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
RELEVANT QUOTATIONS from FLOYD HENDERSON (Con’t.)
On Love
What persons call “love” is the most magnificent experience of all; it is also the most horrendous experience of all. With such duality, how can that possibly be taken for the real? As for feeling or emotion, if love happens as a feeling, take the ride and watch the feelings rise and fall; if love happens as an emotion - that is, if it is being “experienced” by a person in an ego-state - prepare for war.
If there is no “do-er,” and if there is no identity that is real, then there is no “lover” either. If there is no lover, then find WHO thinks she/he is experiencing anything.
Persons desiring to know what love is might benefit more (relatively speaking, of course) if they were able to understand what love is not.
Ego is believing that there’s a vast multiplicity arranged in a hierarchy and that you’re the pinnacle; humility is knowing that you’re nothing, no-thing; love is knowing that you are everything. (That said, understand that ego, humility, and love are merely concepts, thorns that can be used to remove thorns.)
Can you, from the position of ‘As If Living’ that follows full realization, feel and share Unconditional Love? Not only can you, but you shall. In fact, once again, no choice will be involved. It will just happen . . . spontaneously and unequivocally.
On Nisarga Yoga, Natural Living
The Advaita poet William Shakespeare wrote: “The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre observe degree, priority, and place. Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office, and custom, in all line of order.”
The Nisarga Yoga approach offers a direct route to the understanding that results in a natural way of AS IF living (that is, a natural way of functioning). That means living/functioning spontaneously for the remainder of the manifestation, knowing that the “world” is illusory but living as if any of “all this” matters.
(Thus, employment can happen even without the assumption of an “employee” persona.) Natural living recognizes that the laws of nature have the right of “insisture”:
either (a) life is lived naturally according to the “customs” of the universe or (b) persons violating the natural “order” will collapse and self-destruct.
The realized move through the relative existence in a manner that is fixed by nature even though they appear to be moving as they please.
Rather than trying to exert any force, they accept that happenings happen. Among the realized, nature has “priority” over efforts to control or manipulate.
The realized abide within the framework of the natural laws that have “insisture,” understanding that all is to happen per the natural order and understanding that all is to happen in “proportion.”
Persons, on the other hand, seek to control and manipulate so they will not have to accept “proportion.” They work to accumulate and to have more and to appear to be greater than what is proportional.
They imagine that they have an actual need for more than is proportional or necessary.
The realized move along lines that are “customary” rather than along paths which are unnatural or supernatural. To think supernaturally is to think magically, and magical thinking is delusional.
On Creation and Creators
Either there is One, or there is duality and/or multiplicity. Either there is a prime cause and creation (and therefore a prime causer and creator) or there is neither creation nor destruction.
Science has proved that there is neither creation nor destruction. All is energy/matter, and energy/matter can be neither created nor destroyed. Wherefore a causer or a creator in that reality?
The cause of all is . . . all. Where is there any possibility of a creator (or a creator-sustainer-destroyer god) when that which is has always been, when that cannot have been created, when that cannot be destroyed, and when all merely cycles . . . or not?
Persons who are programmed to believe that their bodies-minds-personalities shall last “for infinity after death” do not pause to consider that, if infinity is a possibility in --> that “direction” on their timelines, then it must also be a possibility in <-- that “direction” on their timelines. Infinite is infinite. Whatever has the ability to exist “forever after” also had to have the ability to exist “forever before.”
On Emotions vs. Feelings
The realized can feel, but without attachment and without a chain of reactions that result from emotional intoxication. Feelings among the realized are merely witnessed as they rise and fall.
Emotions, on the other hand, are “experienced” only by persons - by those believing in their false roles and assumed ego-states. As a result of their persona-generated emotions, they are continually in a state of emotional intoxication and are constantly reacting and over-reacting to what they take to be “personal experiences” that are driven by desires and / or fears.
Contrary to some charges, the non-dual understanding does not result in the realized “living a robotic existence.” It does result in the remainder of the manifestation happening in a fashion that is free of mental, emotional, and spiritual intoxication.
On “Relationships”
The egotism that always accompanies the assumption of false identities never shows up more often than when you believe that you are in a “relationship.” First, in a reality which is non-dual in nature, how can “one thing” possibly relate to “another thing”? (“Advaita” does mean, “one without a second” or “not two.”)
Next, consider the history of the expectations that you have traditionally brought to “your relationships”: besides wanting a clone of self, you expect “partners” to conduct themselves in a fashion that you find “right” and “acceptable.”
And what you think is “right” and “acceptable” is generally based in what your parents taught you is “right” and “acceptable.” Is there any greater degree of insanity than your expecting a “partner” to conform to the expectations of the very persons who taught you the majority of the lies and the nonsense that you believe?
You come here to discuss your “relationship problems” and “being alone” and wanting to know if the solution is to simply pledge that you’ll never marry again and be done with it. “Is that necessary?” you ask.
Of course not, but the only way to alleviate your current anxiety is to accept that marriage might happen . . . or might not. And if it does happen, the only way to avoid emotional intoxication and pain and to maintain peace is to witness whatever happens without playing phony roles or adopting false identities.
You believe that you are in a relationship with someone you know and that you really have an “object of your affection.” What a deception. (1) If “you” are not, how could “he” be? (2)
Once you move beyond the image and find what that person is truly like, then you will know that you don’t know him at all, and then you may well shout at him someday in anger, “I don’t even know who you are!” Correct you will be.
(3) Once you move beyond your own image and find who
/ what you are, only then will you find what “he” is. As it is right now, you
don’t have a clue who he is, what he is, or who / what you are. And similarly,
he doesn’t know you or You at all. Until realization, you will both be sleeping
with strangers while each proclaiming your intimate knowledge of the “other.”
On Meditation
Originally, only one purpose of meditation was intended: not to reach a state without thought but to consider a pointer offered until that point was understood. Consideration and understanding, not “motionless consciousness,” was the intent.
If it is thoughts that you wish to be free of, then address in meditation or in the quiet the falsity of the particular ego-state that is generating the thoughts, not the thousands of thoughts that the single false ego-state is generating.
Meditation is intended to wake people up, not put them to sleep.
Exercises conducted in the quiet along the “journey” are tools, yes, but when a homeowner’s house is built, he puts away his tools and then simply enjoys “the new place he’s in.”
Once realized, it is understood that there is no meditator, so WHO is it who believes that (a) he has completed the construction of a new house but simultaneously thinks that (b) he must continue the building process? That would be, among other assumed identities, “The Person Who Needs Maintenance” and who has not realized that there is nothing to maintain.
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:
