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.
IN TERMS OF “REALIZATION” AS A NON-DUAL PROCESS, THE MATH AIN’T MATHING
“The math ain’t mathing.”
Taraji P. Henson
“You do not need to allow yourself to be taught more; you do not need to work more and more in order to learn more and more; you do not need to add to the body of nonsense and BS which ‘they’ passed on to you via conditioning and programming. You need less of everything, not more of anything. What you need to do is subtract, not add. You need to un-learn; you need to be un-taught.”
--floyd
Ruby Bridges: “Racism is a grown-up disease. Let’s stop using our kids to spread it.”
Floyd: “The same applies to all that grown-ups add when forming the minds of
kids, including hate, racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, Christian
nationalism, beliefs about ‘different from’ and therefore ‘better-than,’ and
(per Maharaj) ‘ignorance, stupidity, and insanity’.”
“Go
forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
. . . “Go home, take charge of your father’s business, look after your parents in their old age. Marry the girl who is waiting for you; be loyal, be simple, be humble. Hide your virtue, live silently.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“ . . . Question wisely. You will find you know nothing for sure - you trust on hearsay.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“A little learning can be a dangerous thing.”
--Alexander Pope
“Anything short of total un-learning is a far-more-dangerous thing, relatively speaking.”
--floyd
“For the supposedly realized to deny the AM-ness is just as delusional as it is for the non-realized to identify solely with the Am-ness.”
--floyd
Living is life’s only purpose.
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
I’m going to pause to share the answer I gave to a man this past week who said that he has been reading my blog for fifteen years or more. I replied that, “in that case, if fourteen of those years were spent ‘dancing lightly’ with me through the years, no problem, but if they were spent obsessively seeking more rather than ‘getting rid of it all’ . . . problem.”
He said that he had been in the group which I characterize as the “I’ve got it! I’ve got! Damn, I don’t got it!” types.
He said he’d been trying to find a way to be in relationships or marriages and avoid the irritation which came so often. He noted that I had been divorced and ‘alone’ for years (going on twenty-five years as of this writing).
I said: “Well, there were some weeks or months of co-habitation going on during the decades, but none of those events lead to any extended engagements. So, it’s time to discuss ‘silence’.”
Much talk around “relationships” and “marriage” involves “the value of communication.”
Is it possible that communication might actually be overvalued? What about anything else which interrupts the silence? Noise. Loud music. Shouting when partying or arguing, etc.
Maharaj’s take:
“No particular thought can be a part of the natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. In the natural state, one reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience, or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.”
“Shift your attention from words to silence and you will hear.” (Wow!)
“Peace and silence, silence and peace - this is the way beyond.”
The unchangeable can only be realized in silence. Once realized, it will deeply affect the changeable, itself remaining unaffected.”
“You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need.”
One such bogus need among the masses is the belief that they must have “some company.”
Henry David Thoreau said, “I have a great deal of company in my house, especially in the morning, when nobody calls.” What form might that “company” take - that form which does not require anyone else in the flat or house?
Many who visited Maharaj in his loft revealed the fact that they had not yet grasped the intricacies of the understanding when they pushed Maharaj to remarry after his wife Sumatibai died in the 1940’s.
Many who understand the joy Br’er Rabbit felt after tricking Br’er Fox to toss him into a briar patch will understand Maharaj’s reply when asked why he did not remarry.
He said that he did remarry, the very day that his (often bossy) wife died, reporting that “The day she died, I married freedom.”
That happened in my case as well when “The Ex” left. Some have likely heard about the man who said, “My wife left me yesterday and took my dog. Damn I’m gonna miss that dog.”
I flashed back to those days I spent with my Cherokee Grandmother and how grand a role silence played in the maintenance of her sense of peace.
When not with her, I lived the rest of the year in an inner city, gang-infested slum, and there was neither silence nor peace there, either in the neighborhood or in our home.
In the mid-60’s, Simon and Garfunkel released a popular song which resonated deeply within me. To this day when I hear their lyrics glorifying silence, I see the look of contentment which was always on Grandmother’s face when she was in the silence.
For a time after “The Ex” left, the silence in my house seemed deafening, but in a short while, it seemed the most precious gift I had ever been given. To this day I make certain that an environment where the silence dominates is maintained.
“Next,” I said to the man, “as with every happening, Maharaj’s point that ‘the cause of all is all’ should make clear that so many causes can contribute to the irritation which you’ve been concerned about.”
“The way you feel and behave can be driven by hundreds of causes. It was a long journey for me to finally find the answer to one of the most pressing irritants during my early days. A major cause was my misophonia.”
“Your what?”
Many are aware that the one called ‘my father’ had a short fuse and a long belt, both of which gave me so much pain and suffering and trauma during my pre-teen years. That trauma was a setup to hate him and everything about him, including one particular noise he made that was irritating as hell.
Every night for a decade, mom would prepare this snack before bedtime. In an extra large tea glass, she crumbled up pieces of cornbread and then filled the glass with buttermilk. He had an extra long, extra large spoon that he used to eat that snack.
He would bang the spoon again the side of the glass as he mixed the cornbread and butter milk concoction, scoop up a large spoonful of the mess, and then slurp it off the spoon, using his mouth as a human vacuum cleaner.
Bang. Bang. SLURP. SLURP. Bang. Bang. SLURP. SLURP. And there was no escaping that obnoxious sound. I wondered if I would have a decent chance before a judge to plead justifiable homicide and avoid prison.
I could not leave the house at the late hour when his snack was presented, and in the two-bedroom home, my parents had one bedroom, my sister had the other, and I slept on a couch until the age of eleven when she finally left home for college and I finally got a room to myself. There was no placed for me to go to to escape the sound.
So even in that room at night, I had to deal with a maddening Edgar-Allan-Poe-Like-Tell-Tale-Heart noise, growing louder and louder. I would jump onto the bed and put a pillow over my ears but it only seemed to make the sound resonant more inside my head.
“My misophonia was controlling the way I felt. As with the sounds that Poe’s murderer thought he was hearing - the sounds of a beating heart which were increasing steadily from beneath the floorboards of his house - the slurping sounds in our 550-square-foot house were both maddening and inescapable.
I told the man, “When people like you are trying to escape the irritants in their lives, many have no clue about what the deeper forces at play might be.”
Misophonia is just one cause of the desire to escape the irritating sounds which happen in relationships. Misophonia can result in a reaction to sounds such as dripping water, chewing, smacking while chewing, snapping gum, pencil tapping, clicking a ball point pen, snoring, or other sounds which can become someone’s ‘trigger sounds.’
There were plenty such sounds being generated by my partner, and those sound were not missed with her departure. Their absence was welcome, as was the resulting silence.
There is no cure for misophonia, but silence can be an effective deterrent. There is no cure for some of the “much ado about nothing” shouting arguments which person engage in, but the silence - which becomes a preferred mode among the realized - can allow peace to manifest.
I ended many an argument before it could take hold with the simple words, “You know what . . . you may be right,” followed by my silence.
To catalogue the causes of irritation in the U.S. or any other nation would be impossible, but the fact is that realization can eliminate many - but not all - of those causes. In some cases, the services of a trained, professional therapist might be required.
Realization is not a cure-all, but it can certainly eliminate much of the BS which plagues persons and their “relationships.”
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.
