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.
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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.
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“I am offering you exactly what you need - awakening. You are not hungry and you need no bread. You need cessation, relinquishing, disentanglement. What you believe you need is not what you need. Your real need I know, not you. You need to return to the state in which I am - your natural state.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
(From Friday’s post)
What have been the two types of reactions to that pointer? Some responses heard here have included: “There’s no cause to be mean about it” and “I prefer a teacher who expresses love, not hate” and “There’s no need to be so direct and hurtful.”
So those in the first group who find Maharaj’s words offensive might ask:
“WHO - what egotism-supported ego-state - is offended by Maharaj’s words or the
words of anyone else?”
and
“WHO is calling Maharaj’s words ‘mean’ when they amount to a spot-on diagnosis
that can lead to identifying the real problem and then prescribing the proper
Medicine for that which ails a person?”
and
“WHO wants a teacher who is indirect and evasive rather than direct?”
Maharaj: “I am offering you
exactly what you need - awakening. You are not hungry and you need no bread.
You need cessation, relinquishing, disentanglement. What you believe you need
is not what you need. Your real need I know, not you. You need to return to the
state in which I am - your natural state.”
When a doctor some fifteen years ago diagnosed the presence of cancerous and
pre-cancerous polyps, he did not say, “There is a little boo-boo that you might
want me try to make so away” or “You might want to find a holy man and pray for
your boo-boo’s to go away”
or
“Tonight, you might go outside and look into the heavens and wish upon a star that your boo-boo’s will magically go away.” He was quite direct when he said, “You have polyps. Some are cancerous. It is clear that I must excise them, and the sooner . . . the better.”
Was
he being “mean”? “Hateful?” Too “direct”? Too “insensitive”? Or was he merely
stating the facts - and stating them quite clearly - regarding my condition?
No. There was nothing “personal” about his words, any more than there is
anything “personal” about Maharaj’s words. His words are actually about an
illusion, so WHO could be offended by that? Only one who is taking himself /
herself to be a person.
If Maharaj was not talking to a person but to the blocked consciousness in his listeners, then “ignorance” or “stupidity” are not describing a particular person but are actually describing one’s beliefs that are stored in an illusory “mind.”
If Maharaj was not talking to a person but to the blocked consciousness in his listeners, then “insane” is not describing a particular person but is describing belief-based thoughts and words and deeds that are being driven subconsciously by assumed personas. (Thus, “personality disorders” or “insanity.”)
Here, many recently did some cultural stuff and celebrated what they called “my 76th ‘birthday.” I played along.
In fact, though, parts of the plant food body called “floyd” are forever coming and going. The oldest part of outer skin is only 28 days old and is shedding and being replaced as we speak;
the stomach lining is only a few days old, and some parts of it are going away right now and being replaced; the conscious-energy within is only a few days old and is constantly being replenished, coming and going; etc., etc., etc. Hardly any of the parts are really 76 years old.
That said, what has been witnessed throughout the decades are the useless and failed experiences of many subsumed in their whole “journey business” and being taught dogma and “holy things” and “spiritual things” . . . . or whatever they are involved with. The takeaway?
Most who get involved in religious or spiritual cults or twelve step cults or political cults do not need to be in them for very long before their warped minds send them off on tangents whereby they take over whatever process is being recommended and engage in adding “side” investigations, extra trappings, embellishments, superfluities, trimmings, flourishes, and tossing n all sorts of endless blah-blah-blah stuff, etc.
A man I was working with in the late 80’s came to the house to complain about a man in a step group which the complainant had joined six months earlier. As with most cults, the 12-step group he joined soon lead him to become a worshipper of “Their Great Leader” named Bill.
Turns out the man in the group who had provoked the complainant sitting before me (a so-called “alcoholic” named “Phil”) had been picked up by “The Great Leader Bill” some 40 or so years earlier while passed out in the Bowery in New York City. They would spend many years together after Phil “sobered up.”
What had Phil said that provoked the offended, angry man in my house? Well, a newcomer who had become a worshiper of Bill heard about Phil having spent a lot of time with Bill and asked in his most awe-struck, worshipful voice, “Phil, what was Bill really like?”
Phil looked him straight in the eye and said, “Just like every other goddamn drunk you’ll ever meet.” The awe-struck one seemed to go into shock and then into a state of anger.
He has missed Phil’s point completely, the point that Phil was really asking: “What part of knowing what Bill was 'really like' could possibly help you recover from the Addictive Personality Disorder?”
In other words, stick to what is relevant and stop going off on useless tangents. Stop talking and listen instead.
Some surely asked members of “the Peoples Temple” cult, “What is Jim Jones really like?” only to have awe-struck members of that cult begin to sing Jones’s praises.
None said, “He’s a damn sociopathic and psychopathic con artist who is capable of having every members of the cult commit suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid and / or commit murder by force-feeding the poisoned Kool-Aid to their children.
To be awe-struck by anyone is to be fooled. Realization is about being freed of the learned ignorance and insane beliefs which render a person susceptible to being fooled.
Stay focused on that task alone.
Thus,
I led the angry man to the door and sent him away with this consideration: “The
truth will set you free, but it’s going to really piss you off first.”
The invitation here regarding beliefs is to begin at the beginning by asking, “Why
should ideas, concepts, emotional intoxication, and attitudes / beliefs be cast
aside? What would be the ‘payoff,’ relatively speaking?”
To understand that the answer is to be free and to end all personal suffering and misery, the task might be easier. Holding onto beliefs and behaviors that are rooted in senseless programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination makes no sense;
yet
if one is in denial about one’s relative state and condition, then the truth
shall never be seen and the Sickness shall never be treated.
Many say, “Sometimes I see the insanity … but,” after which there is a return
to the same old thinking and talking and behavioral patterns and no permanent change
is sought.
Moreover, the occasional admission that certain actions that were driven by insane beliefs does not assure that the steps will be taken that are required to be free of the effects of ignorance and insanity.
Admissions
such as, “I can’t believe I did that” or “I can’t believe I was dumb enough to
fall for that” or “That was really stupid on my part” typically provide little
or no respite from the same old patterns that are soon repeated.
Some even say, “I’m convinced I should do this or seek that or change this,”
yet such comments are usually followed by “ . . . but” and then by a return to
the old ways. Again, projecting one’s relative faults and seeing the insanity
is easy when seeing it in “others.”
How many times in a day do many use the phrase, “Look at that idiot” or “He’s crazy” or “She’s totally nuts”? And they may be on to something. Yet most often, persons only see the insanity of “others” and seldom admit to their own, so their own insane behaviors and insane talk almost always continue.
Occasionally
“seeing it” - and then forgetting what was seen - changes nothing when the
power of programming, conditioning, etc. are still in play.
Consider the parallel: Pavlov’s dogs were not “crazy.” Prior to conditioning,
those dogs only salivated when smelling something they could consume, as is
natural. But after conditioning, they behaved in the most unnatural way
imaginable:
they salivated when they heard a sound rather than when they smelled food. Conditioning can even drive dogs to behave unnaturally. Why should humans fare any better after conditioning?
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.
