mandyjw

Remember legalizing gay marriage? From my point of view it was mostly understanding and insight but there was some pressure too.

I wouldn't categorize him but Steven Harrison's books are really good but have a very stage green perspective in my opinion. It's very interesting.

Nailed it.

I'm just a Holy Fool, oh baby he's so cruel But I'm still in love with Judas, baby

Well you just added a whole new layer of meaning to the question "Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart?

I tried to live the simple minimalist life, but then I said "fuck it, this is too complicated."

How strange, no one replied to this topic in 2017? It's at first horrific and then incredibly liberating to realize that this is all a façade that no one gets to judge and no one else is judging anyway. What should we do about that?

That's weird, I'm sorry. Ever since I was a kid, Summer is equivalent with ethereal, magical BLISS in my mind. Fall and Winter is also a lot better now since I discovered vitamin D though.

She is awesome. I know a Vietnamese woman refuge and she said she first came to the US as a child that she literally thought that it would be JUST like the movies and Hollywood. She had no concept of what it would actually be like. I think that culturally they had a strong fantasy of what America was and I think Donald Trump has actually pretty much lived that fantasy out in his own life. I also think that this points out that Democrats need to be a little more creative and inspirational. They are far too intellectual and tackle problems and fears rather than painting a picture of what's possible. That's not what gets most people's votes.

I live up north where seasons are really dramatically different and the days get really short in the winter. I used to absolutely hate Fall. I'm more open minded now. In my experience, there is a VERY different energy about Fall, that can be very dark, depressing and even scary if you misinterpret it. If you embrace it rather than avoid it, understanding nonduality, ( no light without dark, blah blah), it goes much better. I heard someone say recently that spring is about beauty and fall is about wisdom and that really resonated. It's a time for going inward, rest, stillness and letting go of stuff.

@Mikael89

Parroting Rupert Spira here, deep sleep is awareness of no object, waking or dream state is awareness of objects. Awareness/consciousness/whatever you call it is the same, unchanged and untouched. The reason people pursue this is the search or desire for love, for truth, to ultimately to align their waking life with the qualities of awareness that comes prior to everything else. Obsession with objects while misunderstanding what you really are prior to all of that is unsatisfying and the cause of suffering.

What politics exactly are you referring to?

Yes, true.

Something wrong with the human form? Sounds just like religion. Sins of the flesh. None of those worldviews are built on anything true though. There's no difference. Atheists are very susceptible to the same kind of traps of religion itself (just framed in new beliefs about enlightenment) because they don't have the experience of having watched people around them fall into them their whole life. It's like being the younger sibling, you know what makes your older sibling get into trouble and you know to avoid it. Maybe letting go of language means expressing yourself with it utterly completely and honestly. Maybe it means silence. I mean, who knows?

I really respect that, but there are subtle ways in which we hold ourselves apart from the things we want. The journey is an inherent component of the destination. Humans can't access it. It's not accessible by anyone, it's access itself. It's the force, the source that drives life. It's an ongoing quest of the human to align with it. There are some spectacular breakthroughs along the way. But you can't say the force that drives life is ultimately not accessible to anyone alive. It precedes it. So you have a belief in beliefs then? Such fixation on specific people here! There already aren't specific people, starting with yourself.

I once had a really warm goose down winter jacket and comforter. Then I realized I had been sick for weeks because I was actually allergic to goose down. It was not at all hard to let go of those things I'd previously loved once I saw the connection with suffering.

Can you imagine if you were like.. up in heaven somewhere disembodied, and God was like "ok, well I want you to go do some awesome shit but the thing is, you can't do that stuff unless you have a body and the problem with having as body is that it can get hurt or killed, so you'll feel fear sometimes. In fact you might even forget that ultimately, you're not a body." Can you imagine how much courage it would take to say yes to THAT? You're already courageous AF. You just forgot there's no such thing as courage, cause there's no such thing as you.

Open-mindedness is the same as truly being honest with yourself, and love. I was raised Christian but as a kid I realized that the belief in hell was impossible to continue with if I believed in a loving God. The two beliefs would not align, so I chose love and dropped the hell belief. That was just part of a string of letting go of more beliefs from religion in order to chose love. But religion left huge openings and questions in my psyche as well. It was neither help nor hindrance when compared with an atheist belief structure. I had different fears. The worst thing as a devout Christian is not physical death at all, it's the Devil that we psychologically equate as the driving force behind suffering itself. Your mind is already completely open. You don't have a mind, you are awareness. No one can tell you what will happen the openness is the question and the answer itself.

Yes! Can also manifest as attraction to people. Any strong emotional reaction really.

Does it though? Factor is a limitation, so when you say infinite factors, you're not talking about infinity anymore. Every single word or concept is limitation. Even infinite as a concept itself. I don't have manners though. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. You already have your cake and eat it too. It's that damn Good. @Shin

See, I didn't just create the story, I had to create language too. And do I get so much as a "thanks, Mom!"? No, I get called a devil with my own words.

@electroBeam Just look at the world "devil" in the mirror. Backwards it spells lived.

@electroBeam I the author, am a dramatic little bitch, I have to throw you away from home if I want to write a story about how you find the way back. You call this your birth. But you were always home in my mind and heart the whole time. Never born, never apart.

Suffering is a call to come Home. But you sit in the dirt and sing along with it instead of getting up and running home. it's not your fault. Maybe no one told you home isn't a physical place and that you're not a physical thing that can ever be apart from it. But feeling is. That's why suffering feels bad. Come home.