tsuki

You have to distinguish between suffering and pain, or difficult emotions. Suffering is ignorance, it is acting in accordance with false beliefs, having no results, and not learning from your mistakes. Suffering causes pain and difficult emotions, but they are not suffering. Suffering is inextricably connected with knowledge, which can blind you, and the antidote to it is consciousness, a.k.a. clarity, or truth. The point of spirituality is not to live a life without any difficult emotions, or with no pain. The point is to respond to your suffering in constructive ways. This is actually done via listening to all of your emotions and sensory experiences and responding to them with clarity. As humans, we need connection. This is not optional. We are highly social animals.

Happiness and enlightenment are not necessarily connected. Enlightenment concerns knowing your true nature, while unconditional happiness is related to emotional mastery. You can know your true nature, and yet - you may not know how emotions work, and how to be effective in this domain.

The illness is God's will, but so is your willingness to be healthy.

Also, it may be important that this entity visited after I had a visitor from abroad that was very distressed, enormous shadow, to the point where he would visibly switch between two personalities. The shadow was so large, that he barely was able to tell what he was doing when he was possessed by it. He also had latent psychic powers. In frustration he would move my wife's energy around her body and he broke a vase with flowers from across the room.

@Kay100 I had one instance of a disembodied entity occupying space in my home. First of all, realize that these entities are not dangerous. They are attracted to sensitive people and enjoy the attention you are giving them. The more you personalize them and the more you dress them up in mysticalities, the more they are willing to play these games with you. Your fear and other reactions feeds them. In my case, it was probably a dead person looking for something. It enjoyed showing its presence at night, to the point where I was waking up, thinking that someone is in my empty flat. Or it would show up as a foreign presence in a forest, behind trees, when it was barely out of my field of view. My wife had vivid dreams of a dead acquaintance few days beforehand. To get rid of it, I did several things. First of all, I noticed that it enjoyed staying around a black chair that I had at home. It liked black a lot, so I covered that chair with colorful clothes. When I did that, the entity threw a bauble off my Christmas tree. I also spread these colors around the house in places that were not lively enough. When I did that, It cornered itself in my wife's study that I usually don't sit in. So, I claimed that space with white sage smoke. After I did that for two days, white sage and lots of colors, the entity disappeared. Haven't seen it in a year. All of these things that I did ware purely intuitive, I was sure that this was the right thing to do. Maybe if you got to know your entities better, you could understand why they are attracted to you?

Knowledge is finite and it is possible to know this.

Spirituality is not about living a life in opposition to what you want. It's about exploring the relationship with yourself, discovering what you truly are, and having no inhibition to being it. There is no conflict between spirituality and wealth.

@decentralized I'm sorry that you feel this way. What you feel right now is important because it teaches you what you want, but believe me, it is temporary. You will feel better after some time and you will be occupied with something else. There will be things in your life that will make you forget that he ever existed. Just like when you behaved in ways that make you feel that you deserve to be dumped. You are a valuable person even when you are not beside him. Please be gentle with yourself, please don't pour gasoline into the fire. There were reasons for why you behaved the way you did. Try writing your thoughts on a piece of paper. Write a letter you would not be ashamed of writing to your best friend. Please stand by your own side.

@Rilles I agree with your observations. Leo has a lot of work to do in the relative domain. Just hearing this statement from him, in a humble way, without making this observation into a virtue of self-observation, would do wonders to this place. Despite his non-dual insights, Leo is a very fallible human being, with quirks of personality that are purely circumstantial. He oftentimes gives advice with no regard for the person on the receiving end, simply because he is preoccupied with his life. He is oftentimes reacting to his past, where I'm willing to bet that he was ridiculed for being different. This is why I think that he is ridiculing people he is teaching, because he is still afraid. When said explicitly, there is nothing in these words apart from compassion, coming from a place of understanding. There is a very good reason why Leo is behaving this way. This is not an objective reason, but a purely subjective one, that is justified from the point of view of individual suffering. What is missing here is the recognition of the importance of relativity. It will be missing as long as Leo is not willing to step up his game. Another important thing is that there is no way of "making a person open up", of forcing someone to be vulnerable. I think that threads like this serve only to express one's frustration and are not helpful in changing this place.

This is a very entertaining thread. Haven't seen Leo so eager to talk for a long time. @Leo Gura, you touched upon the subject of will and I was wondering about your views on it. During my recent awakening, I became conscious that I have no free will and that my will is exactly the same as understanding and love. I understand that knowledge and the finite mind is bound with the body and that through this will, I am the force that animates all of existence. On the other hand, I am also not a thing, I don't exist as something and I cannot die and that I was never born. I wonder how that relates to God consciousness you are speaking of.

"I" exists as a thought. Even though it claims that the subject is an object (I am this, I am that), this is impossible.

Mu

@Vivaldo Your interpretation of the film is incomplete. it does not incorporate the existence of space-monkeys, men that followed Tyler into their own demise, and were trained by being dehumanized. In truth, Fight-club is a commentary on how a persons interior rots when they follow conventional, pre-destined paths led out by society. This is exemplified by the protagonist, a nameless character that is deeply unhappy with his life, to the point where he has a schizophrenic breakdown where he develops an alter-ego to vent his frustrations. Tyler is, in essence, the protagonist's will to destroy that is created because of repressed unhappiness and status games. Tyler's destructive nature is shown throughout the film and he is not an edgy character that is detached from society. He is actively destructive towards himself, other people and institutions. He hates himself, Marla, and space-monkeys. Ultimately, he shoots the protagonist in the face and blows up Wall street. Weak, purposeless men that are not connected to themselves are attracted to Tyler for the same reason the Protagonist created him. If you find Tyler attractive, watch the hell out. Let me say this again. Tyler is not a strong character, a perfect man. Tyler is the embodiment of repressed anger and destruction that men seek when they are unhappy. Fight club is a study on trauma and how it shows up in masculine expression.

Why would it be about you? Why would anybody want to hurt you intentionally, with full understanding that they are inflicting pain? Let's invert this situation. Try to imagine that you stand in front of a person, and deliberately do something that they don't want, precisely because they don't want it, just to inflict pain. Not because you are reacting to something within you, like anger (which not about them, but about you), but to do it for "their" sake. What would be a reason? The issue is not "between you and them". This is your issue. You are hurt, they are not, they are not thinking about it. For them, it does not exist. There is no magical space that is sprung "between", in which the problem hangs. When you want to "communicate your negative feelings" to them, what you communicate is that you want them to change the way in which you feel. This is not possible. You are creating your own feelings by thinking. Let me get more specific. You are thinking that something must be true, and when people's behavior does not correspond to these expectations, you feel bad. Then, you react to this feeling and blame the person for "doing this to you". This is a little bit abstract, so let me give you a few examples that may, or may not fit your case: You may think that you are a good person, and that it means that people ought to be kind to you. When people are unkind, you feel bad because it violates your assumption that you are good. Then, you react to this feeling and try to make other people act kindly towards you, so that you can think of yourself that you are a good person. But the misunderstanding here is that people act unkindly for reasons that are unrelated to you. People may be unkind because they have to stomach a perfectionist boss that is abusive towards them. They are unkind because they their have a toothache. They are unkind because they were just thinking about a teacher that scolded them unfairly in third grade. The truth is that people's behavior towards you, and your moral standing are unrelated. You may also think that the purpose of relationships is to provide pleasure, to have good time. When difficult emotions arise (and they inevitably do), you think that you do something wrong and blame yourself for "not being social enough", for not being pleasant. What is missed here is that people's emotions are related to your behavior only through their interpretation. Their interpretation is, in turn, strongly related to their beliefs. Regardless of whether these examples fit, or not, their common theme is that there is a belief that emotions are something external, that is done to you, and that you are a passive recipient of them. This is false. You are creating your emotions by thinking about people, about the world, etc.

Personal sex preferences, arranging ones life to one's benefit - all fine, whatever the content. Speaking of it in a manner that suggests any form of a superior lifestyle? Disgrace unfitting of a teacher. There are many women that don't orgasm during regular sex, for all sorts of reasons. If sex is the central point of a relationship to you, say it plainly. But don't assume a role of a model that speaks of what relationships should look like and what is pathetic. I've seen a lot of shit talked here on this forum but I haven't been so pissed off in a long time.

@Leo Gura What you call your personal standards stop being personal once you are vocal about them in a community that looks up for your guidance. Yes, you have said to not believe you, not copy you, do the work, etc, but in the end it is not a student's fault when a teacher spouts nonsense from their personal bias. Choosing to be in a relationship with a woman that has been traumatized is not pathetic. That is you spouting nonsense from your personal bias. What you wrote is just disgraceful.

@somegirl When you bring rational logic to justify how you feel, you are encouraging your friend to do the same. They most likely also think that they had a good reason to be upset/angry/insensitive, because they were overwhelmed with other stuff in their life and weren't paying enough attention. To them, it was never about you, which is exactly why it was hurtful to you. Also, notice that the situation in which you were hurt is already gone, and that you are the one that brings the pain into the conversation and in doing so, prolong it. I don't want to imply that your pain is irrelevant, or that you are feeling something incorrect, I am merely referring to relationship dynamics and what is playing out between the two of you. Specifically, how you are creating anger and resentment in your friends. So, what can be done about it? First, realize that you are, indeed hurt, like a hurt animal that needs help. Even though your friend has hurt you, you need their help, you need them to apologize to feel better. You need them to behave a certain way so that you don't face this difficulty. This is a position of neediness, not of assertiveness, as conventional logic would make you believe. You cannot handle this properly if you dress up in self-righteousness, moral superiority, or victimhood. How can you expect to open up and be vulnerable to a person that has hurt you? This is a double-bind. That person cannot help you if they are not receptive to your needs. Saying it to them, telling that they are insensitive will not help. It will arouse self-righteousness. Don't do it. What should be done is to withdraw from the relationship until you feel better and feel that you are ready to spend some time with them again. You have no right over this relationship, its nature is completely transitory. If you hold on to it and "make it work", you break it. A relationship that must work is not worth having.

We currently are nowhere near the technology that would be truly creative. Artificial intelligence as it currently stands is extracting patterns from data we feed to it by constraining a more general computational algorithm that we also chose for it. The fact that it is unpredictable to us, and that the extracted patterns are intricate has little to do with art. To me, one of the defining characteristics of art is intention. AI is more of a programmer's brush than it is an artist.

@Mosess ?

Because I was conditioned to believe that my feelings and perceptions are not the truth, and that I need to justify them with rational logic.

Define what emotional mastery means to you. Get to learn how emotions work, how they arise, what they communicate. Inspect your circumstances and understand how they relate to how you feel and think at any given day.

I wouldn't be too judgmental about your difficult feelings towards her. Your children need your protection and you are giving your absolute best do provide it. Forgiveness does not imply that you should welcome her into your life as if nothing happened.

Another misunderstanding is that you are supposed to manipulate your perception of reality to be in accord with a description that you read somewhere. Meditation, contemplation, and spirituality are about recognizing what is already true, and already the case. You are not supposed to manipulate, alter, or otherwise modify yourself, or the world. This is not the goal. This pursuit is irrelevant. If you can manipulate your experience and see something differently, then it is not the truth of the matter, but a facet of your experience. So, reading something, relating to it, bringing it into the context of the investigation is completely irrelevant to contemplation. What is true is already true, regardless of what you know, or don't. When you recognize something true, your relationship to it may or may not change, but >>change is not the method<<. It may sometimes be helpful to remove things that distract you, such as TV, loud music, or your beliefs about the matter, but these things are not the truth. For example, when you investigate yourself, then you are present in your experience regardless of whether you are sitting, standing, doing yoga, or sleeping. It is not about an emotional state either, because you are yourself regardless of whether you are angry, blissful or fearful. There are states that are helpful towards this investigation, for example, it may be beneficial to develop focus so that you can stay longer with the task without being distracted. It may be beneficial to develop good posture so that you don't hurt yourself while investigating. But investigation, in of itself, is itself. It is not thinking, it is not wrinkling your eyebrows and looking serious, it is not sitting peacefully, it is itself. It is irreducible to anything else. So stop thinking about distinctions, or removing them, but investigate what they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtk3HCgTa8 In this talk, Rich Hickey talks about complexity, simplicity, easiness and difficulty. How these two dimensions are distinct, how they interact, and how to build reliable systems that are easy to maintain. He uses programming as an example, but this is a great presentation about how clear thinking can help us navigate life.

You are trying to relate the investigation of difference with knowledge that you already have. First, you must see for yourself that you don't know what difference is. You can see that things are different, but you don't know what is difference. You are not looking to explain what is difference. You want to find it, like you find your hand when you to scratch your head. You want to witness difference directly. Book of not knowing by Peter Ralston may be of help.