mandyjw

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

The snake symbolizes healing and kundalini awakening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus_as_a_symbol_of_medicine I don't know but I suspect woman was the first to have a kundalini awakening. Women are still sitting around waiting for men's frontal lobes to mature. In the meantime there are more intellectually stimulating conversations to be had with snakes.

No, it's something that comes through sometimes and I recognize it as alignment. I could bullshit myself and you into believing that my experience is any certain way, but it's not. There is a knowledge of a kind of connection or source that I recognize has always been there and been my deepest intuition and desire. In the past I thought that this thing I intuited was my deepest flaw, sin or madness and I tried to hide it conform and keep myself alive. I thought my inherent intuitive lack of regard for my life or reputation was madness and I tried to shy away from it. Now that charade is up. The best way I can describe it is as if I am a character, and shit happens that I don't want sometimes, but I know that I am really not the character but the inspiration flowing through the author who is writing my story. And when I align with that it's a kind of bliss that can go anywhere with me. It can go to the deepest grief and sorrow that someone I loved has passed, all while knowing that they have never left, there is no loss and that they are more deeply, intimately me that I can imagine. The same with all the people I have passionately loved or desired but couldn't have. When I'm tapped into that source it feels like I'm madly, deeply in love with everything without needing any of it. Other times, I get legitimately fucking pissed off that my husband can't be bothered to put the toilet seat down. Other times, I devolve into suffering, except it feels very hazy and dreamlike and I can pop out much quicker than I ever did before. I also recognize that whatever I have tapped into and discovered is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't know where this is going. I feel like I've been rescued from my lonely castle and swept away on an adventure, and while normally I'd be scared I'm so, so in love with this formless nonexistent hero who rescued me, that I just don't fucking care. The idea that this has only just begun and I don't know where it's going itself feels like a chill of something moving up my spine, which in the past I may have thought was fear, but now understand as pure bliss and desire. This is just some bullshit romantic story, by some dumb fool in love. Take no note of it. Write your own. You're 100% right though. It's too good to be true.

No, it didn't bring death. It couldn't. There's no death, there never was death. Believe (belly of eve) in death or not, it doesn't make it actual. The snake was right. The snake never spoke a lie. Some asshole planted a tree in the garden that he told people they couldn't touch. But really I'm not blaming God but, the story speaks of the origins of blame and shame, which is only us.

Sigh... men.

Hey Leo, this snake in the apple tree told me that this apple would not make me die, and that I'd be like God, knowing good and evil if I ate it. Want a bite?

Bliss. Complaints? I think not, therefore I am...

Anything put on a pedestal is always second place.

The biggest trauma I had in my life was falling head over heels for a boy who had heavily flirted with me, and I was absolutely NOT supposed to be even considering because of some dramatic family stuff that happened before we were even born. I had a private conversation with him where we talked about the family stuff, I admitted my feelings and he told me he didn't give a rat's ass about me. A couple years later, he became coworkers with my sister and she mentioned that we went to school together. He said he didn't even remember me. I just could not make sense of this. This was nothing I even attempted to work through or thought to work through, although I couldn't stop dreaming about him. During an awakening however, it all bubbled up and I saw love in the complete disregard of it. I wanted him to see me. I wanted to heal our family stuff through a relationship. And in a way, he gave me the greatest gift and freedom in saying, it's all forgiven, forgotten and no one cares. And in the awakening I felt the love in that. I tried to make love and healing happen myself, when they were in fact, already the case. Well holy fuck, after writing this, even I've never told it quite like that before, or seen it in quite that light before. Jesus Christ, can't I just help someone else without also helping myself? Life is for-giving for no one I guess.

Once people taste the freedom of that, they won't go back. We aren't going back to not having public schools, we aren't going back on disallowing coverage for preexisting conditions. Once we do something really right, no one wants to change it back. The health insurance racket is probably the number one driver of wage slavery. Free health care will be felt as a HUGE freedom. Problem is a lot of people won't know that until they taste it and honestly, it might take us a while to get it right.

I've gotten sucked into engaging in discussions with some of the conservative Christians in my life. A good handful of Republicans and Christians have completely turned on Trump and voted for Biden. These are observations about those who haven't. Trump's conveniently timed newly revised pro-life stance sold them completely. They are mourning the unborn children that they believe his loss of the election means. There are a few emotionally triggering issues for them that completely shut down any logical reasoning or exploration. 1. Abortion 2. Socialism = BAD 3. Immediate disgust at the idea of higher gas prices, taxes and loss of gun ownership rights. What gets me is that the Republican party is supposed to be CONSERVATIVE. To me, being conservative means not going into crazy debt that our kids have to pay back, not destroying the environment so that my kids will have to pay for THAT too, etc. It means making the American dream a possibility for anyone today and not at the expense of future American citizen's dreams. It means making medical care accessible, efficient, high quality and inexpensive as possible. I want a goddamn genuinely conservative political party.

This story, the whole of it, includes everyone and everything. Just as there is no Voldemort without Harry Potter in the story, there's no Hitler without you. Just as there's no Voldemort or Harry Potter at all in reality, there's no you or Hitler in reality at all either. You are the author, authoring. There's no you without that boring thing sitting in front of you either. But you're dramatic, so we talk about Hitler instead of that boring inanimate object you only now authored into your existence by bringing attention to it.