mandyjw

“The right art," cried the Master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.” ― Eugen Herrigel “Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" he exclaimed. "The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.” ― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery “The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background... In due course one even grows immune to larger stimuli, and at the same time detachment from them becomes easier and quicker. Care has only to be taken that the body is relaxed whether standing, sitting or lying, and if one then concentrates on breathing one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence. One only knows and feels that one breathes. And, to detach oneself from this feeling and knowing, no fresh decision is required, for the breathing slows down of its own accord, becomes more and more economical in the use of breath, and finally, slipping by degrees into a blurred monotone, escapes one's attention altogether.” ― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery “The man, the art, the work--it is all one.” ― Eugen Herrigel “You must learn to wait properly... By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension” ― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery “This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.” ― Eugen Herrigel “You had to suffer shipwreck through your own efforts before you were ready to seize the lifebelt he threw you. Believe me, I know from my own experience that the Master knows you and each of his pupils much better than we know ourselves. He reads in the souls of his pupils more than they care to admit.” ― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery “How far the pupil will go is not the concern of the teacher and Master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone.” ― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

@Artaemis Last night I read two threads here. Nahm's reply sort of cut through like a knife and was somewhat terrifying in my imagination. At some point last night, the answer came to me in "sleep", a thought is a thought.

Great question. I couldn't "think" of an answer. A thought is a thought.

A thought is a thought! OH MY GOD, a thought is a thought!

I remember Leo making a comment somewhere on the forum about how it's sort of like you have to mourn your life, and it is, it does feel like that and it's compassionate to acknowledge that but also what a lot of dramatic bullshit. There was also someone else who asked what they should do before they became enlightened and I thought that was such a ridiculous question and answered with "get all your suffering out of the way first." Who's ridiculous? Moi. I'm this level ridiculous. Today in the shower I was trying to meditate and not think. I get a lot of color and pattern seeing when I close my eyes in the shower, and for whatever non reason see royal blue a lot. I was seeing it and not trying to notice it and my inner voice shouted in a hilarious voice, "BLUE!!!" I laughed. Three Successes: Lots of shooting down thoughts and assumptions today Realizing that I also need to allow, appreciate and dream or I become like this level ridiculous above, only with a nihilistic flare. Clarity on how profoundly and completely desire works just to fuel appreciation. Three things that brought me joy: My son's enthusiasm about building electrical project experiments with my dad. The sunset Cut flowers from the garden Three things that I am thankful for: My son's teacher is amazing. wisdom humor

Oh virtual trash can... dispose of my thoughts as I express them. I stopped writing in this journal so it would float on. I feel cornered, absolutely cornered, and I know that the funny thing is that this is because I have wanted and committed to absolute freedom. I judge people and situations and it boomerangs back at me, and this is exactly how I wanted it. I love them and unknowingly grasp at them, wanting something from them, wanting some special situation, connection, meaning, state, status, and I fall on my ass. I build this amazing house of cards and ask for help with where to put the finishing touch, the last architectural details, and the help I get, the help I wanted was in knocking the whole thing down and throwing the cards across the room. I give up the dream of the house of cards, and feel good about it, smiling in sweet victory and release that that obsession has been transcended, and then the master plans for the next come to me in a dream.

After reading AleksM's thread a second time through, I want to try the practice he suggested. This is the form he gave, I may let the form evolve with time as I go, I'm not sure. "1. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed ____ (describe your harmful selfish way of thinking, acting, emoting) 2. When I notice and become aware of ___(describe the things you mentioned earlier), I stop and breath. 3. I am conscious that ___ (1. describe the harmful consequences of your pattern and why it's not supportive for all life. 2. Describe why and how the changed action is better for all) 4. This is why from now on, I am committed to (describe a practical healthy mind pattern new pattern that is best for all life with which you're substituting the old, unnecessary, selfish and harmful pattern)" 1. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to quickly react in a way to shame my husband for being forgetful. 2. When I notice and become aware of myself immediately being overcome with feelings of regret, fear and shortcoming, I stop and breathe. 3. I am conscious that shaming other people for being forgetful is only an expression of how hard I am on myself and comes from a fearful contracted place. By forgiving myself and others for shortcomings I'll be able to experience life more fully, expansively and share in that with others. 4. This is why from now on, I am committed to forgiving myself and others for what I perceive as shortcomings and letting go of my perfectionism and need to control. I am committed to embracing the present reality of the situation without the mind filter of an ideal "I" am trying to force it to mold to.

Oh shit. Peter- verb decrease or fade gradually before coming to an end. Peter name, meaning stone The name Ralston is a boy's name of English origin meaning "Ralph's settlement". ralph /ralf/verb INFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN vomit. Ralph name- meaning "wolf-counsel".

My daughter pretends to find jewels in the house, "look a jewel! Look, ANOTHER one!". My son says "You can't find jewels in the HOUSE, only in the basement!" Me: "She's PRETENDING, go do your WORK."

Putting this here, because it's like a purge. My parents almost never said I was pretty except when they occasionally told me to emphasize why I should be careful whenever in the presence of men. The thought of my appearance and being seen by men was always married to a feeling of fear.

I am a rascal, I am a rascal, I am a rascal, I am a good girl and I know it. I've never been one for affirmations. I am full of shit. I am unbelievable. "I'll let go!" What is depression? I have some sort of ego backlash. I get up at 5 to meditate and the past two days my daughter has gotten up too. Today is so rough that tomorrow I'm getting up at 4 to meditate. Meditation is an addiction. Because, I still am so distracted during the day that I cannot hold my connection like I want to. I want to be able to not meditate. I can not meditate. But my beliefs and fears about meditation and depression are showing, like an uncovered blister. The bandaid helps it heal, yes. But it also allows you to forget that the sore exists, which may or may not be helpful, if it requires attention in any way. Depression is a kind of self created drama, which though this statement may sound yucky and heartless if one identifies with depression, there's a kind of desire for the profound that is mixed in with depression. It's like a desire to create the profound, to hold out for it. To hold on to it. But you are it. Let go and... TA DA! Oh, go fuck yourself. I've suffered from depression since I was 10. My life and my self actualization journey has been a game of chase, I'm the prey and the depression is the lion. I have literally, literally run for miles and miles since I was 10 to run away from depression. Now, I've found that I can sit to run away from depression. What a revelation! But I am the lion. Lying. Sitting in meditation, running, or sleeping, sitting watching Leo Gura or Leo DiCaprio on youtube, I am the lion. I truly enjoy the profundity of meditation, of running, the drama of dreams, or Leo's videos and romantic dramatic stories, but, in the end I may have to admit that I unconsciously enjoy the profundity of my depression as well, and the unconsciousness of this enjoyment is the only veil that colors the profundity the illusory color "depression". Homeschooling my son off and on while writing this and look over and my daughter has powdered the puppy's entire butt with cornstarch and it's all over the floor. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe I should just do neither and just clean up the mess. A brilliant parody of what was ALREADY both a profound AND funny song. "Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?" I'll never let go Jack. "Oh let me joke..." "We do not like your jokes" "Oh let me joke..."

@electroBeam I've laughed before and had people think I was crying, I've cried before and had people think I was laughing and plenty of times I've not known the difference myself in the experience of it. It's all just arbitrary. What is the point of generalizing about women OR men? Some women like big penises, some like little ones, some like average ones, some fake orgasms, some orgasm a lot, some don't orgasm. Some are horny cyclically, some all the time, some not at all, some are hornier after a certain age, some are less, some are going through emotional issues that shut them off from their sex drive, others are neurotically seek pleasure and validation from sex. Who on EARTH cares what the overall average is? Isn't variety BEAUTIFUL? If a woman wants you to feel a sense of completion like you pleased her, she fakes an orgasm so that her own blockages aren't overthought by you, she's doing something out of love. Maybe she enjoys sex, and connection in a tantric sort of way but doesn't need to have an orgasm to prove it, but she knows it's important to you so she fakes rather than try to explain. If she never fakes with you and shows her displeasure with your performance, she's being honest with you out of love. There's nothing to fear, or diminish anyone in this situation. No one gets "credit" or "blame" for anything. Everyone can just let it go. That's the entire purpose of an orgasm anyway.

No one has ever seen the entirety of the earth or the moon, all 360 degrees at the same time. In a beginner art class you learn how to draw perfect circles and shade them to look like a sphere. The illusion is what makes it 3D. Both flat, 3D and spherical are concepts that don't exist in experience, they are ways of communicating and understanding experience afterwards. Are there better ways to communicate an experience than others? Are there deeper more thorough ways to explore something, and then be able to communicate even better after? Of course. But your communication through thought to another will never be the actuality... your shared united experience. Ok, I will print off the words Usain Bolt on a piece of paper, tape it to the floor and I will jump over them. There, I am faster than Usain Bolt.

The point is just that you imagine what everyone else is experiencing... in YOUR experience, and you are responsible for your own experience. It makes no difference if a woman fakes or not, you only take credit for or second guess, yourself. If you believe girls are less horny than men, that will be what you experience, if you think they are more horny, that will be your experience. If you think you can make a girl orgasm by text message, that will be true. If a girl thinks she can orgasm from a text message, she will, if a girl thinks she can never orgasm, she won't. Orgasm is psychosomatic, your thoughts and beliefs create your experience. Way too many beliefs and hurts projected on the opposite gender, maybe the real release you are wanting to to let go of the beliefs and start imagining the experience you want from life.

Oh no, I wasn't implying that, the clip was just because Leo was talking about food and she is obviously just really enjoying her sandwich.

All you did was prove that no man has ever given a woman an orgasm.

It's the basis of everything, forgiveness, open-mindedness, clear perception, unconditional love, healing. And it's only possible because no thing/no condition makes all things, well... infinitely possible. LOVE IS ALIVE! Even learning to follow your intuition means learning to question intuition. Even receiving insights means letting go of insight. Even a marriage, long term relationship or a skill that you have spent your life mastering is only alive when it is let go of and freely experienced in the moment. It is only then, when the weight of time and the one who is committed to or doing, is let go of that this "investment" is enjoyed or experienced. Ironically the deepest, longest commitments require the most letting go. Which is exactly why or how you committed to being you. You aren't even...a you.

Love is alive, love is alive, love is alive. I HATED this episode when it came out.

Learned some new variations toward the end of this video that felt really good.

Ok, so the first quote from above is in reference to physical death, which I took out of context and yet, this insight I got way back from Eckhart Tolle comes up again, that each goodbye and end of an interaction or conversation is a death... AND a new beginning. This the value of setting intentions, yet with complete allowing, holding to nothing.

The past couple nights I've had strange dreams in relationship to men, not relationships as in attraction or romantic ones, just general relationships. The night before last there were gay men and I was conscious of my judgment towards them. I've always subtly felt like gay men hate women, and I suppose that men feel this way about lesbian women too. I used to be really active on an art forum and there was this gay man who everyone adored, he was awesome and funny. But occasionally, he talked about the reason why he was NOT attracted to women and that was some of the most demeaning stuff I've ever read. And these liberal women thought they were open-minded to him because homosexuality is liberal and open-minded, so it was seen as ok for the most part. This is a stupid story I'm perhaps remembering incorrectly, but I suppose it illustrates the fact that you can love anything and that love is pure, but when you come up with reasons why you don't love the other, well that's not how Source feels. I project judgement onto him for saying women are disgusting, but in reality it's the mechanism in myself that I don't like. I say that it's his problem he was focusing on what didn't prefer, but I was identifying with the female body so that I could focus on feeling a way I didn't prefer about the female body. Tricky. I remember when I was a kid I used to ask my dad which of my stuffed animals or artwork he liked best. And as soon as he picked one I said "well, what's WRONG with the others?!" and eventually he told me why he didn't want to choose, that there wasn't necessarily anything wrong with the others, he just so happened to choose that one. But he strongly modeled this pick and choose and favoritism with his relationship with people. I learned patterns of connecting with people by demeaning others in conversation with them, which later destroyed my relationships and happiness until I saw through it. There I go again, it's dad's fault, or gay man's fault, someone else's fault. Men make fantastic scapegoats I guess. I use them to allow me to perpetuate my own inner bitch, but I'm the only one who can't ever get away from her. I've always hated this song but it came to me. I can only love my own inner bitch instead of trying to get away from her. Last nights dream was about someone who was watching me go about doing things, and he had this incredibly carefree fun loving attitude and yet he sort of questioned and pointed out things to me that I was doing. I can't remember more than that. I'll intend to remember by dreams more clearly next time. How did I feel though? Good, for the most part. Loved, but also unsure of how I should fit in to the mix of personalities and circumstances. I've never been able to interact well with men who are social butterflies, I only like the shy quiet ones because my playful side comes out unbidden and men who are fun make me shy, quiet and cautious in reaction. Living from ego is always a game of unconsciously playing devil's advocate and uncomfortable mirroring situations. This from Ask and It Is Given really struck me and I want to quote it here. "You are an eternal Being always projecting from Non-Physical, and sometimes that projection is into a physical personality. When this physical personality is complete for this time, there there is a withdrawal of focus. It is sort of like: Here you sit, and sometimes you go into a movie, and sometimes you come back out of the movie, but you are always the you that went into the movie, whether you are in the movie or not. Here is a rule of thumb that will help you; If you believe that something is good, and you do it, it benefits you. If you believe that something is bad, and you do it, it is a very detrimental experience. There is nothing that you can do that is worse for yourself than to do something that you believe is inappropriate, so get clear and happy about whichever choice you make, because it is your contradiction that causes the majority of the contradiction in vibration. Make a decision about what you want, focus your attention there, and find the feeling place of it- and you are there instantly. There is no reason for you to suffer or struggle your way to or through anything. "

Learning and discovery is the greatest joy there is, but it wouldn't be a joy if you didn't have the freedom to do so. So the possibility of learning + freedom to do so= the possibility of ignorance. We get to choose what we focus on. You cannot learn and be conscious of ignorance, consciousness of ignorance is pushing something away, learning is receiving. Openness/love/appreciation forgetting what one knows is required to learn, beginner's mind is the only "intelligent" kind of mind.

Love is no exclusions, so Truth and Love have to be identical. There's no better than, only different ways of speaking of it. That's why some people don't speak of the truth as being love, because anything you exclude consciously or unconsciously will come back to you, call it karma or whatever you want to call it. If you speak of love and an opposite is inferred and focused on, that's what will be experienced until that too is understood as part of Love.

When you're in awe of the beauty of a sunset or something you are that. Mind is the commentary, "look there's pink and orange", "maybe I should take a picture", "wow I've never seen a sunset like that", "a bug is biting me, goddamn it, I want to enjoy the sunset" etc. Just practice dissolving into the moment, by finding things that help shut off the mind, running long distance, meditation, shamanic breathing, whatever and put you into that full blown appreciation mode. After you've gotten good at that, you can invite the mind back in to the party, or it'll crash the party anyway, then you can ask it what you are. You usually have to get it love drunk first before it tells you anything honest.

What is innocence, in relation to ignorance? What is it that imposes the extra judgement that the choice of the word ignorant infers?