mandyjw

If there is pleasure, there is suffering, if there is light, there is dark. Dualities such as these require a reference point or you as the one who experiences them. This self is illusory, therefore the suffering is also illusory. But if you resist suffering, or try to hack your way to avoiding it, then you've cut yourself off and created duality again, and then bam, suffering. The pain is your friend. It tells you you're still alive. Oh, I crack myself up. Into dualities.

They are never separate from you and never were. They are apparently more separate when they are in your presence because your senses and thoughts are perceiving them there, present and separate. You've never been alone and never will be alone.

There aren't any unenlightened people unless I look for them, so I must be creating them that way myself, right? I mean enlightenment isn't an objective fact that can be pointed to, so unenlightenment must be just as unreal.

Is life a distraction from enlightenment or is the search for enlightenment a distraction from life? Of maybe there's no life without enlightenment and no enlightenment without life and therefore, no conflict?

@How to be wise

Awesome! I keep hoping to be able to join in one of these days. I just love his style so much.

OMG OMG OMG. It's so fascinating and tantalizing. And it's completely mundane and boring and not happening. At the same time. Oh I love it. I'm sitting in a movie theater watching this brilliant piece of art, drama and action, completely safe from it. Crazy lady next to me might forget it's a MOVIE AND all of sudden lose her shit and spill her drink on me though, who knows. Or I might do the same to her.

She has the power to completely destroy him, ruin his life and all his delusions about how holy and enlightened he is. Then he'd have to face what he actually is.

@How to be wise So many separations and divisions. Adam was such a tool. "God I'm lonely." he whined. So God makes Eve. Then that bitch gives him an apple from the wrong tree. Suffering from thereon out. All her fault of course. Temptation. So the monk says, "I'll just hack this problematic setup, I'll be alone and I'll be happy about it, goddamn it.

No, it's not, because he has the choice of abandoning it, and that's the choice he made.

I know a celibate Buddhist monk who had a fling and now has a child he won't even meet. I know another guy that is disgusted with spirituality who is raising that child as his own. I wonder which one is more woke?

Brilliance often comes with some major blind spots. It would be a shame to dismiss the brilliance because of the blind spots or to credit the brilliance with a source separate from yourself.

@electroBeam

Last night this show I watched as a kid came to me, "McGee and Me". My parents were really into Focus on the Family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_on_the_Family It was some of my first knowledge of the Bible and morality and whatever. Here's the child actor in the show more recently. Aren't we all stars now...

My darling, if you were really a minimalist you wouldn't think of yourself at all. Grains do not equal gluten. Gluten free oatmeal and rice are good choices. Also inflammation is caused by food sensitivities. Inflammation is connected to cancer. Gluten = cancer is a huge jump. I just got into even better shape by changing my diet so my macro nutrients are balanced, but just intuitively by what I feel like eating. I don't judge fat, carbs or protein. I have potatoes for part of my breakfast this morning, my momma grew them in her garden, I dug them myself and baked them with grassfed butter. Good news, the potato famine has passed.

I have a lot of social anxiety and am prone to this, I did it on live TV once years ago. Someone mentioned it to me but people had much more positive reactions to it than just noticing my nervous hands shaking on the side. I think that's they key, just focus on what you want to say or do and WHY, and if you shake and look a bit nervous, no one really cares that much. With more experience and focus it will likely go away. It's inspiring to see someone who has a lot of anxiety put themselves out there I think. I think it also makes us a bit uncomfortable, but only because we see it as a call to do the same thing too, the things we deeply want to do but are scared of doing. We project our own feelings of discomfort, our own anxiety, on others.

@electroBeam That's really not all you're eating is it? That's extreme, unless you feel 100% amazing and garbage otherwise I would never entertain the idea of such a limited diet. I think you need some whole grains in your diet and a lot of veggies. Throw in some wild rice, maybe potatoes, your Irish roots will be happy about the potatoes. I love salmon and sardines but I eat a few servings a week because of mercury and contamination concerns. Also you're getting literally no fiber other than in berries. Sleep apnea sounds like a good possibility.

No one really knows and that is the beauty of it.

Buried treasure, eveeeerywhere. https://doingnothing.com/ I put it there of course. Some of the lessons intuitively learned as a little kid playing in a sandpile will take you a whole lifetime to learn the depth and profundity of. I always acted like a had an imaginary audience. You could call me a pro former. Bahahaha.

My son shows me a writing he wrote on a wood box in minecraft, "Before you switch to survival plz take what you have." So I asked him what's in there, "a lodestone compass." Dude, you can take things from creative mode with you to survival mode?

My son came back with more minecraft lightbulbs to show me, now some are glowing, "finally this one has a use", and "this is the maximum, lol"

I want to be a well known spiritual teacher and I also want to burn the whole fucking teacher/ student structure down with a fiery burning passion. Not sure how that perceived conflict is gonna go down, but I'm sure it will be a fun adventure. For someone.

Actually you know what? The conciousness level or the popularity of the teacher doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure my Grandmother gave me some kind of spiritual transmission when she died, but maybe that was just love. Can't tell the difference. Oh man, writing that made tears well up in my eyes. Confession, I still kinda hate the idea of spiritual transmissions but I can't deny them either. Eating some watermelon just now, and my son comes up with his minecraft game and shows me lightbulbs in his tool kit and the text that comes up as he hovers over them. "Useless lightsource." "And this one.", "Still this one."

Pretty sure this guy, Steven Harrison, is completely underrated. It was his tape, "Beyond Consciousness" that caught my eye in the free book box. Still listening to it. Had some big insights from the first one. I don't think the community or "teaching" structure was there or ready for him at the time. Internet, technology, connections, ya know. This piqued my interest. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ZYHKCS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i7

Oh Jesus, never realized the synchronicity from what I was writing early this morning, (the first paragraph and the end of this) . Cre ate. @Johnny5 I was pretty much doing just that when you responded.