mandyjw

I agree, but most of those videos are really for entertainment. I'm not saying it's right or wrong but why? We'd do better to observe and be curious about ourselves and why we are fascinated or horrified by the things we are. The identification with the body drives a lot of our behaviors. I suspect that we study tragic bizarre things with fascination and horror, trying to figure out how to prevent them from happening to ourselves.

@Keyhole Those can be means of emotional and physical pain projection. We try to imagine these experiences as if we knew what they were like. We are projecting and imagining something that feels terrible. Why?

Why are there all kinds of plants with incredible medicinal uses? Seems too good to be true.

@arlin No particular way, it's always been there. Everyone has a desire to know truth and love, and when you realize that awareness itself is the desire to know truth and love, you realize you already are what you're looking for. Feeling it and embodying it seems to be a process, but that's also what's wanted.

@Preety_India This is really great if you haven't read it. https://www.amazon.com/Womens-Bodies-Wisdom-Revised-Emotional/dp/0553386735

If it was, it would be disappointing. If it was not, it would be disappointing. Neither is nor not is the goldilocks, just right zone in which we "are", like Jim says, it's already what's wanted. I like the word full.

All your mind can do is imagine "not" as something. Usually something scary, like a void. If it notices the lack of something, (which is actually itself imagining the lack of something) which it can never experience, it has to create the lack of something, which is something. I hope that makes sense, it really sounds like I'm talking round in circles, which I am because I'm describing a strange loop process of something creating itself.

I connected a lot of dots when my Grandmother died. She was 93, so it was easy to accept but still I loved her very much. The grief drove me deeper into intuition and connection I wasn't conscious of before. It felt like an expansion and clarity of love rather than loss and when it didn't I was able to see the clarity every now and then again. I started listening to Abraham Hicks clips at the same time who said to look for someone you lost where they are and not where they are not. As you go deeply into nonduality, this pointer makes sense on every level and can be experienced. Rather than grief it's a kind of profundity and beauty that can be covered over if you only look where you believe something that once was is no longer. You have to go to them where they are, they won't come to you because your assumption that something is lost is mistaken.

It helps to think about what dreams are trying to heal or show to you, to think about the symbolism rather than taking them face value. Also apply that curiosity to event in real life. This is all the dream. Heavy contemplation will sometimes lead to insights during sleep or rest in my experience. It's like building muscles. You actually rip them apart when you're working hard at lifting weights, but during rest you build them back better than before.

I ADORE Jim Newman. All these teachers are very different ways of pointing you toward the same thing. You can point to the same thing coming from vastly different directions. "It's" not located anywhere or directional but language pointing someone to something is and has to be. With Jim Newman, remember that there is no such thing as an absence of the thing. So he's throwing all these possible beliefs you're holding onto at you and squashing them ruthlessly like a bug. Love it. Also some people can only grasp the Jim Newman direction of pointing at stuff, and still believe that "not" is actually not. Other teachers will trigger them by talking about what it is.

@Adamq8 Couldn't pick one, I'm a total teacher whore. Right now, Rupert Spira. I had a huge breakthrough after discovering Abraham Hicks, but started out devouring everything Eckhart Tolle after discovering Leo's videos years ago. Also found Jim Newman incredibly helpful recently. Nahm on the forum has helped me immensely and so has just about everyone on the forum. The further I go the more the common vein of what everyone is saying clicks. This is leaving out so many people and events that worked out for me at the time too though. Bottom line, there are no teachers but there just seems to be a whole lot of love.

Consciousness/awareness are words that we have stolen to use for a word to what is beyond their normal meaning. So Rupert Spira speaks of consciousness as what is beyond the everyday understanding of the word (infinite), and Nisargadatta Maharaj is using the word consciousness as we and everyone else normally uses it (finite). They are both talking about the same thing, when you can put together different ways of speaking about something it helps you move beyond the language of it. All teachers have to borrow finite words to speak about the infinite, so that's the benefit of having so many different teachers.

Some guy who knows how to play guitar. Sometimes I forget that my psyche doesn't have walls and it seems like there are peeping Toms. I'm running out of places to hide.

I literally just had my first sip of coffee in weeks while reading this.

The present moment points straight to awareness and out of thinking. It's an incredibly powerful pointer, but that's its sneaky function. There's no present moment. If this was a movie made of frames, you could point to the presently experienced frame. There are no frames.

The dilemma here is that when we judge someone's level of development or connection with love, we are holding on to the belief that people actually can posses and embody love, and that there are actually separate people. So if we judge someone by their actions and wonder if they aren't aligned after having understanding or glimpses, we've shown ourselves our own cards so to speak, and we see that we are holding onto the hope of realization or embodiment of love to make us good, safe and ok. In order to maintain this charade of a self, we actually judge others, and in that moment, the love itself is covered over. It's a slippery beast. Not the love. The thing that tries to grab it.

With diet, I think it's really important to follow your intuition. Test things and see how you feel. I absolutely love almond milk, more than normal milk but I swear to god, the calcium they use in it is not right and I get strange subtle symptoms when I drink it. I think the best bet is to eat a ton of veggies. Also if you eat sardines with the bones, you get a lot of calcium. Make sure you buy the more expensive, smaller sized ones, or the bones are just gross. I don't think high quality sources of dairy are bad every now and then if you can handle it.

Consistent over what? Time?

I suspect and have experienced that antisocial behavior (although usually it's withdrawing from social life completely rather than lashing out) can be a result of understanding the true power of love and a complete unwillingness to settle for less in relationships. The disparity between what one knows themselves to be deep down but cannot embody or see reflected in the world becomes too painful to bear. The disparity is all that is noticed and in the focus on it, the love is lost. There is no disparity, no self and other but most teenagers are too immature to even begin to go there on their own. If the proper guidance isn't there, that kind of passion with no outlet or understanding can ignite into something destructive.

Luke, I am your Father.

@arlin

The real puppet is the mind. The mind isn't that much fun really, but mind fucks are.

Yeah, I admit it's stupid. Ken and Barbie are both just made of the same plastic. But you have to have a good imagination to keep that sexual tension alive. My obsession with the garden of Eden myth probably has something to do with my Christian upbringing, where the psychology of blame and fear of seduction by women is hard to ignore. It's not just religion though, you can also find plenty of it in the dating section of this forum for example. There is an element of the feminine and the feminine mystic side of things (the Occult actually celebrates a lot of it) that is demonized in Christianity, and sadly I often see the same thing going on throughout the more "woke" spiritual community to some degree. Also going into the deep metaphysics or whatever of spirituality, it is common for women to have very different awakenings than men, and to have different problems/openings with different chakras. They can open in reverse, supposedly. Many of the traditions still are aimed at men. Spirituality is a field where there should be very strong gender equality, but there isn't, nearly all the "superstars" of spirituality are male because we project the traits we think are superior onto spiritual teachers. Not sure if this comes from the fact that emotions are demonized at some stage of the path or what exactly. Again, it's all just dualities at play. If there no form or duality, we're just a molten puddle of plastic, not Barbie and Ken. It's just not as much fun. But yes, it's funny.

You could say the snake's speech was the first thought. You can say the snake is symbolized by the human spine. The thing about stories is that they are open for anyone's interpretation. Spend time in nature with actual trees rather than reading about them then. Nature has a way of the being both the most boring, calming, mothering and the most fascinating teacher ever. fascinate (v.) 1590s, "bewitch, enchant," from French fasciner (14c.), from Latin fascinatus, past participle of fascinare "bewitch, enchant, fascinate," from fascinus "a charm, enchantment, spell, witchcraft," which is of uncertain origin. Earliest used of witches and of serpents, who were said to be able to cast a spell by a look that rendered one unable to move or resist. Sense of "delight, attract and hold the attention of" is first recorded ..1815. https://www.etymonline.com/word/fascinate