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 Religious and / or Spiritual Ego-States
All human suffering is rooted in not living naturally, and all suffering persons (i.e., the non-realized) are living unnaturally or supernaturally. Those living unnaturally can be recognized by their self-destructive behaviors.
Those living supernaturally can be recognized by their magical thinking, by their belief in modernized versions of ancient gods, by their acceptance of ancient myths and superstitions as fact, by their disdain for scientific evidence, and by their belief in non-factual explanations for naturally-occurring events.
Unnatural living and supernatural living are both tiresome and exhausting, but natural living is easy.
The non-dual understanding invites you to question everything. Faith in dogma requires that you question nothing. The “journey” only begins when questioning begins. The “journey” only continues if questioning continues.
Pray all the prayers that you think you need to pray; knell, bend over, stoop, or lie prostrate as much as you think you need to kneel, bend over, stoop, or lie prostrate; read all the “holy” books that you think you need to read; visit all the “sacred” sites or “sacred” men that you think you need to visit;
chant or hum every chant or hum you think you need to chant or hum; ring every bell you think you need to ring; and burn every stick of incense that you think you need to burn. But when you are done with all of that, realize that you - and all persons who are fixated in a stage and are playing their religious or spiritual roles - are mistaking the dawn for the noon.
Realize that praying and knelling and bending over and stooping and lying prostrate and reading and visiting and chanting and humming and ringing and burning (and every other external thing you try to use to be more spiritual or to try to demonstrate how spiritual you are) will actually block you from finding the truth which can only be found within after certain pointers are taken into quiet and solitary consideration.
Those are all acts of misdirection, conditioning humans to focus on what the church or temple or mosque is selling rather than on being focused on finding a version of the Ultimate Medicine which treats the Ultimate Sickness. Those are about making you dependent on them rather than being truly free.
If anyone tells you that he or she has that which can treat what ails you but its effect only lasts for a day, run like the wind. That's a BS plan.
One must either find a working approach or be doomed to adopt “their” ideology instead, and both the historical and current evidence show that nothing is more destructive, relatively speaking, than buying into “their” ideology.
It eventually had to be asked, “WHO wants to be a ‘Supreme Self’? Who is making the dualistic claims that ‘I am free of all concepts’ and ‘I am freed from assuming identities’ but then claiming as well that ‘I Am the Supreme’?”
Focusing on the “I Am” is a tool that is only effective after body identification is forfeited. Then, the “I Am” can be used to negate the mind which supports the personality that wants to add words after the “I Am”: “I am spiritual”; “I am a teacher”; “I am good”; “I Am the Supreme.”
The only reason for the pointer to “focus only on the ‘I Am’” is to divert the focus from the false identities that have been assumed, from the talk about “I am so-and-so.” Once the last two personas (“The Religious One” and “The Spiritual Giant”) have been cast aside, the use of the “I Am” will also end, right along with the former belief in “The User of Spiritual Tools.”
Supernatural living leads to magical thinking which convinces persons that they can have access to power that will allow them to control. The master addiction among persons is a desire to control, and the secondary addiction is the addiction to power, which they think will allow them to control.
The result among persons is belief in the illusion of power / powers and an overwhelming desire to control others, to control their surroundings, or to control other nations.
When persons become religious or spiritual, they try to use their power (or superpower) to control their racing, variable, tortuous “minds” or to control the behavior and “minds” of others (all of which is impossible since what they are trying to control is a mirage).
The more they believe they have power, the more they believe they can affect when it rains, can influence who heals, can impact the paths of hurricanes, can control who wins wars and who loses, can control who receives blessings and who is cursed, ad infinitum.
Supernatural beliefs, therefore, are the compost from which spring the illusions of megalomania, egomania, and self-aggrandizement; therefore, while religion and spirituality are not to be avoided, they are to be transitioned. They are but one step along a “path” to the freedom that happens when the understanding of “natural” displaces unnatural and supernatural thinking.
In order to be reincarnated or to have a resurrection and life eternal, you would have to be a body and a mind and you would have to “have” a personality.
Here, the consciousness speaks to you of the no-self, no-Self, no-SELF Reality. Being free of belief in all of those words and concepts can guide “you to You” - so to speak - and then to the no-word silence and the no-concept bliss.
If your decades of religious effort and spiritual practices had resulted in the ability to understand the truth that cannot be stated, to be comfortable in the silence, and to be content in the awareness of Wholeness and Completion, then you would not be here. Do not disparage, however, those decades of effort;
instead, transition your religious and spiritual roles just as you must transition beyond your belief in all the other roles you’ve played. Otherwise, you will continue to stand in the subdued light of dawn while insanely believing that you are being bathed in the full light of noon.
In response to, “Floyd, millions of people who believe in God can’t be wrong!”: Indeed, your notion is accurate; in truth, it is not millions who have been deluded in their beliefs. It is trillions upon trillions.
There are no “different persons” at “different levels” of enlightenment or at different levels of goodness or badness. There are quantities of manifested conscious-energy that are obscured by varying quantities of concepts.
Either way, ultimately, all of the manifested conscious-energy (obscured or not) will unmanifest and merge into the vast pool of conscious-energy that is not manifested, and that’s that / THAT.
On the Child Ignorance Stage
Among persons, only a child - existing in a pre-programming, pre-conditioning state - will witness without judgment, without thoughts, and without beliefs based in duality.
For adults to be able to witness without judgment, without thoughts, and without beliefs based in duality requires a shift “back” to the state of child ignorance by casting aside all of the nonsense which has been generated by conditioning and programming and acculturation. Nothing is more at peace than a healthy child if its physical needs have been met and if it is free of contaminants.
As long as health and food and shelter requirements have been met, perfect peace happens. Contentment can only happen in that pre-mind state of existence. If realized, contentment happens as a result of “returning to” that no-mind state.
That is to say, contentment happens as a result of removing the layers of concepts that obscure consciousness so that it is as available as it was during the brief period of childhood that happened prior to the obscuring of the consciousness. Why should one who currently takes himself to be “an adult” settle for less contentment than that experienced by a child?
That which the Childhood Stage offers as the consciousness manifests and eventually deteriorates to identification with the “I” is nothing more than an opportunity to know that you exist; therefore, as you take the steps from the “I” to abidance as the Absolute, this stage is again nothing more than an opportunity for you know that you exist (that is, to know “I AM” and “I AM” only).
A fictional mind had not yet resulted from hearing the lies about who or what you are and had not yet assumed any false role or identity or personality. All merely happened via natural instinct and body chemistry rather than programming and conditioning.
Here is why worldwide ignorance has not been stamped out and will not be stamped out: persons believe that the planet-wide epidemic of ignorance could be solved if only people would acquire more knowledge.
The non-dualist understands that the knowledge is the ignorance and that the ignorance is the knowledge. The ignorance is that which the masses have been taught and have learned, and their ignorance will only be compounded if more of the same type knowledge is injected into the equation.
Ignorance could be stamped out if persons were to forfeit their revered beliefs and ideas and concepts and dogma. Since that happens so rarely but is a prerequisite for realization, only a few will ever realize (that is, being restored to sanity and being freed of learned ignorance). There is no lever to pull or handle to push that can produce a brain-flush . . . nothing other than the non-dual process.
(Were the brain to be flushed of all of the concepts and beliefs that make up the “mind,” then the peace of the Child Ignorance Stage could happen. Unlike adult-age ignorance, the Child-age Ignorance Stage is really a misnomer.
It actually refers to the “no-mind,” pre-programming, pre-knowledge, pre-ignorance state. Children early on don’t really have the ignorance / knowledge that adults must be freed of if they are to return to this former, more peaceful stage.)
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.
The exceptions are those such as you, the ones who take these steps and return to that “state” of peace that exists when we are once again free of learned ignorance and the influence of the illusions of the body-mind-personality triad.
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:
