mandyjw

It's hard to have empathy for a person who pays taxes to a government that ever dropped an atomic bomb on a city and still has means of doing so. This all ends up flying back in one's own face. It's really hard not to have empathy for others.

A trick to loving Trump (or oneself) is in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, I think. Calvin is a selfish devil, and Hobbes is his imaginary companion who is wise and knows better but loves him anyway. In the strip Hobbes' character only exists in Calvin's imagination. And Calvin and Hobbes only exist in our imagination. Similarly, Trump and oneself only exist in one's own imagination.

Well that's neither here nor there.

I was raised Christian and we used to sometimes differentiate between "Old Testament God" and "New Testament God". The gnostics call the "Old Testament God" Demiurge. Demiurge, demi meaning half, urge "I have half a mind to do something about this shithole I created. Aww, fuck it, I'll stay up here on my golden throne and judge it all." It's sort of a good pointer to the separate mind I guess. Most gnostics seem to believe they are sort of stuck in creation, subject to it, creation is evil. That's my perception anyway. Of course evil spelled backwards is live and devil spelled backwards is lived.

If you project the devil outward you can keep fearing it. If you love the devil you have to intimately accept that the devil is you.

The Devil is a powerful placeholder for fear in the Christian psyche. This helps to understand what's really going on there.

The moon effects nature in profound ways, the tide is run by it, women's fertility and cycles are run by it. Nature is a cyclical thing, it's all about the circle of life, the death/life cycle. So the moon is an incredibly powerful symbol beyond symbols of this. We don't honor cycles in our culture very much because rest and death cycles aren't seen as so convenient for businesses. There's a disconnect from nature. Emotional changes and fluctuation in moods is often seen as undesirable, but this is nature, this is how change, growth, death and birth manifest. Likewise on one's spiritual journey there is death and rebirth. Old parts of us die and new parts are reborn. It's all about alignment, releasing resistance to the flow and cycles of life. The moon is always whole and yet, its reflection and effect on nature... what we perceive, is what changes.

Says the guy whose name means "lion". God is funny.

The flu can have very strong mind-altering effects. Maybe he comes out of it awake.

Oh no, we all create it. Why, though? Another 4 years will just indicate that we need our master's degree in Trump, a bachelor's just wasn't enough.

One thing I've noticed is that I really like to do what the opposite of the teacher is supposedly about. Jim Newman made me incredibly excited about my life and work again. Now I'm reading this book about how the present moment is a bunch of shit, and all that's "real" is what's next and I've never been so present in the now. I highly recommend this book based on what you said you want in the first paragraph. It's hilarious, light-hearted and full of stories, but a lot of them sent a chill right up my spine and really helped me to reframe some stuff. The author is deeply into astrology, which I am not and know nothing about, but still, her playful way or writing it makes that sort of thing not matter at all. https://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Openness-Letting-Divine-Take/dp/1476793484/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=outrageous+open&qid=1601636940&sr=8-1

It hurts your sleep quality in high doses or taken before bed. If you want lucid dreams taking it before bed might be good, but not for good restful sleep. I like reading those free downloadable classic books. Novels that are somewhat tough going are perfect. Fiction puts you into dreamland but not if it's too enthralling. Then you can tell everyone you've read all these classic books, even though you're really just lazy and were just reading them when you were half awake. I read Moby Dick that way and at the end I was like "oh fuck, this was really about enlightenment the whole time! Who knew?"

Oh. My. God. Reality show star President does not disappoint.

So you are feeling itself, but we experience specific feelings. When we feel something that doesn't feel good, we can either, A. Go straight to the source of feeling itself and just FEEL (that's why meditation and meditative forms of living are so effective) B. we can examine what thoughts we are thinking, and what beliefs (patterns of thought) are in place. Both those options disidentify from being the one who is sad, or the one who is happy. One utilizes thought and gets very curious about itself and one drops thought. There is a process of flipping back and forth and "knowing" (really feeling,) which to do when. You get better and better at it, but still you're only ever just feeling which you were always "doing" (spoiler alert, you're not doing it) all along.

@VincentArogya Go deeper, the feeling isn't an end product. You don't have love but you are an open door to love. When I use the word feeling, we think of a product of some kind, we think of the word feeling as a noun, a category of which there are several types, love, boredom, sadness, etc. But you are always feeling, as in the verb. That never changes. There is no difference between what you are and feeling, (this is what is meant by the pointer "you are Love") so we don't even need to distinguish between nouns and verbs anymore. The illusion is that we can ever close the door of feeling. The door is made of Love/Feeling itself, it cannot truly be closed. This is where the pursuit of Truth comes in and becomes one and the same with the pursuit of Love. In the same way memory works, you do not have memories but you are an open door or pathway to memory. Each is created anew, even when it seems we remember the same event or person thing, etc. I can remember my dead Grandmother and how amazing she was and feel amazing or I can remember that she is dead and gone. I can do the same with my awakening. There's a big difference in how those two memories feel. So if I pay attention to how I feel I can align with feeling by paying attention to what thoughts feel good and which do not. By using feeling as a gauge I align and "remember" that the door is always open.

What was different at its core about the awakening compared with now, rather than how you felt? You're chasing for a feeling, but you are feeling all along. Nobody wants anything at all, they want it because of the way it makes them feel. But they are feeling, all along. So we chase for love, but then there again, we only want love because of the way it makes us feel. Don't worry about gauging anything, just pay attention to how you feel. Or better yet, just feel.

@VincentArogya Why is higher consciousness preferable to egoic mode? Why is present preferable to not being present? Why is being without judgement preferable to judging? What do all those things at their root have in common that you want?

What happens when you drive the car to the supermarket? You just sit there in your car, or you gonna walk in the store?

VEGGIES! Any of em'. Pick your favorites and branch out later. This is my favorite kind of rice. Doesn't give me any energy crashes like white rice but I like it a lot better than brown rice for taste. https://www.amazon.com/Lundberg-Family-Farms-Blend-Ounce/dp/B000G82L62

@VincentArogya No, but what things that are not tangible are you seeking?

Why are you doing consciousness work? What do you seek to get from it?

@zeroISinfinity Exorcism. If you have 19 demons you're more likely to deny that demons exist than if you have just 3. But demons don't exist, because individuals don't exist but they also do, so it's kinda hard to explain, so yeah.

In my experience yes, the moon cycle definitely effects my body and mood. Women have always been more historically in tune to this for obvious reasons. What's true for you?

Well, he could be the other extreme and be buying pieces of toast of eBay and worshipping them cause virgin Mary appeared in them. I think that sometimes extremes have to be explored so we can affirm to ourselves that they aren't "it" and we aren't to be found in them.

Attraction changes when you realize that it has no cause and happens to no one. It turns into something more like resonance. At first it seems like attraction is absent, but it's experienced differently and can still be experienced in some pretty wild ways. This applies to more than just the area of romantic relationships. It's really about changing how desire is experienced. When we start out with spirituality we often go down the "desire is the root of suffering" path, but it's not as simple as we'd like to make it out, we can't avoid suffering but avoiding desire. You'll only know if you're desire-less or resisting desire by how it feels, and that's always changing.