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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“A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.”
-Yeshu’a
“Self-identification with the body-mind is the poison that brings bondage.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.”
--Sri Nisargadatta 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.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Addressing “The Big Four”: The Sources of Instability and Being Unstable Mentally
(Continued)
If organic and chemical and situational factors are not at the root of instability and mood swings, then personality can be considered as a source. All personality is rooted in duality, and one binary set that is rooted in duality and that will generate a sense of instability and mood swing is the “less vs. more” pair.
Persons / personas never have “enough,” much less “plenty”
or “too much.” With that subconscious belief, how could anyone ever feel
fulfilled, and in the absence of that, how could one ever assume a position of
neutrality in place of an assumed identity
The result is that persons live unnaturally or supernaturally in their quest to accumulate “more”; in their disparagement over not having “enough” or “something needed” or “that which once was but has been lost”; and in their endless longing for “continuity of personas” and for “continuity of body and mind.”
The guide sharing the “Nisarga Yoga” understanding, which offers up natural living as an alternative to the above fiction-based existence, understands that there are times when it is natural for the deer to feel fear and / or anger and / or grief of sorts.
If someone were beating you and abusing you and you claimed that you had no fear or anger around that, your claims would not be evidence of “realization” as much as evidence of denial, as evidence of one or more personality disorders, and / or as evidence of insanity.
As far as the non-dual understanding are concerned, eliminating the relative consequences of the bastardized consciousness (and eliminating the subsequent human suffering during the manifestation) provide the sole rationale for attaining the understanding. That is one of the most basic elements of the understanding.
A visitor to the site said: Among seekers who have moved farther along the “path,” (that is, beyond the assumption of religious and spiritual personas, which are adopted at the third step to realization) it can be understood that spiritual practices are not helpful? Why?
Farther along the “journey,” it becomes understood that there is no “one” to be helped and because “practices” merely reinforce a belief in newly-assumed ego-states, including “The Good Person,” “The Religious One,” or “The Spiritual Giant.”
However, such practices can be used for a time if they involve (a) reading or hearing and then (b) considering in the silence the pointers which can lead to realization.
(If one cannot visit a guide, as is often the case, then one can read the words spoken or written when it is the re-purified or unblocked consciousness which speaks.)
As for “religious or spiritual practices in general,” they are not a connection with pure Reality since you are that pure reality. To speak of “connection” is duality (“this” being connected to “that”).
Also, such practices, if clung to, can become a source of insanity or discontentment since they can lead persons to believe that they are being “connected to” or “with” something rather than knowing the unicity that you are . . . the unicity that all is. Experience that, and then even “The Experiencer” can disappear.
In regards to spiritual exercises and work and practices, Maharaj offered the following pointer to those who had moved as far along the “path” as the third step: “Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false.”
In the end, it is seen that all concepts are false. It is seen that all personas (including the “bad” ones that might have been discarded as well as the “good” ones assumed in their place during the religious or spiritual phase) are based in lies and self-deception.
To help understand that sense of having “gotten it” for a
period before there was a “shift” whereby one returns to concepts and beliefs
and acceptance of false personality identities, Maharaj explained why persons
seem to grasp the understanding and then seemingly “lose” it:
“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.”
Regarding whether you should focus or refocus on your
former traditional spiritual exercises, he said, “Whatever spiritual things you
aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion
All this is happening in the objective world. All is dishonesty. There is no truth in this fraud.” It is suspected that you have done plenty of such exercises for many years, but where did those “disciplines” get you, in the end?
As mentioned earlier, a co-host of this site in the past said: “This has left a view of a different experience of reality.”
The next phase is to see that there is no experiencer. Be rid of the concepts and beliefs and acceptance of false personality identities once and for all and revel in the freedom of the non-attachment that happens when the subject-object witness merely observes all of the supposed happenings of “this world” and when the “Pure Witnessing” observes the Oneness.
At the point of full realization, it is understood that there is no “one” to be happy or sad and that there is only the consciousness that witnesses. The question then is, is the consciousness witnessing all exactly as it is, or has the pure consciousness been blocked from witnessing purely?
If the latter is the case, then all perceptions are in error and unhappiness is happening because (A) “they” fooled you first and now you are fooling yourself and because (B) they robbed you and now you are robbing yourself.
Find whatever it is that you are fooling yourself about. Find the opportunity and the possibility that they took away from you by their warped and ignorance-based programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing and indoctrination.
The result of the blocked consciousness is that persons (the non-realized) are aware of nothing as it actually is. If the consciousness has been re-purified, it sees clearly (which then results in a sense of oneness and peace).
If the pure consciousness is “warped” or “blocked,” then it will sense the misery of separation and aloneness. If it believes that false identities from the past were real, then persons will mourn “what was but no longer is.”
The former co-host also once asked: “What pointers do you have at this stage? I am continuing to gently ignore the mind stream and using the ‘I am’. I am also reading “I AM THAT” and your blog and your books as these texts seem to break the solidity of the mind-body-personality. Are these spiritual practices I should abandon? They seem helpful - in fact they are my only connection with pure reality and help me feel sane.”
Of course if a seeker cannot visit a guide, then the reading of the words as consciousness speaks - and then taking those into silent contemplation - is the alternative. Understand, however, that the process of considering pointers requires none of the common “religious” or “spiritual” practices that billions engage in regularly.
Regarding the words of Maharaj, “Read I Am That if you like, but understand that those transcripts were from the early words spoken by this speck of consciousness.
The later collections of pointers from this speck - especially the words uttered during the final months of that manifestation - are far more to the point and reveal a far higher degree of speaking coming from the totally unblocked consciousness.
Eventually, he would advise seekers to stop reading I AM THAT, period.
(In those “I Am That” days, Maharaj was still hosting bhajans and sharing the types of spiritual talks that were being offered by his contemporaries rather than the type of sharings that came via the consciousness later on. Later, he would urge seekers to abandon their structured and rigid “spiritual living” and to abide in a spontaneous, natural - that is, nisarga - fashion only.)
In the end, he rejected all such game-playing and spoke far more purely and far more directly and far more unequivocally (even “abruptly” or “brusquely,” some would claim).
Yet those final talks are the ones that offer the greatest clarity and serve up the understandings in the most straightforward version of the Direct Path manner.
Further, note that the aim of his talks are the aim of the sharings here as well: to provide a means by which “human suffering” can end and a means by which a peaceful, happy, AS IF existence can happen for the remainder of the manifestation of any given speck of consciousness, ending those seeming “shifts” between the duality of “happiness” and “unhappiness.”
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.
