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. Also, by clicking on NUMBER FOURTEEN,” visitors can also see the introductory discussion on non-duality on Walter’s non-duality site and then a Q and A session which followed.]
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 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?
6. 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.
LESSONS IN NON-DUALITY from TRAVELS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Messages Regarding Oneness and Realization Seen in Travels through South Africa
When realization happens, there is an accompanying shift in the way that functioning happens in the relative. Not only will you not use others or take from them what they do not offer freely;
to
the contrary, there can be, post-realization, a change that is so thoroughly
different from what typically marks the relative that you may find that, on
occasion, you do not even accept pleasure-giving opportunities which are being
offered freely.
Even as pleasure is being offered, you might pause, stop, and even turn away
from things relative that most persons seek. When will that happen? When you
have even the slightest doubt that what is happening in the relative is not
seen by all involved to be an act of Love totally . . . that Love-perspective
manifesting when the understanding of Oneness is clear to all involved in any
act. Only under those circumstances can the gift of any forms of pleasure be
received and given among the realized.
With Hannah, what was not being offered was taken, constituting unnatural acts
of control and chaos and violence, acts that were as far removed from Love as
can occur in the relative existence as the realized turn their backs on trying
to control, on generating chaos, on acts of violence.
The texture of the relative existence among the realized takes on a “strange
enough appearance” to the non-realized masses as it is, but to turn down
opportunities for relative pleasures unless Absolute Love has been overlaid on
any acts of relative love or pleasure-seeking or wanting or longing can appear
to the non-realized to be the strangest of all behaviors that are witnessable
among the realized.
Is it not clear, though, that such restraint must manifest among those that
have been freed from living in the mirror, freed from wearing a mask, freed
from trying to negotiate the relative with a closed fist and a closed heart,
freed from taking that which is not offered or taking that which is offered
without being rooted in Love only?
But among the realized, not only is there no desire to use or to abuse or to
take from “others”; there are no actions that can be taken if there is even the
slightest sense that a separate “other” is involved.
In the realm of relative duality, such horrible events as happened with Hannah
can serve to provide an example of one mode of functioning as persons move
through the relative; the pointers that are offered when the consciousness that
is aware of awareness speaks offer the alternative.
Thus, the invitation of the realized teacher adumbrates the invitation of the
realized poet McCallum, so both can suggest that you “unmask your unlived life,”
that you “unfasten your fist,” that you “let loose the medicine in your own
hand.”
Stop with the grasping and clutching; stop moving through the relative with a
fist-shaped hand; instead, “show me the lines” of your open hand and I will “show
you the spoor of your ancestors,” (that is, of any ancestors that displayed any evidence of wisdom).
Stop with the grasping and clutching and trying to control with a fist-shaped
hand and “show me the creases” in your open hand; then only can the teacher “show
you the way to the water”; only if you “show me the folds” of an open hand -
and heart - can I “show you the furrows for your healing.”
Healing what? The Ultimate Sickness. With what? The Ultimate Medicine.
One
day in South Africa, a drive to the south of Cape Town and then along a coast
road led to Cape Point and to the Cape of Good Hope.
Some claim it is there that two oceans meet, but others say that it is farther
to the east of those capes - at Cape Agulhas - where one can supposedly find “the
actual point of demarcation” - a point of supposed separation - between “the
Atlantiese (Atlantic) Ocean” and “the Indian Ocean.”
For hundreds of thousands of years before “differentiating persons” came upon
the scene, the ocean was seen to be one body of water. It remains so today,
except in the minds of misled persons.
Now, persons teach other persons that, along an imaginary line running north
and south, the waters to the west of that imagined line are the Atlantic Ocean
and the waters to the east are the Indian Ocean.
It is a blatant falsehood, of course, but like all of the falsehoods believed
by persons to be true, the falsehood is not even challenged; never is it likely
to be disbelieved or unlearned.
The effect in this case with a belief that the waters of the planet are divided
and form separate oceans will be nil, but the relative effects of believing in
separation and two-ness instead of understanding the not-two-ness of non-duality, mark and mar the relative existence for persons around the
globe.
That sense of separation that results from beliefs in hierarchies and
differentiation was illustrated with recent events in the relative life of
Hannah, mentioned yesterday.
Moreover, no one told the ocean at the tip of South Africa that it was not one
but is two instead, so the ocean knows no such separation or differentiation.
Having been taught no nonsense, the ocean believes no nonsense; the ocean just
is and is one . . . not two. There is no beginning and there is no end, as far
as the ocean is concerned and as far as anyone capable of seeing the false is
concerned.
But with programmed and conditioned and domesticated and acculturated and indoctrinated and brainwashed persons,
set up to ignore the reality of the cycles by having been taught that lines and
timelines are real, there is (in their minds) an assumed beginning and end to
everything.
In the supposed duality of the relative existence, persons will believe that
there is a beginning to the Indian Ocean and an end to the Indian Ocean. They
will seek love and believe that their concepts about love are real and that
there can be a beginning to love and, most typically, an end to love.
They will be joyous when they believe that there is the beginning of a desired
but false identity that is assumed and they will be miserable when they believe
that an end has come to a desired but false identity that is assumed
(accompanied by much sturm und drang on each occasion).
Rather than seeing that all of the relative events that are occurring differ
not at all from the tides that rise and fall and ebb and flow without end, they
misperceive all, as if each wave differs from every other wave not in
appearance only but also in essence as well.
Believing in another imaginary line from birth to life to death to punishment
or reward, they can be elated when they believe that they have “created” a new
life with “a beginning at birth” and they will be heartbroken if that life
comes to an end with what is called “death.”
They will be so in fear of what awaits in terms of eternal punishment or reward
that they will dedicate their lives (and, in some case, their deaths) to the
pursuit of some guarantee that eternal bliss can be assured.
The result is a planet populated by persons living in delusion, believing lies
about “a” being separated from “b” and about “x” joining “y” at this or that
time and at this or that place.
Stand at the southernmost points of South Africa and imagine that two oceans
are joining each other there, or see the reality of oneness instead. In the
former case, join the masses in being fooled; in the latter, stand with the realized
and perceive all as it actually is.
Yet there is an irony about moving through the relative with a sense of Oneness
and unity while neither welcoming nor tolerating those who would try to impose
their disharmony and control and will upon the realized and the non-realized
alike.
The buck that moves away from noise or that strikes back at those that would
attack is living no less naturally at those moments than when resting in the
cool blue shade. More on that, and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela later who,
though realized, once said:
“The time comes in the life of any nation when there remains only two choices -
submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa.”
It is impossible to predict what the realized will do in any given situation,
the cause of all being all, the cause of any action being determined by all
causes that manifest at any given point.
But to know the boundary-less Oneness of the Absolute does not suggest that
boundaries cannot - or should not - be set in the relative. If you do not set
the boundaries that are essential in order to guard your inner environment as
well as your outer environment, then who do you think will?
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
To watch the most recent talk and Q&A with Walter and his guests, click:
Walter Driscoll and Floyd Henderson
To watch the interview when Walter and Floyd discussed the fact that the Ultimate Sickness is a mental / mind sickness and why learning more is not the answer and why unlearning is the answer, click:
