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.
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IS YOUR RELATIVE EXISTENCE HAPPENING AS IF YOU ARE DANCING LIGHTLY OR AS IF YOU ARE DOING A STIFF, BOOT-STOMPING, GESTAPO-STYLE MARCH?
Content / Contented Raging
LIGHTNESS or CHAOS AND INSTABILITY
So
emotions are unnatural, and natural feelings can become unnatural when they are
not processed. How are such extended feelings viewed by the non-dualist that
finds little in the relative existence that is more destructive than thinking?
Maharaj puts feelings and thoughts on the same objectionable level:
Maharaj: “Thoughts and feelings are flimsy, transient and meaningless, mere
mental dust that blinds and chokes, yet they are there, obscuring and
destroying.”
The same lightness-blocking fears and depression and anger that can drive persons to act out in unnaturally destructive and unnaturally self-destructive ways can also manifest as feelings that are natural but that do not lead to destructive or self-destructive behaviors if they are processed.
Emotions are never processed though they might occasionally be seen in retrospect to have been insane; the realized can see the potential effects and consequences of extended periods of feeling and can process feelings away before they devolve into emotions and inspire irrational conduct and relative costs.
Emoting results in motion; processing feelings does the opposite. Emotions refuse to hear when the captain “blows the still”; it is the sanity of realization and the presence of light that blow the still, that stop all motion, and that preempt insane and risky and damaging behaviors (all relatively speaking, of course).
[“Blowing
the Still” is a whistle command delivered in the past on British ships. In a
time of threat or potential crisis, the tendency of the crew might be to race
about and panic. “Blowing the Still” signals that all are to pause and to wait
to hear a message from the captain that can help avoid destructive,
panic-driven behavior and that can bring about an orderly response to whatever
must be faced, relatively speaking.]
When the detour comes, the sane find the way back to the path; when emotional
intoxication drives the bus off the road, there is sometimes no coming back.
Some do survive the crash, though they can be left in a helpless or wounded
condition.
That
sometimes requires one who cares enough to offer assistance to come along and
toss a rope that can be used to pull the one that survived such a wreck back
onto the actual path.
The invitation is to shift into the background of motion which, otherwise, can
transport one from feeling . . . to emotion . . . to self-destructive motion.
Maharaj: “ . . . In reality there is only the source, dark in itself, making
everything shine. Unperceived, it causes perception. Unfelt, it causes feeling.
Unthinkable, it causes thought. Non-being, it gives birth to being. It is the
immovable background of motion. Once you are there you are at home everywhere.”
CHAOS AND INSTABILITY PREVENT LIGHTNESS
and
BOTH INDICATE THE PRESENCE OF HEAVINESS
Consider the analysis offered earlier by Maharaj of what can happen when freedom from emotional intoxication is interrupted by emotions that lead to motion (actions) that lead to misery as shared in a conversation earlier.
What you have seen is why non-dualists use the word “selfish” (that is “self-ish”)
to describe the ego-states that toss a huge stone into the previously-still
pond and care not about the effects of the waves on those sharing your pond.
Maharaj: “When it comes to thoughts and feelings [and] desires and fears, you
become acutely self-conscious.”
Focused on the self’s relative needs or desires or fears, the self takes over
and causes the tossing-without-caring to happen. Yet therein lies the reason
that realized non-dualists do not judge and then harm: it is the false self which,
in the absence of authenticity and in the absence of understanding Love, which inspires
such behavior.
A common source of chaos in the formerly peaceful pond begins with duality-based
separation / divorce. Divorces / separations happen are commonplace with those
in one religion separating themselves from those following any other religion;
they happen when white congregations exclude and divorce / separate themselves from black worshippers; they happen when the rich wall themselves off from the non-rich; etc.
Such “apart-from” beliefs will have an effect on all in your pond. Does that call for shame and guilt over tossing the pebble and causing waves to strike others who care? No, it calls for reconciliation via an understanding of the unicity, the oneness.
And
that is actually not about an “A” reconciling with a “b” but is merely once
more becoming awake enough to see what has pushed one’s self into the
foreground of motion.
In reconciling with the authenticity and the oneness, then there will be a
reconciliation with all. In touch with that which abides in the background of
motion, all of the destructive or harmful motion (i.e., relative actions,
relative behaviors) will stop. The “Blowing of the Still” has been heard and
acknowledged. Stillness returns.
What drives one away from the stillness and into motion? That will always prove
to be some emotion, and that emotion will have been rooted in the fears and
desires of one or more personalities. Consciousness will drive motion; abidance
as THAT - even as the AM-ness continues to happen - will allow the shift to the
background of motion where pure witnessing only is happening.
That is the way it is in the true state which Maharaj spoke of: “My true state,
which is whole, undifferentiated, is beyond birth and death. I am never bound
by my body and mind. I am limitless.”
If not bound by body and mind and personality, we will be “bound” to that
still, undifferentiated whole. Then we will be free of personality and
personality-driven motions (actions, behaviors) which cause “divorce” . . . which
cause a sense of separation.
If caught up in the turmoil of emotions, we arrive in that state discussed
earlier when Maharaj explained the situation that can rob one of the stability
that had come previously with the understanding. To understand what leads to
such an unhappy circumstance, consider:
1. At some point, the seeker grasps - if even only for a fleeting moment - the
awareness of the Oneness that cannot be segmented, that will not succumb to “divorce.”
2. The stability comes after touching the stillness of the awareness that is
not aware of. At that point, You enter the background of motion; you witness -
as opposed to being driven into motion / action / reaction - by
personality-based emotions.
3. Then, if pulled back into the foreground of motion which is generated by
consciousness, body, mind, personalities, and personalities’ emotions, one will
divorce oneself from authenticity and peace.
4. That which is “lost” is not the understanding. It was always there; it
remains there but has become temporarily blocked . . . not in reach for the
time being. No, what seems to have been “lost” at that point is the sense of
wholeness which comes with being stabilized in the unicity and in the peace of
your original nature and merely being Love.
That sense of wholeness is only visible and knowable from the platform of the
stillness. If being driven by the Class VI rapids of a river, everything that
appears to be racing by along the sides is a blur. Nothing is clear.
If sitting in a quiet eddy to the side, the chaos of the water can be witnessed, but all remains clear when witnessed from the area of stillness. Having been crashed on the rocks and the rapids, there will eventually be a sense of splintering, of splitting off from, of fragmentation.
The
divorce and all of its ramifications have come. What triggers the motion, the
movement away from the understanding and being pulled back?
Maharaj: “You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts
leave you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling
to them again.”
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.
