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
“Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare. Yet there is hope, because the moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity. This is the function of the Guru - to make us see the madness of our daily living. Life makes you conscious, but the [guide] makes you aware.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
“It is impossible to state the truth. It is possible for a guide to point the way to the truth for seekers and for seekers to become able - and willing - to differentiate between the true and the false.”
--Floyd
As this series comes to a conclusion, consider:
Freedom is not about hanging onto this or that; it is about being willing to give it all up, including all accumulations and any and all identification.
Look at all of the religions and philosophies and ideologies and political movements and spiritual movements which exist or which have ever existed and note what they had, and have, in common:
What they have in common is a belief that people need to accumulate, need to learn more, need to study their dogma and memorize it and adopt it as a guide to living; need to think the way their philosophers think;
need to accept their spiritual practices and doingness as obligatory and compulsory and essential rather than optional; need to adopt their political views or their culture-war beliefs, ad infinitum.
What the trillions of people who have sought
in addition to what they have already tried via those institutions and organizations
and associations is this:
they have not become aware of the fact that of all of the religions and philosophies and ideologies and political movements and spiritual movements which billions have been affiliated with, only one outside their venues has offered a totally opposite suggestion.
That one? Non-duality. The true non-dual message endorses de-accumulation rather than accumulation.
At any given time - including at this very
moment - many have been (and continue to be) trapped in the most horrific
circumstances on the planet, relatively speaking, exposed to famine and abject
poverty and war and rape and murder.
The realized feel that pain and suffering; the realized, as Love, would that it
would end; but the realized know that as long as there are persons, there shall
be conflict and stupidity and insanity and relative harm and relative
imprisonment.
Yet as high as the numbers are of those suffering physically, the most widespread
suffering comes to the billions who are trapped in their mirages. If you want
to know what that illusory prison looks like, watch a street mime in Paris that
is seemingly trapped inside an invisible box, raising his palms and pushing on
one side after another in an effort to escape and be free.
Such mimes are Everyman / Everywoman, trapped
as if by an invisible force which is identifiable as “the human,
nonsense-filled mind, personified.”
The Pure Witnessing can see that there is no prison, that there is total
freedom. You understand full well that the mime could walk away from his
perceived entrapment whenever he chooses (except for the fact that adopting a
persona ends any opportunity to choose).
You know that the glass box is not real, is mere fantasy, is just a part of the
play-acting, is a figment of the imagination. Yet look how real it seems to the
one trapped in the illusion. Notice how clueless and perplexed he is (and how
clueless and perplexed all persons are) when lost in the dream . . . when trapped in an imaginary prison.
Yet the non-realized live life in the fashion of that mime and believe that the
glass box is real, though it is only an invention of the mind.
But how even inventions can bring mental misery and emotional suffering! So it is when those separated from Reality and reality seemingly live in the imaginary prison of false beliefs, of false identities, of false-personality-based fears, and of false-personality-based desires.
Over the years during which Maharaj offered
satsang, three times he changed the estimate of how many are likely to realize
at any given time, lowering the number by ten times or so with each estimate.
He said that most will never seek and that, among those that do seek, most of
them are afraid of freedom and that only a few were interested in total
freedom.
If you take the number of persons Maharaj estimated would realize at any given
time and compare that to the world population at the time, he suggested that
the number would only be in the thousands . . . that only a few thousand out of billions
would ever be totally free . . . that only a few thousand at a time on the
entire planet will understand completely the natural functioning of the
totality and the unnatural functioning of the mind.
Most will forever be lost in the dream and will have no clue about why they
think as they think, say what they say, and do what they do. Most will believe
that they are making things happen, that they are in charge or in control;
a huge number might see things happen but
will have no understanding about the chain of causation; and the vast majority
will most often stand about with a question mark on their faces, asking, “What
just happened?”
How could persons possibly understand what is happening, and why, if they do
not even know who / what they are? To understand how to be totally free, it
must be understood exactly what is binding and imprisoning persons.
As the end of the series draws near, I'll share something Louise wrote years ago which can still provide some summarizing pointers about what blocks
total freedom and and what the only means is by which total freedom can
manifest:
L: What you are cannot be known when you are trapped in the belief of being an
individual. This belief is your imprisonment. You expect freedom to come while
clinging to this notion, but it can never happen.
The chains which bind are the beliefs you have about yourself that you take to
be truths but that are in fact the lies or myths propagated by the society. At
one time persons clung to the belief that the earth was flat, because the
society perpetuated this false idea. Are things so different now?
You are not a separate individual; this is a belief or idea that you have been
taught by the society and that you continue to believe because consensual
reality reinforces it. You do not want to be free, because you want to cling to
a string of falsehoods.
Let go of your ideas. What have they brought you except imprisonment and
suffering? Accept that you cannot handpick right ideas and wrong ideas. Let
them all go. That belief-free state is freedom.
To be completed tomorrow.
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.
