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
“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
It is at the third step that seekers must leave behind any remaining personal identifications, be they the body, the mind, or any of the hundreds of assigned and / or assumed roles which the non-realized masses have been driven by throughout their relative existence.
Wednesday’s post ended with this:
Q. 2: “Here’s the piece I don’t get about the no-mind of child ignorance: if there’s no mind, how am I supposed to ever have peace of mind?”
F.: “Let me see if you understand what you’re really asking for. You want a mind that is always at perfect peace, but consciousness is energy and thus is not immobile if manifested. So you are saying that you want your consciousness to be unmanifested - that is, you want to die. Ha.” [Laughter]
(To continue]
Q. 2: “Okay. Real funny, but you described a superconscious state when you talked about the vision that came to you.”
F.: “True. The samadhi state was reached, but the required vision came when I had entered into the theta state. Remember, too, that Maharaj said that it's the nature of consciousness to be ‘busy.’ More to the point, however, do you see that you're speaking of another desire? We've already seen the ramifications of desire.
Who - what ego-state or states - want this perpetual peace? Take all the steps, find how this consciousness manifested, and then you’ll be free of the misery caused by a mind conditioned with learned ignorance. That’s the focus of this step. Complete all the steps and natural living will happen.”
Q. 2: “Then the relative existence will be peaceful?”
F.: “Ha. Again, a desire. I hear both a fear of something and a desire for something. Once realized, the message is this: what is, is. Moreover, fewer and fewer troublesome challenges and decisions need be dealt with. Why? Because abiding at the Four Step Level, fewer choices will arise.
And that does NOT mean dissociating from traumas during the relative existence or being a Spiritual Giant who loves her or his abusers rather than undertaking a trauma healing process offered by trained professionals. In other words, Use the same addictive approach I’ve always used: avoid, evade, dodge, and dissociate from reality. It worked for Tolle who has made already made an estimated $80 million this year.
In the case of a woman who ended a relationship after taking tens of thousands of dollars from me. Do I have to try to practice that silly admonition from a woman who admits she has been driven by the Addictive Personality most of her adult life as well as a host of neuroses and psychoses?
She read a line in a self-help book that said, “Acceptance is the key.” She took that a step further to set up a ‘spiritual guide’ practice which has generated millions in profit for her as she told one woman who came here to try to be freed of the cult-like hold she had fallen under by a woman whose main message is that accepting is not enough; instead, you must not accept things but must love everything that happens.
Really? “Love what is no matter what ‘it’ is? So slavery in the U.S. should have just been loved? [If you visit Florida, you’ll actually be able to hear that pro-slavery message from the governor and many others.] Receiving regular beatings which drew blood from a drunk father should have been loved?
The love what is woman now explains at top dollar pricing her methods for how to ‘love everything that is’ by doing ‘The Work’ which she prescribes.
Some have paid $5000 to be taught how to do ‘The Work.” Some said they spent over $10,000.00, and others sucked into the cult even more. The woman is said to have taken in millions with her dissociate from reality message .
At least three people who had also been taken in have come to me to try to be freed of what they had been taught via the woman’s indoctrination and brainwashing. ‘The Work’ teaches that, If you lived in Nazi Germany and a man took the bayonet of his rifle and stuck it into your baby and tossed it into a fire, then ‘Love What Is.’ Bullshit.
I do not have to love a woman who cost me thousands of dollars. Nor am I driven to hate her. I have the freedom by abiding at the Four Step Level to neither work to love her nor to end up having to disabuse myself of the cancer of hatred if I assume “’The Victim’ role.
To the contrary, I abide in a state of neutrality. A child does not
hate or love until it is taught what it should hate and what it should love by
duality-endorsing parents. I, at the Fourth Step Level, understand that I do
not have to love the woman who took money from me and I do not have to hate
her, either. I was automatically shifted into a neutral state around that issue. She was a mirage, so why should I waste a moment of contentment
dealing with a mirage. Was that dissociation? Hell no. I witnessed another chance to practice differentiating between what had been true and what had been false.
See, it is an automatic neutral response which typifies a relative existence unfolding at the Fourth Step where false personas cannot pull me out of the contentment of the Fourth Step Level which - prior to realization - I had last experienced when I was a child that had been fed, that got a fresh diaper, that was in a room with a pleasant ambient temperature, and would soon be allowed to follow-up with a pleasant nap.
Abiding in the Fourth Step Level, all happens, and all happens without attachment. Movement . . . no movement . . . whatever. [Pause]
Consider the deer that lives naturally rather than with a thinking mind. Generally, the deer is what you would probably call ‘at peace.’ Yet during the days when I went into the woods regularly, I often startled a deer as it was feeding. It would ‘freeze,’ raise its head, turn its neck, zero in on me, and stare; then its heart might have raced if the adrenals kicked into overdrive. Next, seeing my movement, it would bolt away.
I would not say that deer was ‘at peace’ even though it had no thinking mind and no false identities. But I noted that the deer would feel something, would often run and jump its way to an adjacent clearing and, seeing that I was moving on, its fear would dissipate. It would then ignore me completely. It would return to grazing.
Something happened, a feeling followed, consciousness witnessed what was
happening, no persona was assumed so no attachment to the feeling followed, and
the tasks involved with sustaining the consciousness continued. The deer was
momentarily dealing with a disturbance and then immediately re-assumed its state of neutrality
and moved on. That is natural.
With the deer, happenings were happening, then another happening was witnessed, then fear rose and fell, and then other happenings happened. Voila. But consider this: how peaceful is the deer’s existence as long as it has a body to tend to, as long as it must search for food during seasons when less is available to eat, when it must fight on occasion to preserve its territory or to protect its partner from other deer trying to move in during mating season?
I don’t know how much ‘peace’ as opposed to how much ‘not-peace’ that deer had in the relative, but it was certainly freer than persons whose thinking minds accept false identities that generate fear and desire all day long, every day.”
Q. 2: “Right.”
F.: “The deer did not take offense, having no persona that felt it had ownership of that field where it was eating. It was not driven to attack me as a result of a ‘how dare you come into my space’ mentality that always accompanies ego and egotism.
Its consciousness knew its presence - it knew the ‘I-Amness’ since it ran away from a perceived threat in order to continue its presence - but the actions taken to protect that beingness were intuitive. That left it free of attachments and emotional intoxication.
Without a thinking mind and without a personality, it did not feel driven to work at trying to avoid or gain, as you’re doing. Forget trying to find ways to avoid what a body-mind-personality experiences as a result of its learned ignorance.
If you take that triad of body-mind-personalities to be ‘you,’ fears and desires will always be experienced. No rest will come because your personalities will always be engaged in a never-ending quest, and the quest is an impossible dream since in effect you're trying to avoid illusions. You're crossing an imaginary road in terror, dodging cars that you're only imagining are coming toward you.
How futile, that constant jousting with windmills! You’re trying to address the symptom rather than the cause. The cause is the assumed triad and the learned ignorance. Get to the root and understand this step.
Devalue your knowledge and learned ignorance. Let dissolve any remaining personas. See all that you have learned to this point as being useless and let it all fade. Then no body-mind-personality illusion will be occupied with desires for peace of mind or with fears of losing peace of mind.”
What awaits? The relaxation of the Fourth Step
Level.
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:
