mandyjw

Having an abnormal or painful thinking pattern may cause you to question and watch your thoughts more, it will be like having a fire under your arse to motivate you to do so. On top of that, "neurotic" or "compulsive thinkers" are beliefs, thoughts and judgements themselves of oneself or other people. Enlightenment is the transcendence of these, in more ways than one. Thoughts aren't owned, there's no one to have them.

The path of least resistance is not a bypass, but choosing a path of more resistance because you erroneously decided based on flawed criteria beforehand that it's the path of least resistance is something most of us often do out of habit. That's true for big decisions and little ones.

I think that after seeing that there's no self, spirituality, or the "means" by which we "think" that was seen, then becomes a more feasible story line to grab on to for a while. We give credit to spirituality, thinking it's safe and worthy of the credit we give it because spirituality and practices are not an actual thing. We don't realize that things are only things because we make them separate things in thoughts, on one level it makes no difference if we identify with a sports car or a spiritual attainment.

Reading through the thread I posted above again was an entirely new experience, as I understood more and I seem to be becoming more and more aware that every experience is completely new and is both not happening. I've been listening to Rupert Spira's yoga meditations and yesterday this one seemed to have quite an effect fitting it in with everything else. The night before last I ended up arguing with my husband. Shortly after a glass that I took from my grandmother's house with Minnie and Mickey mouse fell and broke, cracking with a line straight between them. The next morning a mouse in the wall annoyed me a lot during meditation. I re-baited the traps the next morning. My husband criticized something I wrote on my dream board that morning and I tried to explain how desires are meant to be let go of, they aren't necessarily goals. I had written "house on the ocean". I understood the next day how I had feelings of being afraid of him which have nothing to do with my actual safety or his character but expectations I've placed on him out of survival based fears and how fear based my lack of connection with him was. A lot of things came together for me to let go of the reactions, and holding the openness allowed me to see things in a new light. Last night I had lots of thought come up that I'd consider overthinking/nihilism. Thoughts like, "oh shit, it's REALLY real, that nothing is real." It sounds hilarious, but doesn't feel funny to think them. Meditation has gone from mostly peaceful and enjoyable to somewhat difficult, though because that's a judgement happening after the fact the real judgement that I make is that they have become incredibly "productive". There's a lot of watching thoughts and feelings like "you're not doing it right", "you haven't tapped into that", staying stuck on beating oneself up AFTER a thought that was judged and owned, and surrendering the doer and the illusion of time. The Alice in Wonderland quote above about time has come back to me many times. Toward the end of meditation this morning the sun started streaming and I had this image of a girl from high school I never liked. I ended up offending her in the locker room after gym by saying something I didn't mean to sound mean, and just hadn't thought through but she took it that way. She said something mildly mean in response and I took the whole thing very hard. It was a story or memory that fueled my "I hate people", "I can't deal with people", "I have no social skills", "I'm not worthy of existence and social interaction" stories. I had never thought of her again except in passing, quickly dismissing the painful story behind it and annoyance with her, and had sort of kept her in the box of "people I hate", without considering it since. It seemed so random how the thought of her came up, until I realized that it wasn't random at all. Then the next thought was of time shortage, "I've gone deep into a meditative state, this is the goal, I don't want it to end, what I want is here, not our there and the alarm is going to go off and break it" storyline. I have an intention to make up with Time. It's never what you think it is. One thing I've been doing is watching the "ugly" feelings come up with thoughts behind them and having a "come sit on grandma's knee" approach to know that they are loved and seen. Otherwise the judgement after the fact exists within time, and resists them because it can't "see" them properly, all it knows is a memory of it and its reaction against it. If I child acts up to get attention, they will continue because it's just an indicator that they aren't getting enough attention. The attention must come, not only in response to the child acting up, but more often than that. The bad behavior has a legitimate cause, there's a root need it's showing. Self love, self love, self love, keeps coming up again and again in a myriad of ways, yet always the same answer to an infinite number of stories or scenarios built to veil or hold it apart from what it already is.

They're just completely plastic. PLASTIC. plastic. plastic. There's no one to have intuition.

How do you measure how many lives are saved and the viral-for-good effects it has on others in that person's life? You can't. Not all suicidal phone helpline workers are successful in preventing suicides. Should they just quit because they are somehow responsible for those suicides?

Last night I dug up this thread again. I had the thought later that I want to closer observe my beliefs about implications. When I was reading a lot of old Faceless posts I understood that a thought of other creates a thought of myself, immediately, and so it is with certain instances of future, past or objects. But even saying or understanding this is not grasping it, not in the least, because some of the thoughts of I or people or objects are sheer appreciation, a kind of focus that is not from ego, and some are gone along with as suffering. The thought itself is not the problem. I also recognized that thoughts are tried to feelings and that when you start observing your thoughts it's only the blatant ones you're aware of at first, even then it takes practice to watch them, then to get at them, then to dig for the roots, to connect the whole. I'm loving the metaphor imagery lately of the universe being like a skeleton, or a net with threads, everything is connected, so everything moves and adjusts in unison as every other part moves. So becoming conscious of this, feeling it, seeing it, becoming it, is to lose the separate self, while also honoring its "own" existence and function. Thoughts of others, self or implied comparisons are a frequent occurrence. I notice that I often feel threatened by seeing someone else succeed. I don't choose to feel this way. my self concept does not want to feel this way. My self concept guilts itself for feeling this way. And so a thought that feels bad if often owned and followed by a thought that feels bad. Love, self love, Self Love, is the only thing that can break the loop. When unconscious, a person just feels threatened and accepts it as ok, and truth and feels bad. When love is turned into a thought or ideal, it says "i" should love the "other" not feel threatened, and it feels bad. In the moment none of these things exist of have any pull. In the moment, there is unconditional love for whatever. Also last night, I thought about how I feel a bit "lost" like I'm losing time and identification with my life, and therefore the implication is that I'm mismanaging my life. There is this belief that there's some sort of ideal way of keeping track of such things, of holding on to them. These feelings started happening years before I found Leo or Eckhart Tolle, just an affect of what I wrote off in thought as being an adult or the sense of time going faster, or being busy with being a parents, etc. But maybe it was just a sense of truth shining through, that's there's nothing to grasp at so you can stop trying, relax and watch the beauty unfold. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes and I watch what sort of characters my mind likes to play out and project on what it sees. I like the Women Who Run with Wolves Book, and it helps me further integrate the witchiness I've become conscious of. Accepting myself as the "hag", is key to loving my form. It's easy to love older women, I think my mother's gray hair is beautiful, I think she is beautiful, but when it comes to my "own" body, there are lots of old patterns and beliefs and standards to dissolve. It's easy to love a tree, it's unsymmetrical, random, haggard, weathered form, and it's purity itself, as it is the temporary and fleeting flowers and fruit that it bares. The same perception is true about the human body, about one's self. It's a new practice for me, to watch my diet and what I eat, to pay attention and also love my flaws at the same time. In the past the more attention I pay, the more judgmental thought I pay. There's no doer. No standard. It's complete freedom. I've noticed in myself a tendency to buckle down and forget all else when I get inspired, which works with mindfulness or whatever you like to call it just like it does buckling down on diet. Watching or reading threads by someone with their shit together, (Rupert, @Nahm , etc) is so inspiring but that inspired feeling can be hijacked by thought and often turn into an ideal outside of the "I" which creates the suffering/I-don't-have-it-yet-desire that is that separation in feeling again. I sometimes also think that I must dump all my other desires and pursuits because they are "less important." It's the same exact thing that's was occurring with my diet and fitness, with disallowing anything I want at all, a clean home, etc, that flaws are paid more attention. Then the inspiration is not looked any more, the desire is forgotten and pushed aside and old patterns return. I don't need Nahm to wear a tin foil hat and a lavender unicorn tshirt to make me feel less intimidated and I don't need super models on magazine covers to have imperfections or to go away. I like looking at supermodels and always have. No picture is reality, the picture is its own unique alive "entity" in a way, when it is perceived in the moment, because it is the consciousness itself. Oh...

I was watching this Rupert Spira clip and laughed SO hard. "I'm from America." "Don't Tread on Me" snake. It's a stick!

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep. I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life. Now my loving is running toward my life shouting, What a bargain, let’s buy it. -Rumi

I gotta be cool, relax, get hip And get on my track's Take a back seat (ah hum), hitch-hike (ah hum) And take a long ride on my motorbike Until I'm ready (ready Freddie) Crazy little thing called love This thing called love, I just can't handle it This thing called love, I must get round to it I ain't ready Ooh ooh ooh ooh

I feel bad for Leo right now, all these people telling him all the things he should do, probably sending him batshit crazy PMs.

When I was a really young kid my parents attended a Baptist church. I remember looking out the window and the sun was streaming in and I had this incredible feeling and it hit me, I understood God, that was God. I told my Mom and she tried to set me straight, although she also said that the Son of God sounded a lot like Sun. I got really bored one day and also managed to convince the Pastor's son to climb up on the pulpit with me when his Dad was preaching. I got to play with a hedgehog once and it was the most disappointing experience ever. OW, ow, ow.

I'm so glad I'm here to pull myself out of Crazyland! "But MOM, I'm not ready to leave yet!"

"Oh! I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! In the land of ice and snows Up among the Eskimos, There's a college known as Ogiwawa! You should hear those college boys, Gee, they make an awful noise When they sing an Eskimo tra-la-la! They've got a leader, big cheer leader, Oh, what a guy! He's got a frozen face just like an Eskimo Pie! When he says, "Come on, let's go!" Though it's forty-five below, This is what the Eskimos all holler: I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Rah! Rah! Rah! Tuesdays, Mondays, we all scream for sundaes, Sis-boom-bah! Boola-boola, sarsaparoolla, If you got chocolate, we'll take vanoola! I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Rah! Rah! Rah! I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Rah! Rah! Rah! Frosts and malts that are peppered and salted, Sis-boom-bah! Oh, spumoni, oh, cartoni, And confidentially, we'll take baloney, I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!" Sundays? Oh Jesus.

I completely misunderstood my first experience like this and it turned into one of the moments that embarrassed me the most to recall. It happened after sitting in the sun all day and I ended up offending a stranger really bad as he thought I was mocking him, when really I was only somehow peripherally aware of what he was saying, was speaking things that I thought were completely my own thoughts. Having had some experiences of oneness and understanding more now, I now understand what happened and see it as a wonderful phenomenon, so it felt really good to let the embarrassment of it go.

Last night I dreamed that I was swimming in a hot spring in this desert setting and Leo was there. I was surprised and in wonder of it, and he explained how it worked even though in real life I know how hot springs work and have alwasy wanted to go to one. Under the water was the foundation of some old building. I was amazed by how warm the water was, and grateful. Then it started changing. I started to notice all kinds of dirt in the water, and it got dirty and disgusting as stuff grew in the waters that were getting warmer and warmer as summer came closer. I told Leo that we should move. It was almost warm enough to swim and to the right, somehow, magically, was the swimming hole at the river where my mystical experiences started. Yesterday I went there and thought about swimming, but it would be a Wim Hof type experience. Then I thought about how awakening has given me the courage to do what I never would have done. The dream changed and what the building had been turned into a mystery we really wanted to solve. It made me feel like the start of digging up the history of Dr.P. That sense of mystery. It was huge and spectacular and... had something to do with ice cream. WTF with the ice cream dreams? What does ice cream symbolize? I'm trying out going vegan. An entire shelf fell out of the fridge door and spilled yogurts all over the floor just now. There were lots of reactions and insights and feelings from Leo's latest video. When he said towards the end, how do you know you're done, what if there's a level beyond and a level beyond, my mind went immediately to gambling. We don't think our thoughts. We are susceptible to our surroundings until we purify/discover ourselves. That's why people long after solitude for this work. If you are what you eat, if diet is so important to spirituality, then does it make sense that we would ignore our surroundings? Or that they would be just as important? As the inner so the outer, as above so below, is within so without. It's a fractal universe. My friend sent me this message a week or so ago. "Did you know that the GI tract can be considered OUTSIDE THE HUMAN BODY because it is just hole that passes all the way through? Watching Ask a Mortician while doing dishes and thought you'd like to know." You are a vortex, a whirpool, spiral as Rupert Spira so elegantly describes. His words just makes me want to curl up and die in the bliss. I digress. There's nothing in the center, like the metaphor that came in the vision of light, of source, you are that but also this stuff swirling around. You are, verily I say unto you, a toilet bowl ever flushing. Beautiful isn't it? You are what you eat. You are the people you hang around. You are what you give your attention to. Garbage in, garbage out. Also you are not. You transcend all that, you're already pure, you're the calm eye of the storm at the center of the spiral. If you greatly honor food choices and spiritual shouldn't we greatly honor where we choose to live? Ramana Maharshi worshiped a place. It's beyond worship, it's dissolving, becoming. "The Maharshi called Arunachala the spiritual Heart of the world. Aruna, which means ‘red, bright like fire’, does not signify the mere fire that gives off heat. Rather, it means Jnanagni, the Fire of Wisdom, which is neither hot nor cold. Achala signifies hill. Thus, Arunachala means ‘Hill of Wisdom’." https://www.sriramanamaharshi.org/arunachala-hill/ I don't believe in taking this too far, just like with diet. There's a careful balance of neither worshiping nor demonizing the choices we make, of not prejudging alignment and locking it in via the mind in an effort to avoid feeling, sensing, intuiting our way to true alignment. I've tried to let go of this feeling, thinking it's crazy and not wanting to think about it too much because it has such pull, but it keeps coming back. The metaphor of water and whirlpools doesn't stop appearing and connecting. Last night I had an impulse to look through my memory box and I found a project I made years ago. It's a tiny vase, a vessel that's made of blooming flowers on a watery background. Dr.P had a large Rebecca at the well sculpture surrounded by a fountain and at the talk on him an old man recalled memories and said how they never were able to get a well dug at his mansion. There was no water on that hill. It's ironic.

When you wake up from a dream you feel relief and are shaking off confusion. Awakening is clarity so powerful you'll laugh and cry hysterically in bliss. Maybe the relief (joy) is as a powerful as the strength of the confusion (suffering) that is seen through.

Acceptance is a step before appreciation. Appreciation is a step before love. And so on after that....

manifest. ... Coming from the Latin manifestus, "caught in the act," Rupert... spira, god fucking damn it a spiral, a vortex, and his metaphor about where we come from and come into being spiritually in the video, "Where did my soul come from?" I went on a hike to literally go watch whirlpools, form dissolve and merge with each other today. It seems so real. It seems so real. Phew. Sigh. Take a breath. I was doing so well! Ok, Rupert Spira, it's a circle. You think you're a circle. You become conscious of stuff in a larger circle, archetypes, the story beyond the story of "you", the ancient, primordial story. Then you want to evict yourself from your smaller circle and stay out there. This is dangerous waters for a whirlpool who honors her whirlpool existence. The eye of the storm, the center of the whirlpool, vortex is still. Just fucking stop thinking already! ow, ow, ow, breathe, breathe, insight, insight, insight, ow ow, ow “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass “Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.' `If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him.' `I don't know what you mean,' said Alice. `Of course you don't!' the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke to Time!' `Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied: `but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.' `Ah! that accounts for it,' said the Hatter. `He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!” ― Lewis Carroll On that note, I have to go make dinner.

This morning I went for a run instead of getting groceries, and I followed my intuition about it, and felt and assured myself that I was right where I needed to be. I watched Leo's video with breaks in between over the day. At the start of the run I heard these ungodly animal screams and saw the source of them, eventually which was a black cat, that seemed unharmed. That was the start. I had an insight, knew what I had to do and had no doubt about it. Then there was this profusion of signs and symbols and connections that had meaning for me, they came so fast it was like fireworks, with the finale at the end and even connected back to prophetic dream I had months ago. The last thing was the bald eagle that flew over. I feel crazy. You think you're crazy. There's such joy, and profound beauty in these connections but my mind is still fearful and adapting. They come on really hard after I meditate and connect deeply, and then they throw me out, because they are so fascinating that they cause me to stay with the mind. I am practicing holding that connection. But it's like stretching. It's like yin yoga. You stretch and you feel the pain and the (block), you go past your comfort zone and what was tolerable and there's that "point" that you only know by feeling where you should stay to challenge and love yourself at the same time. Angles of a pyramid, angels peeramid. It's not a watermelon, Leo, it's a fucking pyramid. You built the pyramids, and you chose the eye of providence and eagle as a symbol for the US. You resonated with Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid for a reason deeper than you think. What does it mean? Nothing. That's the "point", of the pyramid, it's where a massive structure turns into nothing. Really nothing? No, everything comes together at the point and connects, so well, it's love.

Weird dreams last night, I don't have any idea what they mean. I was walking through a small building and Esther Hicks was there and I made eye contact with her, and it was just odd. I wondered if she could see something in my eyes, if she knew something about me. I was eating at a table at a public super and this creepy looking older man sitting across from me took the last bite of something (ice cream) off my plate and ate it. I keep dreaming that I'm at large parties and events, that I don't want to be at. There's this huge sense of relief I feel about being quarantined. I had made all sorts of plans to come out of my shell, to travel, to go to stuff, and this pandemic has given me the out and opportunity to further turn inward that I didn't know I really wanted.

Yesterday's productivity, seemed to be preceded by me flipping open Dr.P's book and reading something about his motto being business before pleasure, which I thought about because that's not how I've been living lately, and it doesn't feel great either. It doesn't feel good to have a duality between the two, and yet for sake of planning and intention, separating them out isn't something that can avoided. All my life I loved the feeling in my body and chest after a good run, but thought of it as a reward for my effort. Lately I feel like I can tap into that very easily. Let's go for feeling effortlessly. Looooove yin yoga. Feels like...

Just deeply appreciate things, people, nature, etc.

I grew up in a tiny isolated town. One time I visited a major city, and except for a few terrifying moments I absolutely LOVED it. Then I came home and I loved my home town more than ever, it was as if I'd never really seen it before.