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
DEFINING FREEDOM - CONVENTIONAL SOURCES (cont.)
Again,
one dictionary defines freedom as the absence of ceremony and the ability to
live naturally.
If you look objectively at the ceremonies in your own culture, can you see how
many of them involve the same kind of rigidity and stiffness and uniformity
described earlier?
Do you see that your culture would have you moving in
unison, reciting in unison, standing in unison, and / or sitting in unison with
all of the other elements in your culture?
Can you see how many of the rituals and ceremonies of your culture attempt to
make people move about in a lockstep fashion, thinking in the same way, talking
in the same way, all behaving in the same way in every circumstance, and all
behaving in the same rigid and unbending and uniform manner?
Especially in the West, how often during your upbringing were you ever invited
to question what you were told? How many times were you told that you did not
have to blindly accept what leaders say, including religious leaders,
government leaders, or big business leaders?
How much time was spent encouraging you to relax and take it easy vs. time
spent programming and conditioning you to stay as busy as possible in order to
accumulate as much as possible?
If you answer honestly, is it not then also
clear why persons become a slave to authority, become accustomed to blindness
rather than to seeing clearly, and fall right into the go-do-zoom mentality of
their culture?
Is it any wonder that in the U.S. that the “we’ll teach you to relax” industry
is now a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business? Is it any wonder that what they
offer is a limited plan that can help you relax for fifteen minutes in the
morning before leaving the house and entering the rush hour traffic that soon
eliminates whatever degree of relaxation you might have experienced during your
fifteen-minute “meditation time” or “quiet time”?
Is it any wonder that, in the East, a brief period in the samadhi state is
touted? Some have said, “You just don’t get it, mister. Fifteen to thirty
minutes in the samadhi state has curative effects. Science can show you the
actual, positive, physiological changes that occur.”
One person said some time back, “If you would take a few minutes to Google ‘health
benefits + meditation,’ you might learn something.” And the reply was:
“If you might unlearn everything, you might fixate in a constant state of
samadhi without all of that ‘going into samadhi’ and ‘coming out of samadhi’
that you presently experience. Then, whatever ‘benefits’ you speak of would
come not like a light, occasional sprinkling but would manifest more like a
flood that would wash away once and for all whatever it is that you are seeking
to be free of via your fifteen or thirty or sixty-minute sessions.
“But you do not want to be totally free. You want to engage in your
religious-spiritual exercises, and many also want to be seen doing that. The
draw of corporate worship or corporate meetings is that person can publicly
display what they take to be their advanced level of spirituality.”
Meanwhile, they open their services or meetings by singing or chanting words in
unison, and they close their services or meetings by singing or chanting in
unison. They rise in unison, sit in unison, bow their heads in unison, or raise
their heads in unison;
among some whose religion is as far right as their politics, they pray in
unison, then sway in unison, then swoon in unison, then fall about in unison,
and they even roll around on the floor in unison.
And all the while, they think their activities and exercises are making them
free, when their movements are actually limited to the narrow confines of
group-think, group-talk, and group-behavior.
They will come here to explain how free they are (“free as a bird - flying,
diving, turning, swooping as I please”), but they are totally blind to the fact
that their flying, diving, turning and swooping is all orchestrated by the
movements of the surrounding masses.
Thinking they are “individualized and unique,” they are totally unaware of the
fact that they are a part of a synchronized mass, moving up when the masses
move up and moving down when the masses move down, just as some birds do as
they move across the sky in a manner that parallels the movement of all others
among the flock.
Certainly, a bird in such a mass of birds moving in unison - if it could think
and believe - would think and believe that it is free, but the fact is that it
is trapped in the prison of the masses.
And in that state, every action will be
determined by the shadowy masses - never by the light, never by the pure
consciousness that allows the realized to be free of the dark influence of the
light-less masses.
Remain attached to the domesticated and acculturated masses and to the way that
they think and talk and behave and you will have no chance at all of finding
the road not taken by the masses . . . the
one path that leads to Truth.
And remain a part of the masses that will never find the Truth and you will -
as is the case with the masses - never be totally free.
Next, some might consider the upcoming pointers to be a
deviation from the subject matter of this book, but by its end, you will see
that it is not. To be addressed are certain “relative happenings” in order to
offer “an Absolute message”:
the many inquiries that have come in since the body here began experiencing
some abnormal functioning of the heart have been appreciated, but know that the
talk about that happening deals with the plant food body only and has nothing
to do with me.
Just as the conscious-energy which can manifest for a time in a plant can allow
for talk about a plant-cum-consciousness, so too it must be remembered that
this heart issue is happening in a body-cum-consciousness
but that the consciousness involved is not attached at all to the body, either
literally or figuratively.
In fact, the conscious-energy is forever coming and going too. Plant food is
eaten throughout the waking hours to ensure that a “fresh supply” of that
energy is cycling as plant food / elements transform into cells.
Next, understand that the notion that some teacher is “different” and able to “do
this” or “do that” for you must be transcended if one would understand the
functioning of the totality. Maharaj invited seekers to determine everything
that they are not willing to let go of. The invitation is still valid.
First and foremost, are you willing to let go of any attachment to the body
(knowing that does not require that you become “suicidal”)?
Reaching that state of non-attachment to the body is
where the “path” begins, specifically, with a transcending of identification
with the limited and personal and individual plant food body and then with any
attachment to a clump of elements at all.
It is that transcendence that makes the realized appear to be “different,” not
reacting years ago when a doctor spoke of “colon cancer” and not reacting when
there was talk of “only 6 to 24 months to live unless immediate action is
taken.”
[Note: The absence of “reaction” does not eliminate the possibility of action,
but whatever actions that might happen among the realized regarding these body
issues will be based in logic and reason and will not be driven by the desires of
persons with financial and god-complex-based agendas who would trigger a state
of emotional intoxication in order to control people.]
Again, does non-attachment to the body mean that the realized are irrational,
illogical, suicidal? Hardly. Just as the ego-state of “The Spouse” (which
egotism soon upgrades to the status of “The Super Spouse”) can be transcended
without divorce, so too can body identification be abandoned without destroying
the body.
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.
