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
Nelson
Mandela’s Guides: Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.
and the Non-Dual Message
Challenges faced by children in their families of origin pre-wire them to emote and feel and talk and think and behave in specific ways for the rest of their lives. Some are pre-wired to seek the love they did not receive; some are pre-wired to try to control;
and some are pre-wired to rebel against abusive authority, to question, to contemplate, to intuitively sense both authenticity and phoniness, and to appreciate moments of solitude and quiet to try to make sense of the senseless “world” in which they find themselves.
(The latter make up only 1/2 of 1 % of the
planet’s population, another obstacle to mass-realization.)
Being among those in the latter group, “floyd” was drawn during his early years
to the words of some few in particular, including Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma
Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and, later, Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela was also influenced by the words of Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma
Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. To study their words is to see that all
spoke a common language: the language of enlightenment, the language of
non-duality, the language of realization, the language of the heart.
Therefore, before describing the feelings that arose after finally visiting the
prison where Nelson Mandela - prisoner # 46664 - was locked away by the leaders
of the apartheid government in South Africa and after finally standing outside
the tiny cell #913 in which he was confined for 27 years, consider the non-duality-style
pointers which were offered by all four of those men.
See how a common thread ran throughout all of their pointers. See how Nelson
Mandela was influenced by the words of those three who spoke to him. Then see
how all four can speak to you now, via the language of the heart:
Henry David Thoreau
[Who spoke of “the unity beyond the multiplicity”]
“I have a great deal of company in my house, especially in the morning when
nobody calls.”
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he
hears a different drummer.”
“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that
they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all
undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.”
“To be awake is to be alive.”
“My Aunt Maria asked me to read the life of Dr. Chalmers, which, however, I did
not promise to do. Yesterday, Sunday, she was heard through the partition
shouting to my Aunt Jane, who is deaf, “Think of it! He stood half an hour
today to hear the frogs croak, but he wouldn’t read the life of Chalmers.”
[Have you ever stood half an hour to hear the frogs croak or to hear birds sing
or to find a piece of beauty in nature and gaze at it without moving?]
“The frontiers are not east or west, north or south but wherever a man ‘fronts’
a fact.”
“In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to
improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting
of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment;
to toe that line.”
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a
velvet cushion.”
“Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds
which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores.”
In the streets and in society I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated; my
life is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or respectability would in the
least redeem it - dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!! But alone
in the distant woods or fields, in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures
tracked by rabbits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,
when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more
feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I
suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by
churchgoing and prayer. I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the
homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are,
grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day about half the
daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the
Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane . . . every day.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let
alone.”
“I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.”
“The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from
which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever
rolling to the land are too far-travelled and untamable to be familiar.
Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to
us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.”
“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a
school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of
simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.”
“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than
make-believe.”
Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi
[Who worked for human rights for Indians not only in India but also in South Africa when he lived in Durban.]
“I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only
teach you not to bow your heads before any one, even at the cost of your life.”
“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and
what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life
is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”
“A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to
solve them is no religion.”
“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be
unaffected by outside circumstances.”
“Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.”
“I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so
unlike your Christ.”
“I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason . . . .”
“Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of
ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive
out hate; only love can do that.”
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and
conscientious stupidity.”
[Recall Maharaj: “This is our stupidity, verging on insanity.”]
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
“ . . . Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
“Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man
forgets himself into immortality.”
Nelson Mandela
“There is no such thing as part freedom.”
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way
that respects and enhances the freedom of others. “
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If
you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
“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.”
Earlier, the pointer was offered that . . .
. . . 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 (to use Maharaj's term).
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?
All four of the men quoted above set clear boundaries, none willing to “submit.”
What were their fates?
Thoreau: arrested, jailed
Gandhi: arrested and imprisoned many times, assassinated
King: arrested and jailed many times, attacked and stabbed, assassinated
Mandela: arrested, imprisoned for twenty-seven years, eighteen of those on
Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa.
The message:
As Maharaj warned, be careful about sharing publicly any teachings that deal
with enlightenment and independence and total freedom and equality for all. Why?
Because
ignorance hates wisdom; ego hates equality; “hierarchials” hate the removal of
differentiations; sleepers hate awakening; darkness hates light; the powerful
hate freedom and equality for all; the controllers of the world hate
independence for all; and those in darkness hate the bringers of light.
Either share with restraint or be prepared for the consequences when your words
shake those who are soundly asleep. Or, join those above who had the courage to
share pointers toward truth, the consequences be damned.
Or, hear their words and stay in the peace and silence, abiding as your Original Nature and merely witnessing - without attachment - whatever unfolds.
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:
