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.
“DO NOT SEARCH FOR THE ANSWER TO ‘WHO AM I?’ IT IS ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND ‘WHO / WHAT YOU ARE NOT’.”
THE SECOND DEGREE OF SEPARATION FROM REALITY:
Mind Identification
(Excerpts from a satsang session conducted twenty years ago)
[From yesterday]
F.: “Add to that ‘setup’ all of the concepts that they would soon begin to teach you and you should understand the source of your future bondage: the assumption of duality. Their teachings, combined with that initial assumption of subject-object, would soon result in a programmed, variable mind. The mind would begin moving constantly. No rest or peace will it ever know again, unless you follow the path from duality ‘back’ to the unicity.”
To continue:
F.: “Later, they began labeling you as ‘our child,’ ‘our son,’ ‘our boy,’ ‘our teen,’ ‘our young man,’ and later . . . ‘an adult.’ But the Real cannot change; any variable labeling can only name what you are not. As their ‘child,’ they began teaching you concepts, giving you ideas and a personality, ‘whipping you into shape,’ so they claimed.
Then, they introduced one of the earliest and most limiting of all dualities - the source of so many nightmares in this culture. They presented their concept of ‘good’ vs. ‘bad.’
That illusion began to dominate your mind and affect your behavior. With the ‘good-bad’ concepts feeding your illusory ‘mind,’ you were becoming more and more ignorant, even as they claimed to be making you more and more knowledgeable.
All the concepts and ideas and
beliefs and dogma they offered became your learned ignorance. They then began
assigning roles for you to play and to assume as identities. You probably
received their earliest ‘spiritual’ role or persona: ‘you're a gift from God.’ What BS . . . no different from people saying of their pets, "He / she is so sweet, my little doll. We just need him / her to stop biting children, fences, postal workers, other dogs, baby carriages, neighbors, people with a different skin color, and - on occasion - us." How delusional.
Those false identities - be they applied to us or our children - fostered egomania and set another destructive ball rolling! [Laughter]
Self-will became a liability because, the more false ‘selves’ you assumed as identities, the more the agenda of each false self - the desire to be - began to drive you. You were constantly in a fight to preserve those false personalities.
The chaos of self-will ends when the self dies - when the belief in false ego-states or false identities dissolve. Until then, you will have much to fight for, as your current body-mind-personality experience shows.”
Q.: [Nodding]
F.: “Back to the ‘downward’ journey through the stages that has now left you out-of-touch with reality. Next, they took you to church or to a temple or to a synagogue or to a mosque or to a religious cult or to a shrine; there, religious roles and identities were assigned.
You took their learned ignorance and began seeing even more “others” and using religious concepts to judge others and to label them and their behaviors as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ The next stop was school where teachers programmed you, teaching you their version of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ encouraging you to read the words of ‘experts’ and learn from their knowledge.
They told you to listen to newscasts so that you would always be informed. ‘The more you know, the better,’ they claimed. They filled your brain with what they called ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge’ and contributed even more nonsense that is stored in your variable mind.
That mind became dominated by its ‘good-bad’ duality perceptions as that mind tried constantly to process all the contradictions in your false world. Your mind generates the chattering of a thousand monkeys, trying to process all their ‘stuff.’ As you became older, you could drive down the road alone and be in group therapy, right?” [Laughter]
Q.: “That’s still the case!” [Laughter]
F.: “Of course it is. Every picture ever taken of you is a group photo because you believe yourself to be all those false identities that they assigned to you.” [Laughter]
Q.: [Smiling]
F.: “All in positions of influence over you were rewarding you in order to reinforce behaviors they considered ‘good’ or were punishing you for what they thought to be ‘bad.’ You would become confused, though, since what half in the culture labeled ‘good,’ the other half considered ‘bad.’
You did something once and got a kiss. You did it again and got slapped. Contradictory opinions never convey the truth, so you were receiving more and more lies and becoming more and more confused.”
Q.: “So how do I know your words are the truth?”
F.: “I make no such claim. My words can’t convey the truth, either, yet they might allow you to see the lies in order to make way for the truth within to become recognized . . . that is all. But truth has not created your nightmare. For now, forget trying to find truth.
For now, look to the actual source of the misery you speak of - the lies you believe and the false identities you have assumed. You believe all of those lies which form your corrupted mind and which you think define who you are. You have scores of personalities - dozens of false identities - and each has a love-to-be.
It is that love-to-be of each ego-state that inspires you to cherish your false personas. It is your corrupted mind that is inspiring you to fight to maintain each false identity or to be miserable when you see that the role has ended. That mind and its identifications will convince you that it is you - not a role - that is dying.”
Q.: “So do you have a pure mind?”
F.: “To understand ‘where I am,’ go back to the beginning of this tale of your ‘downward spiral’ into the state of misery you speak of. Recall the being and non-being?”
Q.: “Yes.”
F.: “I am beyond even that, so why speak of a mind?
Look to yourself, your false selves, which are just images in your mind. Those leave you miserable and feeling as if you’re dying. All of your problems and all of this talk of misery arise because you are driven by that early training-programming-conditioning, combined now with the fact that you define yourself by the use of labels that limit you.
Limitation restricts freedom. Restriction of freedom prevents peace. You are limited; I Am limitless. And you wonder why I sit here in peace while you sit here in misery?”
Q.: “Hummm.”
F.: “You’ve been a mental prisoner of war, locked up and tortured, but not by her.
You’ve physically escaped the prison through no effort of your own, but mentally you are bemoaning that fact and begging to be allowed to return to your prisoner state. You want that ‘husband’ to experience a continuity of being. You are willing to continue suffering for the sake of that continuity. You prefer the guaranteed pain of the familiar over the potential bliss of the unknown.”
Q.: [Grimacing]
F.: “Once they introduced that duality of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ you began a life-long quest to earn the ‘good’ label and avoid the ‘bad’ label. The woman you married thought you were ‘the best’ at the time; at a later time, she thought you were ‘the worst’.”
Add into the mix a person suffering from the Borderline Personality Disorder ("I love you, I hate you! Get out. No, wait; come back.") With that disorder driving one, the mate coming home in the evening won't know if "Ms. Hug or Ms. Slug" or Mr. Hug or Mr. Slug" awaits on the other side of the door.
Q.: “You had a camera in our
house!” [Laughter]
F.: “Ha. No, I just already know the ending to every movie, having observed so much of the flickerings across so many screens. The way you felt varied constantly, dependent upon the label being applied to you at any given moment. Talk about vulnerable. How fear-based that existence must have been.”
Q.: [Look of sadness]
F.: “Your consciousness-in-motion, and hers, became the seat of all the pain-pleasure duality, so both of you felt happy one moment and miserable the next. In the end, when she felt miserable, you were blamed and vice-versa. Well here’s a consideration: Suppose you had nothing to do with how he or she felt? What if that was determined by his / her chemistry, her / his personality, his / her programming, her / his conditioning and his / her delusions?”
Q.: “That would be freeing, to
get past that blame.”
F.: “Not really. Her blaming you is not the cause of your perceived misery. What will free you is to understand that, if you had nothing to do with her feeling miserable back then, she has nothing to do with your feeling miserable now. She is not involved at all with this misery you claim. She is a figment of your imagination.”
Q.: [Nods]
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:
