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’.”
(Excerpts from a satsang session conducted in 2004)
THE FOURTH DEGREE SHIFT - MOVEMENT TOWARD REALITY:
The Child Ignorance State
or
The Child No-Knowing State
F.: “If you have discarded all former beliefs - especially regarding body and mind and personality and duality-based beliefs - then you have reached the fourth level . . . the level where a shift occurs after discarding any and all beliefs regarding body and mind and personality identifications.
We discussed the first Three Degrees of Separation from Reality. Now, at this fourth step, we’ll begin discussing ‘The Fourth Degree Where Movement Toward Reality can occur.’
Again, in truth there are no steps and there is no journey, no separation, no movement - only past delusions that those were real. Those are all concepts used to help you shift from being asleep to being aware. These are just thorns being used to remove thorns, after which all the thorns will be tossed.”
Q.: “That’s appropriate. The last step was very painful.” [Laughter]
F.: “And what pain do you imagine you experienced?” [Light laughs]
Q.: “I did what you said and really focused on my subject matter during my meditation. I didn’t try to reach some no-thought state but really paid attention to the assignment. I also double-checked some things you said.” [Laughs]
F.: “Double-checking non-duality. Interesting.” [Laughs]
Q.: “The first day, I read part of Genesis and I saw the two conflicting versions of creation you mentioned, and then I sat with that. I also saw where some writer (likely not Moses) plagiarized the I AM THAT I AM and used it as his own, and I meditated on that.”
F.: “And?”
Q.: “And at the end, for the first time ever, I had to ask, ‘Can this text really be considered ‘infallible’?” [Pause. Quiet. Finally . . . ] I’d like to apologize for getting angry with you.”
F.: “Who would have been offended? Here, no one.Better yet, find who got angry.”
Q.: “I know who got angry. I saw by mid-week that my roles really were fighting for their ‘lives’ with you. By the end of the week, I saw that all of the fighting I’ve ever done in my life was being fought by one ego-state or another.”
F.: “Have any others come to a similar understanding?” [Several raise their hands]
Q. 2: “I talked with someone who did these sessions with you before and she said you had her write a list of every role she’s ever assumed as an identity. I did that and was blown away by the length of the list.” [Laughs]
F.: “Would that it were always so easy to blow away the personalities. [Laughter] So what did you find?”
Q. 2: “In about twenty minutes, I listed over seventy roles I’ve played in my life!” [Laughter]
F.: “You obviously needed to spend more time considering and writing if that’s all you came up with!” [Laughs]
Q. 2: “I have no doubt I could probably double the list.” [Laughs]
F.: “There’s that double again. [Laughs] How many can tell me unequivocally that you have realized, or that you’re realizing, how the body-mind-personality triad has blocked you from any possibility of knowing what you truly are? [Everyone raises a hand] Excellent.
Now, without raising your hands but just considering this for a moment, how many are aware of a dropoff in the level of tension you’ve brought into the room and how many are aware of their more relaxed condition right now? [Pause. silence. Looks of awareness begin crossing most faces. One hand goes up.]
Please, no comments or questions for now. Just consider for a moment. [Pause. Quiet. Then . . . ] “Nothing need be said. You’re seeing the results of taking even this much of the journey. Shifts are occurring. [Pause.] Let’s move on. Where I said the first three levels separate you from Reality, Step Four is where you can return to The Child Ignorance State or The Child No-Knowing State.
Consider: At that stage, you knew nothing. You may have felt pain or the sensations of being thirsty, cold, wet, hungry, sleepy etc. Why? Because the brain registers those basic drives and triggers a desire that they be addressed. Again, I said that was about the brain. That means, not about the mind. Why?
Because at that point, the “blank tablet” was present, but nothing had been written upon it. “Tabula Rasa” (Latin for “blank space”) meaning that a child arrives in a condition of manifesting but being empty as far as any built-in mental content.
As a child, you had not been taught anything, yet that will begin to happen soon enough; in fact, why too soon. Far too soon, knowledge will begin to accumulate and will be stored in the “mind” parts of the brain which allow memories and recall of memories to be gathered exactly as the case is with a computer.
Non-dualists have long understood that all of that “knowledge” is actually a conglomeration of “learned ignorance.”
Now, you will not recall those early days because they were being spontaneously and automatically being driven by the brain driven. Eventually, by an overload of teachings, your relative existence will be mind-driven, meaning you will have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, brainwashing, and indoctrinated so it becomes the content added and stored in “your mind” which determine what you think or say or do.
The rub? Early on, your brain worked in your interests. The mind works as enemy to you. “Learned ignorance” means, Garbage in; garbage out. You no longer have the ability to consciously choose what you think and say or do! That is all controlled by the hidden agendas of the personas which you have been told define “who you are.” BS.
We’ve been told by the sages that all knowledge is ‘learned ignorance.’ Before there was learned ignorance, there was Child Ignorance. To move beyond this point on your ‘journey,’ you must reject the learned ignorance and seek to shift into, to return to the Child No Knowing State.
Let me describe the arrival into this state and as I do so, know what your life can be like if you return to this ‘state.’ Please hold your questions until I finish the description and see where this next step is inviting you to ‘go.’ [Pause]
After the space manifests, there’s a period of witnessing . . . without judgment or even knowing. The child then becomes more aware of its presence. Consciousness becomes aware of consciousness.
At that point, the child is aware that it IS, but it has no learned ignorance that it’s a ‘girl’ or ‘boy’ or ‘baby’ or ‘human’ or ‘gift from god.’ The labels and false identities will come later.
Maharaj said: “After the information given to you by the mother, that you are a boy or girl, all your further acquisitions are by hearsay.”
Spreading heresay and nonsense. Repeating ignorance. You know . . . passing down total BS. Your parents and all of your ancestors lied to you. Religious leaders lied to you. Businesses lied to you. Cons of the highest order lied to you, and they all continue to do that to this day.
Remember that we’re taking these steps in the cyclings in reverse order. The original journey was from the Absolute to the misinformed state of body identification.
If the first stages of the original cycle were from non-beingness to beingness to witnessing to Child Ignorance to being programming with learned ignorance, then, on our ‘reverse journey’ we forfeit the labels and identities to enter again into this more peaceful state.
At this point ‘on the way in,’ so to speak, the child had no thoughts, no beliefs, no ideas, no programming, no conditioning, etc. All that was happening within the space was happening automatically.
The heart was beating without the child having to think, ‘I need my heart to beat.’ The lungs worked automatically. As long as the child was fed, digestion happened automatically.
The mind is the storehouse of ideas, thoughts, beliefs and attitudes, but originally, the child was living in a no-mind, no thoughts, no-beliefs, zero concepts state.
If your parents addressed your basic drives, you were at the highest point of peace and contentment that you would ever experience. Once they began to put “a mind” in place, it would all be downhill.
If you understand how you were robbed of your early peace and sanity, you would fight like a warrior to return to that state. And that is the invitation here. Allow yourself to be taught no more; instead, be un-taught. Rather than seeking to learn more, instead, be unlearn.
Return to the state where a brain was functioning and consciousness was present and the child was only aware of its presence. How do we know that awareness of presence was there?
Pop your palms together loudly in a child’s face and the child will react automatically - intuitively - to a sensed danger or threat, but the consciousness which allows for that self-awareness had not yet been contaminated with what adults would later model and teach.
So you as a child had a sense at that point of your presence. You sensed the “I Am-ness” without even knowing any words or concepts. And in the awareness of “I-Am,” without any personality or concepts, peace or at least contentment prevailed.
Then, as children become older, they began teaching concepts and beliefs to the children. The level of peace that a child enjoys in that state of ‘ignorance,’ prior to programming and conditioning and being assigned false identities, is never realized again in its lifetime, in most cases.
Why? Because few will ever realize . . . that is, few will ever realize what is true and then develop the ability via enlightenment and realization to differentiate between the truth and all of the falsehoods and lies and deceits and deceptions which they taught you.
The exceptions are those such as you, the ones who take these steps and return to that ‘state’ of peace or contentment which exists when we are once again free of learned ignorance and the influence of the illusions of the body-mind-personality triad.
That’s why this really is all so very simple: When was the last time that you were 100% happy and content? It was when you were a child . . . fed, dry, in a comfortable ambient temperature and WITHOUT EVEN ONE SINGLE CONCEPT OR IDEA OR BELIEF. So, go back there.
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:
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:
