TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
[Note: One eye surgery has been completed and a second is upcoming next Monday, so there will be some occasions when postings are not possible during the healing process, periods of rest, follow-up doctor appointments, etc.]
1. [See the offer following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all seven 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 end of the post for the full meaning and implications of that.
3. A new 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."
WALLS, PARTITIONS, BARRIERS, DIVIDES, SEPARATION, ISOGLOSSES
Suppose a city had a large zoo and an electrical surge caused the automatic gate to open during the night, releasing the tigers which began roaming the city in search of food.
Suppose someone left a window of his house open because that house had no air conditioning and the night was hot.
Suppose one of the dangerous tigers entered the house through that open window and the family inside became terrified of the tiger which was obviously preparing to attack.
Then suppose that the best response the members of the family in the house could come up with was to . . . close the window, assuring that the tiger would remain under the same roof with them as it became more and more frustrated and angry and ready to attack and kill.
Next, suppose they got to a phone and called the police to ask for help and the police said, "Forget the tiger in your house. There are three tigers sleeping on the steps of City Hall and those are the ones you should actually be worried about."
Would the caller not respond, "What the hell are you talking about? Where did you come up with that nonsense? The sleeping tigers are not the issue. The real danger is right here under my own roof."
Yet that is case in the U.S. and in many other nations where the misinformed populace is hyper-sensitive about the perceived threats and dangers being presented by "the others" in their societies rather than by what is under their own roof.
As mentioned here on occasion, 59% of all women murdered annually in the U.S. are killed by one claiming at some point to have "loved" them: "The Lover" or "The Boyfriend" or "The Husband" or "The Common Law Husband," etc.
When are those women killed 59% of the time? When they try to leave their "Lover" or "Boyfriend" or "Husband" or "Common Law Husband," etc. (By the way, the women are "catching up" nowadays: 41% of all males killed in the U.S. are killed by a woman during a breakup.)
The insanity?
Many among the masses in the U.S. are currently paralyzed by their fear of being killed by "a foreign terrorist coming into the country" (a notion being aggravated by the current alarmist, political rhetoric being broadcast into their homes via television news and "special reports") while totally ignoring the facts which show that any danger threatening "their lives" is actually already in bed with them, a.k.a., "sleeping with the enemy."
The more prevalent terrorists - the ones closest to you but not consciously recognized as full-blown terrorists - are often in your workplace, are often your bosses or fellow employees, and are often sleeping with you at night.
In the U.S., 3,066 Americans have been killed in terrorist attacks from 9/11/2001 through 12/31/2014.
Meanwhile, during the same period, over 211,000 persons have been murdered not by "foreigners," "immigrants," or "the others" but by . . . "Americans."
Talk about a warped perspective which allows "actual relative dangers" to be ignored while inspiring "non-actual relative dangers" to control how persons feel throughout the day.
Yet persons do not want to admit that they are more likely to be sleeping with the enemy than they are likely to become a target of someone they do not know.
When there is a murder, the first person the police look to interview is the victim's mate, fiancé / fiancée, spouse, or "ex." Why? Because they know the odds regarding who is more likely to kill someone, and the odds are almost always that it is always someone they know, "love," trust, live with now, lived with in the past, etc.
Then some are, insanely, their own worst enemy:
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. That accounts for about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. The same is happening all around the globe.
Some might recall the way that a cartoon character called “Pogo” revealed the truth about misperceptions which are rooted in duality and which are generated by distorted perspectives about who is "good" and who is "bad" . . . about who is "for us" and who is "against us":
Yet millions blindly believe the lies being told by their political leaders who try to generate fear in order to be able to control the masses; therefore, rather than finding out what "the real relative threats are to their 'safety'," many unquestioningly accept on blind faith the word of politicians who have a history of lying.
Those who have most abused me over the 71 years I've walked about on this planet were religious fanatics, but they were not of the "Islamic type." They were "god-fearing, bible-thumping" persons proclaiming to be "Christians who were also god-like."
If the tiger is already in your house, the last thing the wise and sane would do would be to close off all avenues of exit and lock themselves in the house with the tiger. Yet that is what persons are doing. They are fearing those who are outside rather than looking objectively at those who are already inside.
They are wanting to build walls around themselves to protect themselves though that which they are likely to need protection from are already inside the wall. And what else lives inside walls? Prisoners.
Persons imprison themselves and imprison others because of fear and arrogance and a sense of different-from-ment and (therefore) supposed better-than-ment.
In the slum-like neighborhood where I lived as a child, we were separated from the city's "elite" by fences around their gated communities and by the police who patrolled their neighborhoods but not ours and a host of other sociological barriers involving distance and economic blockades and skin-color-based obstruction, etc.
Such tribal thinking, which is really just dualistic thinking - has long generated fear of "the others" along with a hatred of those with different skin color, with different religious preferences, with different sexual preferences, with difference economic circumstances, etc.
and have inspired Nazis and neo-Nazi affiliations; a racist belief in white supremacy; a belief in generic superiority as taught by the theory of eugenics; and - of course - a desire for separation and wall-building.
The effects have long been present and continue to this day. Now some say that "a picture is worth a thousand words." The "non-dualist" might say, "Seeing the message in a picture can sometimes save the wasting of one's breath by assuring that a thousand words need not be said in order to illustrate the prevalence of the duality which comes with the widespread Ultimate Sickness."
So you're invited to see a few pictures to illustrate the point.
When traveling around the environs of Cape Town, South Africa some years ago, I witnessed one "township" (slum) after another which was walled off from the more-prosperous surroundings:
Johannesburg, S.A. had similar, walled-off slums:
Kenya has similar divisions:
As I also saw in Mexico City:
As does Tanzania:
As does Seattle, Washington and its tent cities housing the homeless:
As does Mumbai, India:
And the same kind of duality-based preference for separation exists here where I live in a community called "Walden on the Lake." The house I live in is modest according to local standards, but one can drive two minutes in a certain direction from the house and see such mansions as these which are occupied by people with white skin:
and
or, one can drive a few minutes in the opposite direction and see homes like this, occupied by people with black skin:
See? Because the Ultimate Sickness is universal, then the results of that Sickness (duality-based thinking and talking and behaving which generate a desire
for walls and barriers and obstacles and separation and judgmentalism
and unfounded fear of "the other" along with tribalism-inspired hatred and anger) are also universal. It manifests from Africa to India to the U.S. and all points in between.
Maharaj's advice? " Break down the wall of ignorance"
and
"You want to be on both sides of the wall at the same time. You can, but you must remove the wall. Or realize that the wall and both sides of it are one single space, to which no idea
like ‘here’ or ‘there’ applies"
and
"There is no wall between us except the one built by you"
and
"Destroy the wall that separates."
In contrast to those non-duality-based pointers is the duality-based mantra: "Build the wall!!"
To the contrary, Maharaj advised: "Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind had built around you."
To be continued.
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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.
THE EXPLANATION
If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.
Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of God in the past was of a weak God, an absentee God, A Santa Claus-type God, a mean, punishing, vindictive God, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring God whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."
The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a God that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").
Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring God,' any supposed God that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'God' and that the only part that is relevant is the "loving and caring" part.
"That is, a non-narcissistic god / goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'God' and focus on the 'God as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you."
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men."
--Pope John Paul II
"There is no hell."
--Pope Francis, the current pope
[in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari,
a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record
teachings
which become a part of the Papal Magisterium]
Here's
the direct link to the VIDEO VERSION
of the "Awakening Together" satsang session with Regina and Jacqueline referenced earlier, 18 MARCH 2018.
If preferred, here's
the direct link to the AUDIO VERSION
of that session.
