VeganAwake

I'm not sure but fortune cookies never lie or leave you craving a sweet treat after supper ? ❤

Yeah the mind splits reality up into moments or segments in an attempt to digest what's being perceived.... otherwise apparent reality would seem like one big long f****** psychedelic trip. If that wasn't the case you'd probably go insane within weeks.

Yeah there just isn't a right or wrong path to begin with. There's just what seems to be happening! ❤

This looked like a great share opportunity ❤ "I’ve found it interesting to notice and get curious about the undercurrent of restlessness or dissatisfaction that shows up sometimes in my experience and I suspect in that of most other human beings as well. We may find that this is sometimes quite strong and overt, and at other times, it is a very subtle, barely detectible undercurrent—a slight tension in the bodymind that is perhaps almost always there to some subtle degree, even in moments of pleasure. It often manifests as the attempt to manipulate, control, change or understand experience. It might show up for some as an effort to identify as awareness and not as a bodymind, or as an effort to be mindful (to “be here now”) all the time. It might be the sense that something needs to happen, shift, clarify, drop away or be found. It might be a feeling that we can’t stand being here in this mind or this body or this situation. It emerges from a sense of separation—a sense of fundamental lack, of not being okay, of something missing or something frightening or threatening. Nisargadatta described consciousness as an itching rash that comes upon us. Consciousness seemingly divides up the indivisible wholeness and freezes formlessness into apparently separate forms, giving rise to the sense of being an encapsulated separate self and the inevitable feelings of dissatisfaction, lack and endless seeking that follow from that. Buddha called it suffering, the delusion of being a persisting, separate somebody, driven by fear and desire. Adi Da, a controversial America guru (about whom I have very mixed feelings), often posed the question, “What are you always doing?” He was pointing to what he called the self-contraction. And he said, "Your suffering is your own activity. It is something that you are doing moment to moment....You will continue to pursue every kind of means until you realize that all you are doing is pinching yourself. When you realize that, you just take your hand away. There is nothing complicated about it. But previous to that, it is an immensely complicated problem.” He also said, “The self is just like this clenched fist. Relax the fist and there is nothing inside... We are never at any moment in the dilemma we fear ourselves to be." We often think so-called spiritual awakening is about getting something or finding the Truth. But it’s more about seeing the false as false, seeing through unnecessary mental activities, noticing and relaxing that metaphorical clenched fist in the bodymind. And we can’t actually “do” relaxing—that would be a contradiction in terms. In the seeing (i.e., awaring) of the tension, there is a natural relaxing that happens by itself—the storylines begin to lose their believability and their grip loosens. The clenched fist opens. It isn’t a willful efforting—it’s a relaxing, a letting go, an opening, a surrendering. It happens spontaneously. And it rarely, if ever, happens once and for all. It’s always about right now. And sometimes, relaxing doesn’t happen. And then, it may be possible to notice that even the contraction or the tension is never really a problem—it is simply an impersonal energetic movement of this aliveness, a momentary dance that presence is doing. Taking it personally, giving it meaning, viewing it as “The Obstruction Standing Between Me and My Awakening” and then trying really hard to get rid of it, is all only a new meta form of the very problem it is trying to cure—a problem about the problem. This efforting to get rid of effort, or trying to stop trying, is a common unintended side effect of otherwise potentially helpful pointers and practices such as recognizing ourselves as boundless awareness or impersonal presence, or “being here now,” or even attending talks by someone like Tony Parsons in which we are told that there is nothing to do and no one to do it. All of these things, when slightly misunderstood, can inadvertently feed into the very problem they are designed to expose or undermine. The medicine that we need to cure a physical illness often has unintended but unavoidable side effects. For example, radiation treatments successfully and blessedly dissolved a cancerous tumor in this body that would have killed me, but it also caused some secondary collateral damage that continues to unfold (as they knew it would, and as I was told about in advance, and which was a price I was willing to pay). In a similar way, spiritual practices and pointers can also have unintended collateral side effects or potential pitfalls. They can inadvertently reinforce the sense that “this isn’t it,” that “something needs to happen,” that there is someone here who needs to do something to finally be okay or complete or happy or enlightened. They can reinforce a dualistic sense of success and failure, okay and not-okay, a striving for future results, an endless evaluating of how we are doing, comparing ourselves to others, and believing that the speaker at the front of the room or the author of the book has something the rest of us don’t. As with the radiation that cured my cancer, this doesn’t mean these pointers and practices are terrible and should not be used. It seems to be part of the journey from Here to Here that we inevitably stumble into various misunderstandings and their associated pitfalls (or unintended side effects), and then eventually (with luck), we wake up from them—or we don’t, and that, too, is simply how this dance is dancing. Often different teachings serve as antidotes to the unintended pitfalls of other teachings. Thus, in my own journey, Toni Packer helped to dissolve some of the pitfalls inadvertently induced by Zen; radical nonduality helped to dissolve some of the pitfalls inadvertently induced by Toni’s approach; various Buddhist teachers and more encounters with Toni helped to dissolve some of the pitfalls induced by radical nonduality; and so on and on. In one moment we need mindfulness meditation, in another moment we need Rupert Spira or Gangaji or Adyashanti, in another moment we need Karl Renz or Jim Newman or Peter Brown, and in another moment we need Robert Saltzman or Shiv Sengupta. It’s not about one being right and the other being wrong. It’s about pulling the most recent rug we’re standing on out from under us again and again and waking us up to THIS, right here, right now. The mind is infinitely skilled at turning rug-pulling and rug-less-ness into an imaginary new apparently solid rug upon which we can stand. Thus, waking up is not once-and-for-all, but always NOW. So, you may find it interesting to give open nonjudgmental attention to the persistent sense of restlessness or dissatisfaction—feeling it in the body, that subtle or not so subtle tension, agitation or unease, and also seeing the thoughts and storylines that generate and sustain this unease. Not trying to fix or undo it or get rid of it, because that’s just more of the same efforting, but simply being aware of the whole thing—not thinking of it as a problem, but SEEING it as the neutral and only-possible expression of reality at this moment. This can be an interesting exploration, and if it invites you, I suggest approaching it lightly, with curiosity and interest, not in a goal or result oriented way. Allow it to do you, rather than you trying to do it—which is actually always how it is. And remember, we are never really in the dilemma we imagine ourselves being in. The whole story of being lost, bound, incomplete, etc. is all imagination. There is no separate, independent, persisting person to be any particular way for more than a nanosecond. There is ONLY flow and nothing IN the flow. And paradoxically, the ever-changing flow never departs from the immovable instantaneous timeless immediacy of HERE-NOW." - Joan Tollifson

It doesn't mean anything, it's just what's apparently happening! ❤

It depends on "your" definition of desire. The body can desire/crave food, water, sex, sleep, nicotine. And then a lot of desire stems from social conditioning, wanting new things, materialism basically to improve "one's self" image. There's nothing right or wrong with desire....it's not good or bad.(of course society would say having a desire to hurt or kill someone is bad) But overall yes, the desire I'm talking about is that constant feeling of lack or incompleteness, that something isn't quite right and "I" need to fix it.....I need to become whole and totally satisfied. The whole thing is a crock of shit because awakening reveals this entire character called "ME" with all of its unquenchable and needy desires is completely unreal!! ❤

The apparent issue is that the everyday ordinary experience of separation itself feels incomplete or unsatisfactory. So this apparent sense of self attempts to figure out a way to make itself feel whole and satisfied. But these attempts are completely futile and only perpetuate the illusory experience that there is a real separate self with freewill & choice that can one day in the future become whole and satisfied.(with enough diligent training & focus of course?) And the cosmic joke is: there already isn't anyone that's separate or incomplete to begin with...it's an illusion! Or An unreal experiencer having an unreal problem! ❤

Yep, but it's more than just thought. It's the entire physical/mental experience of separation. And it's not just a moment, it's Everything including the experience of moments. ❤

There just isn't a particular something within everything to be called the truth. The word deluted insinuates there is also a clear or correct path. That's complete horse shit. There's no real goal which needs to be achieved or end result which needs to be met.....and so in that sense there is nothing incorrect/correct, wrong/right, bad/good or deluted/pure. There is only whatever seems to be happening regardless of whether a label of true and false is projected onto it. It's already complete, it's already freedom! ❤

The ego is the entire self construct or sense of self which includes the so-called healthy & unhealthy aspects of it. And of course that which labels behavior as either healthy or unhealthy is nothing other than this ego/sense of self. Simply put: Ego = Identity It's that which claims: "I AM" this physical/psychological bodymind organism. And when this illusory identity collapses, there's nothing left/no one there/nobody home & it's simultaneously recognized there Never Was! ? It was just an illusion of self identity or misunderstanding! ❤

Yeah man it's a total trip & completely ridiculous! What else to say right! Just WTF....? ❤

Exactly! Mind cannot grasp nothing because there's obviously nothing for it to grasp a hold of..... it has to turn the meaning of the word nothing into a conceptual something for it to be grasped. ❤

Exactly, it's an illusion of a self endlessly seeking for a better experience in the future. It stems from the experience that something is currently lacking. ❤

Yep it's both, there's a way and there's not a way! Self-inquiry/spiritual practices can perpetuate and prolong the illusion of separation AND/OR it can illuminate the futility of an unreal individual attempting to become awakened! There's nothing right or wrong better or worse with any practice or inquiry, there's just no one that's actually doing it!! ? ❤

Trust me I get it.... it sounds ridiculous and makes no sense! That's also why it's very rare. All I can really say is it can just become obvious at some point that this Seeker/Sense of self & it's entire conditioned belief system is completely unreal. And of course this Seeker/Sense of self absolutely hates this because it truly believes it's on a spiritual path acquiring multitudes of spiritual knowledge along the way to finally attaining something incredible called spiritual enlightenment. But there is no 'you' that finds or attains enlightenment. As the saying goes: "Nobody Becomes Enlightened" Enlightenment is the collapse of the seeker desperately struggling to attain it & simultaneously the recognition that enlightenment or this, is all there ever was without separation. And this revelation can become obvious after weeks, months, years, decades of desperate seeking without rendering any lasting results.... the futility is realized and becomes exhausted! ❤

Well that's why it's called awakening. And it's not an appearance, its an illusory experience stemming from an assumed identity as the body-mind organism. There isn't a relative self nor an absolute self....they are the same illusion but only seem to be different. There is nothing & no one behind the body-mind's eyes or anywhere else for that matter. And that can be a shocking & even terrifying revelation at first. (It's "to die before you die") only nothing really dies because it wasn't alive from the start. Its complete freedom but for nobody! ❤

There will always be something else....thats how the ego/sense of self keeps running in circles tripping over itself. It has to be clearly recognized that this desperate seeker that is jumping through endless spiritual hoops & believing it's getting closer to so-called enlightenment is just an illusion of self and never satisfied. The seeking ends because it's seen for the first time that this very individual attempting to become enlightened was never real from the start. ❤

The shocking and ridiculous part about this whole conceptual framework is that all these beliefs are stemming from nothing other than an illusory separate sense of self which truly believes it's real and can Hopefully figure out a way to escape death. And the cosmic joke is that there Already isn't a real living separate self.....it's an illusion! This illusory self lives in a reality where HOPE is it's only salvation. ❤

Hehe love it & glad to still see you around here and there ❤ Exactly, there isn't a real someone that experiences feelings of guilt....thats the dream story. Enlightenment isn't exclusive, it's inclusive. Feelings & emotions still arise, there just recognized as having never been arising for a someone. So feelings just come and go with ease & without getting caught up on the sticky illusion of self taking ownership of them. A lot of the feelings do change drastically though as there is no longer this personalized self agenda which needs to be met. It's freedom from no one & for no one! ❤

Maybe you subconsciously feel guilty about something. Possibly religious disobedience? Just a thought!! ❤

I would first try some hot and cold compression to expand and contract those muscles(20min hot 20min cold for 2 rounds in each area) ...maybe take some excederin an hour before, and if you're still not getting any kind of relief maybe try to get a prescription for a muscle relaxant. Also some insurances do cover physical therapy massages, I would at least give it a shot. A doctor should know what to do. ❤

Have you tried those float tanks? They are very relaxing. Have you ever been prescribed any muscle relaxers? Saunas, steam rooms, hot tubs and massages should be your best friends. ❤

Yeah man "forgive them for they know not what they do" ❤

You could try speaking with the person directly and let them know how you feel. And then if that didn't work you could go and file a claim with human resources(HR). A lot a times things get ugly because people are unaware or unfamiliar with the other options that were literally put in place for a reason. ❤