegas, but what happens on the savannah will happen everywhere else on the globe where humans have clustered together in cultures and societies.”
--floyd
“Baboons live in big, complex social groups, and the population I went to study lived like kings . . . .
“The baboons work maybe four hours a day to feed themselves; hardly anyone is likely to eat them. Basically, baboons have about a half dozen solid hours of sunlight a day to devote to being rotten to each other. Just like our society . . . .
“We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.”
--Sapolsky
If you have received the full dosage of the Ultimate Medicine, then you are no longer suffering from the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness as you did formerly.
Yet there are still billions walking the planet who are coughing up the nonsense generated by their Sickness, and the chances are high that you are going to end up around some really Sick persons and will have to deal with them to some degree.
More significantly, if you are not at the very bottom of your culture’s hierarchies, then you are in a position to help heal the stress of those on the lower levels.
You have a chance to help alleviate to some degree the stress, tension, worry, anxiety, misery and suffering of those “stuck at the bottom of the totem pole.”
One week, while assisting a friend recovering from major surgery with some of the basic issues which needed to be addressed, the tasks prevented my hauling the garbage to the curb on Tuesday as is required for pickup.
By Friday, the added accumulation was huge, and there was no doubt that the over-worked, over-stressed collectors who had worked through a rainstorm the day before and who were now dealing with a heat index of 107 degrees Fahrenheit were already miserable. Seeing the waiting mound of trash was not going to lighten their workload or their disposition or their level of stress.
Hearing the large truck approaching, I walked to the curb and told the man as he stepped off the back of the truck to begin tossing the mound of garbage bags into the back, “I missed getting the bags out on Tuesday so by today all of this has acculturated. I’d like to help you load the bags.”
Together, side-by-side, we tossed the bags into the truck. Before driving away, the driver got out of the truck and walked to back and extended his arm and said, “Gracias” as he shock me hand.
I cannot describe the look of amazement and then joy that crossed the face of the loader as he climbed onto the back of the truck to ride to the next house.
Someone at one of the lowest ends of the cultural and financial hierarchy in the U.S. had been treated with some concern and respect, and - for a short spell at least - the hierarchy in which he was trapped had been temporarily disable and neutralized.
Is that shared to tout the level of compassion here? Hardly. It is shared as one example of the type of action you might take to alleviate - if only temporarily - some of the stress-inducing effects of hierarchies on those “at the bottom.”
Another example: At the international headquarters of an international company where my daughter had been employed for several years, the already-fluid hierarchy which existed in the early days at the company has been disassembled almost entirely by the new CEO.
As a result, in annual Fortune 500 surveys, he is given by his employees one of the highest ratings of any boss in any company in the U.S. (and worldwide, too, where the company has offices in fifty other countries).
How has the hierarchy been dismantled? No one has a closed-in office. All work in individual cubicles that are placed so that all workers have a nature-filled window view of the forests and the lake surrounding the facilities. The CEO also works out of a cubicle, one that is no larger and no different from that used by every employee.
Gyms are available with free membership; a full-time medical team is present daily, so one who is sick is given company-provided care inside the corporate facilities; three cafeterias offer excellent, healthy meals at cost.
Workers regularly receive paid leave to volunteer their time and effort for community projects, and the organization is devoted to being a model for the way that businesses can operate in a “green,” environmentally-friendly way and still make a decent profit.
The attitude which results from working at a company that is as employee-oriented as it is customer-and-sales-oriented has an amazing impact on production, reflected in the high ratings given to the company and to the boss in annual surveys.
The point: there is no endorsement of the concept of karma here, but if one were to have a “positive” (relative) impact on her or his environment and society, the Am-ness of that one will necessarily have to shift to something more peaceful and enjoyable, again, relatively speaking.
The next point: Are you “a boss”? Are you “at the top of a hierarchy”? Would you be willing to make some changes that can have a “positive” impact (relatively speaking) on those working for you? Would you be willing to start that process today?
SOCIETAL CHANGES AND IMPACTS
There being no beliefs here, there is certainly no belief that anyone can change “the world” (which is nothing more than an imagined illusion seated in the minds of every non-realized person). Consider an early pointer offered by Sapolsky in the film “STRESS: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER”:
Again, Sapolsky points out: [Watching alpha male baboons - the dominant, male baboons on a savannah in Kenya - as they abuse those below them in their hierarchy] “You live in a place like this, you’re a baboon, and you only have to spend about three hours a day getting all your calories.
“And if you only have to work three hours a day, you’ve got nine hours of free time every day to devote to making someone else just miserable. [Baboons shrieking] They’re not being stressed by lions chasing them all the time.
“They’re being stressed by each other. They’re being stressed by social and psychological tumult invented by their own species. They’re a perfect model for westernized, stress-related disease.”
The supposedly realized might claim: “I cannot be affected by anything relative. Those who allow others to stress them are the ones at fault, not the stressors.”
(So much for sensing the unicity which allows for feelings of empathy and compassion and allows for some responsiveness to those yet suffering. How soon some forget that they were in that position at some point before having come across the path of someone who taught them to differentiate between “love” and “Love,” someone that already had an ability to feel empathy and compassion and that was willing to be responsive to that one seeking relief from misery and suffering, someone that allowed them to enjoy freedom from the effects of all of the relative nonsense that billions of persons try to handle every day.)
As long as the persons on this planet remain a largely non-realized population - having no understanding at all of Reality or reality - then the “reality” for those at the low levels of their cultures’ hierarchies is that they will abide in the exact same fashion as Sapolsky’s baboons on the savannah:
They will deal with others who are higher up the hierarchy and who have the time and inclination “to devote to making someone else just miserable” and who behave exactly like certain domineering, male baboons that Sapolsky described as follows:
“Some are scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards.” Being non-realized, the masses will be stressed “by social and psychological tumult invented by their own species.”
What is true for some primates functioning in a duality-based social group is true for other similar primates functioning in a duality-based social. Look at one of the current major conflicts on the planet:
When Hamas attacked Israelis several weeks ago, duality-based beliefs and opinions kicked in all around the planet and some concluded that
“the members of Hamas are the good guys, finally reacting to decades of abuse at the hands of the Israelis who are ‘scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards’ and who were given Palestinian land in 1947-1948 by the United Nations and who immediately established a system of apartheid and mistreatment and violence, using their overwhelming power to exploit the Palestinians whose land was taken from them”
while others concluded that
“the citizens of Israel are the good guys (chosen by God as ‘His favorites’ among the 4000 religions on the planet). The Palestinians are ‘scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards. The Jews were sitting around minding their own business and were attacked, and innocent Jews were tortured and slaughtered by the savage members of Hamas. (Dualistically), the Jews are the good guys and the Hamas members are the bad guys.”
Once a person is trapped in a mind filled with duality-based beliefs, then mutually-exclusive thinking happens. “A” is all-good and always good; “B” is all-bad and always bad.”
But the concept of mutually-exclusive is bogus. It is possible that “A” can at time be a bunch of ‘scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards’ and that “B” can also at times be a bunch of “scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards.”
Maharaj said, “Sin and virtue are invariably relative.” He said, “Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end.”
Next, Maharaj said, “The cause of all is . . . all.” Where did the cycle begin? Who suffered abuse and became abusers.
Again, Israeli officials were outraged over U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ comment that the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel “did not happen in a vacuum.”
He and Maharaj would agree wholeheartedly. No happening has ever been rooted in a vacuum. Some cause - or series of causes, actually - have preceded every happening, and all causes can be traced back to the origins of this universe (and to the happenings in any other universes which preceded this one).
There is a beginningless series of precipitating events which result in every subsequent happening.
Maharaj said:
“Like everything mental, the so-called ‘law of causation’ contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. When the source and ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong.”
and
“The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite.”
and
“All happens by itself” (because all that happens occurs as a result of a chain of causes). “Neither the seeker nor the guru do anything. Things happen as they happen. Blame or praise are apportioned later.”
Seldom do humans look for the facts. “Who started it?” can seldom be determined. If, however, the facts eventually show who started it, the masses will ignore the facts and blame the cause on the ones they perceived to be “the bad guys.”
And if one believes that God chose one social, religious group out of 4000 as “His favorite of all,” what more do you need to know?
“Right?” Hummm.
If one tells me he and his followers are at the top of the planet’s religious hierarchy and are #1 out of 4000, I do not say, “Damn! That's great! You're super!! Even special!! Congratulations!!”
Instead, having dealt for over seven decades with those and similar types from many different religions, if I hear “We’re Number One!” I run like hell.
(And that applies to all who claim to be at the top of any hierarchy.)
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.
