Bill W

I love David Hawkins. His Letting Go book was a huge game changer for me. His LOC is 1001

It was someone else's direct experience that I borrowed lol

The Letting Go book and some of his YouTube stuff on the subject is amazing. Game changer for me. The dating section of this site has a strong element of the blind leading the blind but I know it's an important issue many struggle with. Anyway. This is a good thread to have.

Be careful associating direct experience as some kind of gold standard. I know what you mean about the forum having high regard for direct experience. But most "direct experience" still relies on an interpretation and often an underlying assumption or belief. I've seen a lot of posts similar to "I've had such and such direct experience and therefore it is true". Or "I've had a direct experienced and therefore it is verified". The direct experience is only as valid as the mind that creates it.

Too much sense of entitlement, and therefore a correlating lack of humility. This is the last thing most people want to hear, that they have an exaggerated sense of entitlement and a lack of humility. It's like a double slap on the face. Good that you listed the perks, as I am a great fan of David Hawkin's Letting Go technique. Unless you can identify the pay-offs and surrender them, it's hard to change a self-defeating behaviour.

You have moved out of the journal zone, into the main forum, and now a moderator LOL - You are flying without wings, must be all that coffee, high as kite

There is another thread about Levels Of Consciousness. I don't really agree with it, the way they allocate a level to someone. But....with this post above, you would wreck their numbering system LOL, you would be minus something - probably lower than a corpse lol

Hi Charlie, I must say, I admire your perseverance and ability to not get overly defensive. I think all this rating of LOC is just a manifestation of the human condition which can be highly obsessive and want to catergorise everything in order to understand and justify things. Trying to measure something so subjective into exact numbers just seems nuts to me. I'd imagine or guess that many of the people rated very high on the LOC couldn't care less for it, and they themselves might find it quite over the top and unnecessary. I mean, whose to say someone with an LOC of 800 is anymore advanced than Joe Bloggs who is 3 down in the queue from Mr LOC 800 in the grocery store. Mr LOC 800 might be advanced on YouTube and in their writings and teachings, and then be at home drinking and drugging or beating his wife, or molesting children, who knows. However, I've been around long enough to know that what seems nuts to me at some point, can then become clear later on. You would only have to look at my reading list compared to 10 years ago to see that. I try to keep my stupidity to manageable levels, but it's work in progress, and some times the stupidity is expressed as a reminder that I am still fairly stupid and there is a lot of work to do! There are a good few posts of mine on this forum that back this up! You've obviously benefited from all this LOC stuff and that's all that matters. If anything, the proof is somewhat in the pudding with the way you have managed this thread and discussion. You've kept it from going off the rails and have not spat out your dummy. You have come out of it well in my opinion. For me that's the acid test, if someone is promoting a school of thought, a way of life, or a philosophy, does that person have anything that I want? Has that person got something I want? Are they role model material? Do I admire their work even if I don't fully understand it? And most importantly perhaps, how do they handle adversity? That's a big turn on (in a non sexual way I mean!) I still think a numbers chart for LOC is bollocks for now, but I am above average in stupid, so please for God's sake no one take my opinion too seriously

Most idiotic thread on the forum, How is Leo resisting the impulse to shut this shit down

I'm a mental health nurse, but currently working in a non-clinical role. More of an employment coach, helping people who have been unemployed for a while, back into work and then supporting them to sustain their job. Most of these people have a chronic health condition. Thinking back over the past 10-15 years, every job I've left, I've quit before lining up a new job. People think I'm crazy for doing that. But sometimes you just have to throw the cards up in the air, and see how they fall Plus, I'm pretty shit at job searching and job hunting unless I put myself under a bit of pressure by first quitting the current job lol Anyway, I've always done it this way pretty much. Never been out of work, not even for one day. That could well be good fortune more than pure skill

Interesting that your last few posts have been about codependency. I'm currently going through this excellent book for a second time. It's 12 steps approach on addiction but many shared principles with all kinds of codependency. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Codependents-Guide-Twelve-Steps-Programme/dp/0671762273

Haha. All good my friend. You can do no wrong in my eyes

Thanks for this, I've downloaded The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer on Kindle. Never heard of it before, but looked good.

Thank you. I only found this clip today. I even thought it was a man's voice! I just took a closer look and it's Joyce Meyer like you say. I'm going to look for some of her other stuff, thanks for your input here my friend.

THIS THIS THIS AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN a stunning 10 mins

Is mental masturbation like this thread going to be clamped down on at some point? I know I don't have to read them but it clogs up an otherwise very useful forum.

Brilliant, thanks for sharing. Love it.

Haha. The Aliens were able to verify your fap. Everyone is a winner lol

Were you and your friend fapping together at the time? ?

I haven't updated this journal in a while. For now, I am running on auto-pilot. A dog chasing it's tail. Going nowhere. However, within the context of how my quality of life has been over the past few years, I'm probably running at about 5/10 right now. Somewhere in the middle. Not where I want to be, but a hell of a lot better than living in extreme fear, addiction, and isolation, which thankfully is not the case right now. 13 months clean, 100% free of alcohol and pills, but my workaholic tendencies (addiction) are back in full force. I am not accepting of the fact that I am now in the zone of diminishing returns with the amount of hours I'm spending on my day job. I'm in 95% denial and 5% realisation that this is happening. As I type, I accept this, tomorrow, I will probably wake up back in denial. That's the good thing about having a journal to look back on. (the law of) diminishing returns used to refer to a point at which the level of real achievement (my words) profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of time and effort (my words) money or energy invested. At times like this, I've learned (but failed to consistently implement) to just KEEP IT SIMPLE. To temporarily let go of the "big personal development plan" and just put one foot in front of the other and do the next right thing. With this in mind, I'd like to end on this......... Don't pass the suffering on This is what I will try my hardest to do tomorrow. I (we?) suffer and I (we?) pass it on. Don Miguel Ruiz writes that the human condition is one of an infection that we acquire at about 4 or 5 years old. Passed on to us from our parents or caregivers who themselves are infected. He also writes that we then get full up of emotional poison, we then need to release this poison to try and escape it. Initially, we try to give it back to the person we feel gave it to us, but if we can't do that, we just end up giving it to anyone we can find. So, just for tomorrow, I'm going to focus on managing my suffering without projecting it on to the world. To not be a victim. To not play the blame game. But, boy it's hard to do that.

People believe what they want to believe. No fap. Fapping. No porn. Using porn. None of it really matters. People search for that "A causes B" scenario. The benefits of no fap or no porn are the same as any other time when you successfully introduce some discipline into your life. Whenever you set yourself a target to control your impulses and you succeed, it will feel good and you will think you are on to a winner and want to shout it from the roof tops. You then get people wanting to defend their position. Happens all the time. And some of that will be true. If it works for you, go for it. Fap or no fap. Porn or no porn. It's not important. It's just another way to project your inner problems onto the outside world and you end up playing the victim and/or the blame game.

Porn gets such a bad deal on here! Just don't let it become an obsession. The problem is never the porn and never the fapping. Its like many things in life, be sensible and use in moderation. If you are vulnerable to porn and fapping then work on your inner issues rather than laying the blame external to you.

Thoughts are often not a problem until you act on them or respond to them. I don't think you need to control your thoughts to take responsibility. Action speaks louder than thoughts. I can't remember who said this but it was something like "trying to control your thoughts is like trying to hold a river in your hands" If you try to control your thoughts you are pissing in the wind. That's my experience. It's how you interact with your thoughts that's key. The mind is a master story teller.