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.
OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF TOTAL FREEDOM
“ . . .You are afraid of freedom!”
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Realization
is but the opposite of ignorance.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“You want peace and harmony in the world, but refuse to have them in yourself.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
NATIONS WITH A WARRIOR MENTALITY vs. NATIONS WITH A PRO-PEACE
MENTALITY
Iceland has maintained the title of “the most peaceful country” since the first Global Peace Index launched 13 years ago and is the only Nordic country that is more peaceful now than in 2008.
While many might consider Germany or England (which is also a Germanic nation) to be the most warlike, others agree with U.S. President Jimmy Carter who said that the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world.
Beginning with the American Revolutionary War, the US has been involved in 107 wars since it gained its independence. It's also one of the countries with the most involvement in 21st-century conflicts.
For decades the English used the colony which would develop into “the U.S.” as a dumping ground for the murderers, rapists, highway robbery men, etc. (except for the 30% whom they hanged soon after conviction).
That notwithstanding, the authorities in the U.K. sent over 70% of the people convicted of major crimes in England to this “American colony.” (Australia was a second nation that the Brits used for “dumping.”)
One upper class Brit said that “transportation serves the purpose of ‘draining the Nation of its offensive Rubbish’.” His plan worked. More than 15% of the criminal passengers placed on British ships died before ever reaching land. Those who survived were sold into slavery to wealthy plantation owners.
Talk about setting the stage for the development a nation with a warrior mentality.
How could the warrior mentality of a nation ever be eradicated when, at
community gatherings and in churches and in schools, the masses participate in
ceremonies that celebrate such “special” days as the Fourth of July, Memorial
Day, Veterans Day, VE-Day, V-J Day, Armed Forces Day, Pearl Harbor Day, Flag
Day, and even the National Day of Prayer and Freedom Day and Loyalty Day and
Patriots Day (on 9/11, of course).
Yes, in the U.S., there are ceremonies that even celebrate national defeats and
national humiliations such as happened at Pearl Harbor and in New York City on
September 11, 2001. And those ceremonies are especially effective at generating
nation pride and xenophobia over defeat and the perpetuation of national anger
and resentment.
Ceremonies, the effects of which only a small number will ever recognize, rob
persons of freedom, and that includes freedom from delusion, distortion,
arrogance, anger, resentment, and a host of other effects that generate
personality disorders and even insanity.
But the attachment to (and even love of) ceremonies - be they religious,
spiritual, or nationalistic - will not be abandoned except among the few that
are realized at any given time on this planet. Even as the non-realized raise
their voices in unison and sing of their freedom, they are totally imprisoned
in ways they will never understand. So it is.
Therefore, the discussion regarding “defining freedom and conventional sources” will continue.
To review: One dictionary defines freedom as the absence
of ceremony and the ability to live naturally.
Ceremonies are intended to inspire the masses to recite in unison; to knell and
rise in unison; to place a hand over their hearts in unison; to pledge in unison;
among some religions, to drink blood and body (symbolically for some, in
supposed actuality for others); and to march in lockstep - including physically
and mentally and emotionally and spiritually.
Cultures find anathema those who take the road less traveled, who march in a
relaxed manner to the beat of a different drummer, or who look widespread
insanity and mass ignorance in the eye and shout: “NO!”
In cultures around the globe, uniformity is rewarded, phoniness is rewarded,
participation in ceremonies is rewarded, acceptance of commonly-held (but
false) beliefs is rewarded, form over substance is rewarded, the unnatural is
rewarded, and the supernatural is rewarded. Spurned are authenticity,
genuineness, substance over form, realness, and that which is natural.
Visitors from sixty-two different nations have made contact here; therefore,
the invitation again is to see what ceremonies are being used in those
sixty-one other cultures to block freedom and peace and sanity as the
discussion here deals with the adverse effects of U.S. ceremonies.
Consider the part of the definition above which suggests that freedom involves
the ability to live naturally rather than ceremonially and unnaturally.
Consider the difference in the relative existence as lived by those who are
restricted, uptight, retentive, and unnatural vs. the unrestricted, the
relaxed, the free and the natural.
For example, how natural is it to engage in ceremonies that require persons to
walk the way soldiers walk: to be stiff, to be anal-retentive, to think and
talk and walk and behave in a lockstep fashion? By contrast, see how, in
nature, such stiff and uptight and inflexible and laborious and anal behavior
does not happen at all.
Would sane people want to gather together and participate in ceremonies which
endorse cookie-cutter-type dressing and walking and thinking and behaving in a stiff
and rigid and inflexible manner, as soldiers and police and others do? Or would
sane people rather gather together and relax and take it easy?
Could stiff and rigid ceremonial behavior ever be considered
natural, or would relaxing be more “according to nature”?
Could taut and inflexible ceremonial behavior, by any stretch of the imagination,
be considered natural?
In each of the pairs of options above, the first illustrates the way that the
non-realized move through the relative existence; the second shows the natural
way, the way that the realized Nisargan functions throughout the remainder of
the post-realization relative existence.
Of course the Nisargan manner is not only about lying back, sleeping and
relaxing; however, no matter what happens - working, husbanding, wifing,
driving, walking, parenting, whatever - it happens in that same relaxed,
non-retentive, laid back fashion.
Why do cultures dream up such stiff and rigid ways of walking / marching?
Because if they can encourage some persons in the culture to look alike, dress
alike, and walk alike, then they can train then to think alike, talk alike, and
behave alike.
Then, the leaders in the culture can report that those people are heroes
because they follow orders exactly and without question and are willing to die
(but preferably kill) for whatever the culture defines as valuable and
necessary.
Afterwards (after programming and conditioning), they can put those persons on
display in local and national ceremonies and parades as they model, for all to
see, their rigid and stiff and retentive manner, subliminally giving widespread
credibility to their totally unnatural way of functioning / performing.
The leaders / programmers / conditioners can have those persons put on public
display and demonstrate the way that the onlookers should also think in unison,
talk in unison, and behave in the same rigid and unbending and uniform manner,
questioning nothing and following orders and never relaxing.
How interesting that the term “standing at attention” actually requires a
rigidity that removes all ability to pay any attention at all as some lock
their knees and cut off circulation and faint. And that is a metaphor for the
way that the masses function:
they are programmed and conditioned to be rigid, to be puppet-like, to be
clones of each other and turned into automatons by their leaders, to become “locked
up” (i.e., not free and not natural) and to lose the ability to circulate
freely and actually lose all consciousness in the end.
How long can the difference in “free and natural” vs. “locked up and unnatural”
be ignored? For most, until the end of the manifestation. For you, the
difference can be understood if you complete in order all of the steps which
can shift the consciousness from identification with the false to an
understanding of the Absolute and the natural functioning of the totality.
Then, you can be free and abide is the nisarga (natural) fashion.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
THE NEWEST OFFER
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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.
