mandyjw

@SilentTears I left it a mystery for myself. I think it's the integration of desire not the absence of desire we seek. Q: Why is there so much suffering in love? M: All suffering is born of desire. True love is never frustrated. How can the sense of unity be frustrated? What can be frustrated is the desire for expression. Such desire is of the mind. As with all things mental, frustration is inevitable.

@Koeke Does it feel tense, or more like butterflies, sort of like falling in love? If you're going to tell yourself stories about sensations, might as well make it a good one.

Feel is the wrong word, we don't believe we create our own bodies, we create them as we feel. Even using the word "feel" for what we actually mean... belief/think is more scapegoating.

Disclaimer: I'm not speaking as an authority on this, I'm putting it all together as I type. There is Mind (sort of like infinite intelligence) outside of what we assume or think of as our own minds. Your body exists within this Mind, which is actually the only mind that appears. I guess that's why the body appears to be the link. It appears to be the reason for our separate existence, it makes a great scapegoat. We don't feel as if we created our own bodies which is why we speak of God as a creator outside us. God is Mind. But we are God. You cannot be God and also claim the illusion of a mind that exists within Mind. Mind/God is imagination itself. It's not really there, there's nothing behind it to hold it up.

The body exists within the mind, all experience is mind.

@Anna1 Funny this thread is about synchronicity, because I'm reading I Am That and have been quoting it a lot. I suggested it to remember, because the section in I Am That about remembering and forgetting reminded me of her.

The flip side of giving authority is disregarding. Neither are conscious decisions.

This is actually quite common, it has something to do with the age, and the naive clear pure way we fall in love at that age. What you want is not him, but the pure love you felt then, without any reason for feeling it. Let go of the thoughts about him, and the thoughts that you shouldn't be having thoughts about him and obsessing over it. They are just occurring on their own. If it feels right, seek out a spiritual connection in whatever form feels good, follow your heart in other areas of your life, interests, ambitions, etc. Let go of the story that you're stuck on him. You aren't really. You just want something that you haven't quite defined for yourself yet, and that's fine, the beautiful of that unfolding and discovery is truly what you really want.

Seems like you're the one throwing punches, Batman.

A CEO, Donald Trump, a monk living in a cabin in the woods, and an ambitious enlightened person all have one thing in common. No one is doing any of it. If you're ambitious it's because it's your own path of "least" resistance.

Yes, I didn't mean to refer to the event of awakening. If I spend my entire life trying to NOT be an asshole, incredibly concerned with being a good person and other people seeing me as kind and good, always forever resisting my inner devil, my own survival drives, then that actually, trickily is what I will identify with and fear. Fear and aversion is attachment. I will, ironically be the devil because that's exactly what I resist so much. No person exists. Seeing this is the goal. The person is not there of their own separate accord. Enlightenment is a seeing, not a gaining. You can't add to perfection, but you can stop having illusory complaints about it. That doesn't mean we don't evolve, but evolution is a function of survival. If enlightenment is seen as an evolution of itself, it is itself a survival goal. Oops.

@Keyhole If you had a relationship with someone such as a deep friendship or romantic one, would you be happy if they told you that they needed logical reasons to love you? Because you're pretty, because you're smart, etc. All those "reasons" could be secondary appreciations, but what we really want is just to have an inexplicable connection beyond the understanding of the mind. We crave that depth and all knowing/unsolvable mystery from love. Right? So here you are wanting to understand God logically with the mind, when God is... everything. All encompassing. Inexplicably. Love.

Search youtube for heart opening yoga.

I've wasted the entire morning. Oh glorious rapture! I can even think judgmental thoughts about myself from pure love and bliss. Get off your ass Mandy! BIRD CHIRPS. Maybe I will, maybe I won't? Who can say?

M: The attitude is the fact. Take anger. I may be furious, pacing the room up and down; at the same time I know what I am, a centre of wisdom and love, an atom of pure existence. All subsides and the mind merges into silence. Q: Still, you are angry sometimes. M: With whom am l to be angry and for what? Anger came and dissolved on my remembering myself. It is all a play of gunas (qualities of cosmic matter). When I identify myself with them, I am their slave. When I stand apart, I am their master. "Oops!...I Did It Again..." Not even that. I, did, it, again Q: Can you then help me, the particular person? M: But I do help you always — from within. My self and your self are one. I know it, but you don't. That is all the difference — and it cannot last. Q: It is all well on its own level. But how does it work in daily life? M: The daily life is a life of action. Whether you like it or not, you must function. Whatever you do for your own sake accumulates and becomes explosive; one day it goes off and plays havoc with you and your world. When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own ideas of what is good for others. A man who claims to know what is good for others, is dangerous. Q: How is one to work then? M: Neither for yourself nor for others, but for the work's own sake. A thing worth doing is its own purpose and meaning, Make nothing a means to something else. Bind not. God does not create one thing to serve another. Each is made for its own sake. Because it is made for itself, it does not interfere. You are using things and people for purposes alien to them and you play havoc with the world and yourself. Q: When I see something pleasant, I want it. Who exactly wants it? The self or the mind? M: The question is wrongly put. There is no 'who'. There is desire, fear, anger, and the mind says — this is me, this is mine. There is no thing which could be called 'me' or 'mine'. Desire is a state of the mind, perceived and named by the mind. Without the mind perceiving and naming, where is desire? It's already done! Me suffer? Oh no! How dare you presume? I don't suffer. I've put all kinds of systems into place to make sure I don't think thoughts that make me suffer. "You don't think." I don't think! I don't think! I don't think!

Sally is such a bitch.

I just had an insight that isn't very fun to admit. I don't WANT enlightenment/liberation/awakening to be easy and effortless. I want it to be an attainment. Therefore my mind engages in all kinds of comparing myself to others on the path and guessing about teachers, reacting to them. Therefore I make the path difficult, and a future accomplishment... for myself. Oops.

Why guess? Is enlightenment a thing that is dependent upon time, or can be owned by a person? A person is not enlightenment and can never be. No one gets to own it or claim it. There's becoming your vision of who you want to be and then there's enlightenment. The problem with wanting to become the version of who you want to be is that, you don't see that you already are that because you don't want what you already are. In not wanting what you are you lay claim to it, and you mistake something false for what you are.

I invented pants.

@Javfly33 Maharaj: The attitude is the fact. Take anger. I may be furious, pacing the room up and down; at the same time I know what I am, a centre of wisdom and love, an atom of pure existence. All subsides and the mind merges into silence. Questioner: Still, you are angry sometimes. M: With whom am l to be angry and for what? Anger came and dissolved on my remembering myself. It is all a play of gunas (qualities of cosmic matter). When I identify myself with them, I am their slave. When I stand apart, I am their master. You can't judge self or another because another exists in your mind. Your mind imagines the two of you, and then imagines a story so that it can judge. It separates itself from its thoughts and emotions and in that separation mistakenly believes that it is them. Any ideas we have about teachers and gurus and our standard and expectations about what enlightenment is are imaginary. You can throw them away.

Missing that one e makes this a much more interesting story.

Co-creation is a bitch. I am also a bitch. Coincidence? I think not, therefore, I am. Goddamn it.

Wow... I believed so many things. <- Another belief. Ideas, ideas about awakening. About other people. <- More ideas. This represents my hunger for insight and truth cookies. Important.

Q: We may be sleep-walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there nothing you can do? M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you — "Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up". Q: Why then don't we wake up? M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far away.

I DON'T KNOW ROGER. What you teach kinda sounds like this.