mandyjw

Nah, it's all about the clothing. His Jesus Santa sweater is epic. Also I've noticed the real masters wear a lot of pink and purple, lots of lavender. And have you seen Osho's nails? OMG.

Narcissus was self realized. He fell in love with him Self by self reflecting and Self Love. And turned into a flower. Spiritual master or crazy fool? Both, neither? You decide.

@Evil Raccoon Just going from what I've seen here but, I'm pretty sure your natural talents lie in the comedy/funny guy route rather than the act like an asshole route. You could do both, but might be hard to pull off, I dunno.

So I've been whimsical AF lately. I ripped off this weird closet door that I was going to paint white. It's cut at an angle so it looks cool anyway. I ordered a vintage lion door pull and stained the whole thing really dark colored last night. I'm going paint trees on it after I poly it and add in a subtle partially hidden owl and a moon on it. I got an antique gingerbread pendulum clock really cheap off ebay. I've wanted one forever. The seller didn't know if it would run or not. It came in a Frankenstein box taped together with brown tape everywhere and shipped in old newspapers and an old bath towel from a Florida retirement home. I took it out and it immediately starts going really fast, and even gongs on the hour. The very top wooden decoration part is broken off so I'm carving an owl at some point out of oak to replace it with. And at some point learning about the mechanisms of antique clocks. At the top is the loves me, loves me not daisy. And on the glass door there are gold butterflies. It's so fantastically creepy and beautiful. I like to imagine that antique things and old houses are full of their own ephemeral life and spirit, like I like to imagine that myself and others are too. It's all completely groundless. Timeless.

Ok, yes, so you accept it, you let it be. Where's the suffering in that?

Communication, money and creativity are all things that are intensely powerful, yet when questioned and looked for, are found to be intangible, non-existent. LOA manifestation and renunciation actually work seamlessly together for this very reason. We think there is something behind the communication, something holding up and deciding the value of the money, and someone behind the creativity. There isn't. I've realized I really want to improve my communication, and that my creativity is my communication. I've also realized that communication is a duality, that there are not two communicating. So to improve my communication, I need to stop imagining that there are two which isn't how it sounds and points more toward blockages in myself. Mostly, concerns of others judging me, when the judgement is only and actually coming from myself. I'm hoping to circumvent the self judgment around making my videos by understanding that that uncomfortable energy is really a desire for better communication. I've also been really enjoying my business having recently healed my problem of finding it meaningless. It seems to beautifully connect with everything I'm creating and I found this incredibly source of inspiration that ties together so many things I've been wanting. Surprise, surprise, there's no conflict. I do feel that there is at times. I feel incredibly frustrated with my kids and just want to have uninterpreted blocks of time to focus so bad. My days are a dream, I'm surrounded by so many things I love that I even come in and freak out because it's overwhelming. Funny when examined, not so funny when you're in "do" mode. The past couple nights I've had a "oh shit I'm not here and there's just this" feeling. It comes up frequently in the day too. The feeling only comes because there's someone realizing there's no ground and feeling like they have substance and are free falling. It's another funny thing when examined, because it's always been like this. Or else I could say, there's no always and it's never been quite like this ever before.

No one decides anything. Even when they think they do. That's the flawed assumption at the core, that there's someone there to decide, Someone here. For there to be a spectrum or a movement of back and forth on any scale, and we're talking about the pain/pleasure scale, there has to be someone or some point of reference that focuses on and experiences the different polarities of the scale. With the arising of a someone as a point of reference comes the arising of wanted and unwanted. It's possible to go through life seeing this and maintaining your preferences for pleasure, playing the game of duality, all the while understanding that the entire purpose of the game is free sheer creation and love, that the illusion of the point of reference of self is not what everything hinges on. Physical pain is a useful sensation and it HURTS, psychological suffering that layers on top of physical pain and cast fault and blame and should and shouldn't haves is the real suffering that spirituality seeks to exorcise.

Study and read about hedonic adaptation. Watch it play out in yourself. I've done migrant labor type work, and you get so sore and exhausted out in the fields all day, about day three you're muscles are about giving out and you're MISERABLE. You hit a low and then you come out of it. Nothing teaches this so well as hard physical labor in my opinion. Taking a shower and having a meal after a hard day of work is one of the most pleasurable things you'll ever experience. You don't have to even try to let go of the thoughts because the exhaustion does it for you. Start running long distances, the same thing happens. Suffering requires a point of reference. You are that point of reference. It's not real, it's whatever you decide it to be.

Being open-minded means you're open to see why things you think are inherently bad, misfortunate or boring are serving a greater whole... or rather are unconditional Love. If you assume that there is a "you" then you wonder why things aren't going "your" way, the problem is in what you believe you are. If you make the false assumption of there being a real you, all other assumptions relative to it will be based on a false point of reference.

Sometimes trying to teach others what you think YOU know really can show you that you don't. If you're open to it.

It's an interesting challenge reconciling two seeming opposites, which I credit to being brought up very down to earth but having some wild, uninhibited, lavish Hollywoodesque dreams. It's like trying to reconcile renunciation and living a simple honest "spiritual" life with desire and LOA. Trying to reconcile them I suppose is a lot like putting two kids in a get-a-long shirt and expecting it to actually work and not be a joke. Link for reference. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/390054017700324399/ I think at the core, it's trying to mold oneself to a standard and fit into it that creates the conflict. I want to seek security in right vs wrong, wanted vs unwanted and I need roll models and celebrities to help me imagine how this is supposed to be. Like most people have both an angel and a devil whispering in their ear, I have Ramana Maharshi and Dita Von Teese whispering in my ear and I am both. Progression is the real interest, the rise to fame, the overcoming, the development. Progression only occurs when one realizes that they want to reinvent themselves, which is only possible when you realize that you are not what you imagine yourself to be and are willing to let go of your view of yourself. The key to success is also the realization of the complete and utter impossibility of what one seeks to achieve by becoming. Rich, beautiful, enlightened, happy, spiritual. They will never be attained, there is no one to attain them, and therefore, the possibilities of them are more possible than you could ever imagine. So let your imagination reign wild.

Once when I was in highschool, I think or younger, I went on a shopping trip with my sister. She wanted to go into a Halloween shop, and we did. I went in there absolutely disgusted by the whole thing. We ended up having this conversation about it later and she tried to explain that it's all for fun, but I did not see the fun or humor in dismembered body parts, whore nurse costumes and general spooky fuckery. I tried to explain to her how just wasteful ,unfeeling and insensitive the entire thing is. I was raised to believe that Halloween is evil, anything dark is evil and that Jesus zombie jokes are most DEFINITELY NOT funny at all. Sometimes the longer it takes to properly tell a joke the funnier it is when you get to the end. Halloween is now the biggest time of year for my business and I look forward to it every year. But, when it's actually Halloween, I always feel that there's definitely something deeper about that time of year that the decorations and fun is masking over. It's funny how our initial aversions always have an element of being very wrong and also very right simultaneously. Or more accurately put, they are neither wrong nor right.

@Gesundheit Contemplating the symbolism of the virgin birth is another way of asking "How can something come from nothing?" Which is a very big question with... no? answer?

@Gesundheit I'm too dumb for theories. Can't grasp them.

It's a symbolic pointer. Symbolism is inseparable from reality, making the dualities between meaning and meaningless and real and unreal dissolve.

Feeling!!! What you want is to tap into the wells of feeling and intellect/wisdom so deep they merge and you see they flow from the same source. There's no conflict between the two.

Once you see that you're a chimp and don't resist it (and I don't mean just falsely convincing yourself that you're not resisting it), don't other more powerful desires for real connection outside of survival arise? I completely understand you're reasoning, I see a lot of people in the spiritual community as chimps in pope hats, and I think that in a way that's all any of us will ever become anyway. But it just makes me a bit sad that you seem so cynical about it, as if no one has any chance to transcend it. To me if the desire for something bigger (God, humanity, whatever you want to call it, or whatever it is for you) is clear enough, real enough and strong enough then transcendence is effortless. It's like a creative project that consumes you so entirely that you don't eat or sleep or think about sex. I think chimpery happens when people aren't really sure of what they really want, so all these other desires have power over them.

No. But I do believe that some people are wise enough to value some things more heavily that other more shallow, surface level things. Maybe that's naive, and of course it isn't true 100% of the time but that's the world I like to pretend we live in. The reason I loved this video SO much is because it suggests that you have the power to transcend those chimp drives to fit in, and choose for yourself. Did someone else post this and say the same thing? Sorry to be repetitive if so.

And you know this by experience? Of course what people say and what they actually think are entirely different things.

Does the level of the teaching matter? No. Words have meaning, until words don't have meaning, until words have meaning. What really matters is that someone resonates and enjoys it, that they love it. Entertainment includes some of the most powerful spiritual teachings within it, however the problem is that it's unconscious. By unconscious I mean, the mind doesn't recognize the value of it so it can't seek it and only applies it in limited ways. However it's innocent, doesn't try to own or conceptualize it and inspiration unowned is a powerful force. Even the things we say ourselves have meanings deeper than we know. I said in a video I recorded yesterday that I never thought that my awakening and the bliss/clarity would end. I didn't think. It's not that I was naive. It's that it was recognized that wasn't an actual possibility. But it happened anyway.

@Evil RaccoonAww.. I love you too. But how you know I'm not actually a dude pretending to be a lady? Hmm.... All online advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt in my opinion.

Maybe women don't actually like assholes but men think that all other men who aren't them that get women are assholes. Trying too hard at anything is the problem. Even if you're good at hiding it it colors your perception so much you miss the real opportunities that are there.