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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OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF TOTAL FREEDOM
“ . . .You are afraid of freedom!”
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Realization is but the
opposite of ignorance.”
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Please consider:
Maharaj said it many ways but the key pointer he offered about “realization” is this: “Realization is but the opposite of ignorance.”
To realize requires giving up all beliefs which are a part of the “learned ignorance” pool, and the pool of learned ignorance equals the totality of all beliefs.
No human infant has ever passed through a canal and exited an internal environment and been ejected into an external environment and begun its relative existence with a system of beliefs already in place.
Under normal conditions, each child enters with an active brain, but none enter with “the mind part” having been filled with thousands of false beliefs. such beliefs will be taught during the coming years via the use of warped programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing and indoctrination.
What a nightmarish fate awaits each child. Now the biological form of programming is necessary, but the social form of programming is not. The biological programming sends out a child that, if normal, is already pre-wired to be aware of the basic biological drives: hunger and thirst and the drive to survive will register first; later, the sex drive will be triggered; other drives may develop along the way.
But it is the use of six methods above in italics - when used in a social context - that builds obstacles which block or hinder the finding of peace and stability and a sense of oneness and freedom from the “ignorance and stupidity and insanity” (the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, per Maharaj) which come with the use of social programming, etc.
The solution? Maharaj said, “I have no mind.” Right up to taking mahasamadhi, he obviously had a viable brain working away and doing what a brain is supposed to do, but he was able to be rid of what he had been taught by being un-taught and by “un-learning” all of the concepts, ideas, perspectives, views, notions, impressions, theories, etc. (which can all be summarized as “beliefs”).
If realized, one comes to understand that there is no such thing as “my beliefs.” It can be said that “there were only ‘their beliefs’ which were taught to me and which I unquestioningly accepted as truth and adopted as ‘my own beliefs.’ But there are no ‘my own beliefs.’ There are only the hand-me-down beliefs which are passed along to trusting people or to naïve people or to people who are totally asleep to reality.”
Realization is about letting go of all of the nonsensical beliefs which have been believed to be true and factual; they are not.
Yesterday’s post ended with this:
And that lack of willingness to let
go is not confined to the billions among the masses who are trapped in the
ignorance of their prized, myth-based dogma. Some of the most dogmatic of all
persons are self-declared “Advaitins” or “Traditional Advanta Vedantins” or “Pseudo-Advaitins”
or “Neo-Vedantins” or “Neo-Advaitins” or “Direct Path Advaitins” or “The Real
Advaita Vedantins.”
It might be asked, “Of which version of Advaita Vedanta do they speak?
Traditional, neo-Advaita, neo-Vedanta, Pseudo-Advaita, Direct Path?” and “Of
which yoga do they speak? Hatha, bhakti, raja, gnana, nisarga, or some other?”
Is their issue that they think they know all there is to know about Advaita
Vedanta though they have been exposed to only one method of teaching or to only
one yoga?
Did they reach the mountaintop with a pack mule carrying their equipment? Does
that mean that one whose equipment was carried by a sherpa and is standing on
the same mountaintop has not really reached the mountaintop because he / she
did not arrive in the exact, same fashion as the one deciding who has reached
the mountaintop and who has not?
Is it possible that the one who is not free at all and who is making such
judgments is having to look upward, not really having reached a mountaintop at
all? Is it possible that the truly Realized see no such levels of “higher vs.
lower” . . . “top vs. not-top”?
Or does it mean that the judgmental types have no freedom at all, that they are
driven by their egotism-supported ego-states to move through the relative
existence while making their uninvited visits to one place after another,
telling all who are different from them how wrong they are?
Is the preoccupation with such differences that drives their “me vs. them”
campaigning actually evidence of how totally embroiled in duality they really
are? To use Maharaj’s words, what is it that they are not willing to ‘let go of’?”
The role of “The Knower”? The ego-state of “The Spiritual Giant Who Is Cursed
to Walk Among Spiritual Lilliputians?”
Are there roles that you, similarly, prefer not to “let go of”? Could Maharaj
be correct? Could it be that if you were truly objective, you might have to
admit that, indeed, you are to some degree afraid of freedom (at least freedom
that is the only real type of freedom that there is, namely, total freedom)?
Beyond the billions of persons who are lost in the dream of the superstition-based
teachings of the major sky cults, consider also those who might stumble upon the
teachings here but are lost in the role and in the agenda of “The Real Advaita
Vedantin” mentioned above:
Is there any real freedom exhibited by their behavior that is so obviously
driven by the subconscious agenda of a persona? The questions to be asked
include . . .
. . . “WHO” (what false ego-states) are
so attached to personhood that they have no clue at all that their thoughts and
words and actions are determined by their egotism-driven persona(s)?
. . . WHO (what false ego-states) are so
lost in the illusory sense of “having Realized” that they cannot see that they
are not free at all?
DEFINING FREEDOM FROM A SITE VISITOR
“Freedom is impersonal - how can you expect to find it when you are so attached
to your personhood? Freedom is formless - how can you expect to find it when
you are committed to your form? Freedom is limitless - how can you expect to
find it if you are defined by what is particular and limited? Freedom is without
attributes - how can you expect to find it when you define yourself according
to your characteristics?”
DEFINING FREEDOM FROM CONVENTIONAL SOURCES
And what are some of the conventional definitions of freedom that are offered
in a variety of dictionaries? Here are a few:
a. the power to act or speak or think without externally-imposed restraints;
b. exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.;
c. the power to determine action without restraint;
d. exemption from the presence of anything specified - for example, freedom
from fear;
e. ease or facility of movement or action; and,
f. in philosophy, the power to exercise choice and make decisions without
constraint from within or without; autonomy; self-determination.
Yet consider: when personality determines thought, word and deed - which
personality does - then none of the above forms of freedom can manifest. If one
is driven by the agenda of a personality, then there is no power to act or
speak or think without the externally-imposed restraints of personality.
The person cannot be exempt from the external control and interference and
regulation of one or more agenda-driven personas.
Living under the auspices of personality, there can be no ability to determine action without restraint.
Living under the auspices of personality, there is no exemption from the
presence of such personality-specified aspects such as desire and fear.
Living under the auspices of personality (which determines all thoughts and all
words and all actions) there can be no ease or facility of movement or action.
Living under the auspices of personality, there can be no power to exercise
choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without.
As long as all is self-determined (determined by the false self) then there can
be no Self-determination (determined by the natural, spontaneous aspects of the
unblocked, pure consciousness).
Realization is, among other things, about freedom from ignorance and
irrationality and insanity . . . about
being restored to sanity.
What could be more ignorant and irrational and insane that believing that one is free when one is bound up in personality, imprisoned by delusions, trapped in the cage of one’s “mind,” and living under the auspices of egotism-driven ego-states?
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.
