mandyjw

Last night I had an annoying dream that made me think I was avoiding doing something. I got up and made a list of a whole lot of stuff I've been avoiding and did all of it. Almost everything seemed to have been already done for me. My estimated taxes had been extended, I found that the hotel reservation I made was canceled already at no charge, the bounced check I received has bead recleared by my customer, I just had to actually contact her to find that out. The items I was afraid I had run out of for the order I have to send out were found easily. Then it turned into a snowball effect and I planted the lavender and sage seeds mom just offered me after I had wrote "herb garden" on my dream board and did a bunch of other stuff really quickly. Then spend the rest of the morning in my studio and listened to a lot on youtube that just really clicked and blew me away. Abraham Hicks sounds like I'd never heard her quite so clearly before. Teal Swan's video had a perspective on trauma that was an answer to a question I had after talking with my sister about trauma. And Rupert Spira... The analogy about whirpools and vortexes explains so many things.

Why is this so fascinating? Why is it a meme? It's funny, but also mesmerizing. The guy is so connected with himself, so expressive, so feeling the music, and so... unexpected. It draws you in. You want to judge it and dismiss it but it's too mesmerizing and catchy not to get sucked in. All you can do is dance along or laugh or both.

embody hahaha Rupert (name) ... The Old High German form of the name evolved from Germanic Hrothi, "fame, glory" + Berht, "bright"; thus, Rupert and Robert mean "fame bright." Spira A thing that is coiled, twisted, or wound. A coil, twist. The base of a column. A kind of cake; a twist. When your metaphors go off the rails and get misunderstood. "What are you going to do to get rid of the snake?" -Rupert "Shoot it. I'm from America." "You cannot shoot the snake... it's a stick." -Rupert Lately, I've become conscious that the things that make me laugh the hardest are a type of shadow work or energy release. I laughed SO hard about the quoted scene above in this video, and then I realized how much fear, pain and reaction I actually have around the "shoot it. I'm from America" culture. Maybe people who laugh at people's pain and shame aren't evil. Maybe they actually just want to laugh at their own.

I had a vision in a dream last night that sent me on a tangent of contemplation. Also touches on how there can be "levels" of realization and yet, also no levels. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

OMG!!!! Husband asked if I appreciated his esoteric insights, and I said yes, and I said that I really felt like the word esoteric should have an x in it. He said he thought that might be a word but didn't know what it meant. I looked it up. "OMG it is!" "x gon give it ya" he replied ex·o·ter·ic (especially of a doctrine or mode of speech) intended for or likely to be understood by the general public. Somehow didn't know that exoteric was a word. Feeling stupid, asked him if he knew it was a word. He said no because exoteric must be more esoteric than esoteric itself. esoteric 1650s, from Greek esoterikos "belonging to an inner circle" (Lucian), from esotero "more within," comparative adverb of eso "within," from PIE *ens-o-, suffixed form of *ens, extended form of root *en "in." exoteric (adj.) 1650s, from Late Latin exotericus, from Greek exoterikos "external, belonging to the outside," from exotero, comparative of exo (see exo-).

My husband saw my drawing and I asked if he wanted the esoteric meaning behind it, and he said it was too early in the morning for that. So he ate his breakfast and then went on a parody spiel about the profound meaning of x, something about how x negates but X marks the spot, and then,

24 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.” Luke 11:24

Yesterday something clicked about making intentions, focusing on what's wanted. Becoming more aware of anxiety and depression as it arises, connecting with the body more to slow the thoughts, check in with how the body feels about thoughts, so that there's space to watch and turn them around is the only way to make (allow?) intentions. The negative thought/feeling is a desire wanting to be born. There is resistance and fear, connection with feeling/meditation, is what stops the freight train even though it first seems as if it's stepping out in front. Just stay. Then figure out what is wanted. The connected mind is there, ready and willing to figure out what is wanted and how to get it if you just point it in the right direction. It'll usually come up with something really creative you wouldn't have thought that you would have been able to think of. Because you didn't. The mind wants a job, and it wants creative license to do it. We're sometimes like slave drivers who think its only potential is repetitive, useless work. Listened to this. It helped me make a lot of connections. God, I love him. Focus is imagination is creation. Intentions seem like going against the stream but counter intuitively are actually going with it. I've cleaned my diet up in the past couple days, didn't eat much before bed and last night had vivid dreams and trouble sleeping which is what sleeping on an empty stomach does to me. I had a vision of something like an hour glass only the point in the center was a point of light filtering out in a triangular shape at either direction. The feeling that accompanied this vision was indescribable. I recently read that the G on the masonic symbol stands for God and Geometry. It always seems lackluster to remember and contemplate these dream/visions afterwards. The only interesting contemplation I got from it was that it's a much better way to understand time than to picture it linearly. The point of light is the now. We can choose to look at the past from any angle we want, and choose to envision the future from any angle we want, but all angles are the same light of awareness, now. Eh, writing it out maybe it's a better insight than I thought this morning. I suppose that even now, I'm comparing the insight from some chosen angle in the past. I should probably make a drawing of this.

When sizing up teachers, don't just look at the teacher or what the teacher knows, look at the negative space in between or you might miss the whole lesson.

If you read Harry Potter you'll have lots of feelings about the characters and you'll probably hate Voldemort for lots of good reasons, but there's no story without him and also, he was never real to begin with. Swap you for Harry Potter and ego for Voldemort, and you've likely got a similar story going on about ego and enlightenment. You could even call the story in your head the map, but the map is not the territory, and it's ever evolving (kind like the Marauder's Map). To make it even more tantalizing/confusing, Harry Potter is pretty selfish sometimes and Voldemort isn't entirely evil. And the TEACHERS... we haven't even started trying to figure out the teachers.

@Mada_ Sounds like it will fit in perfectly with your interests. Foraging and the law of attraction go together quite well, you learn about something, look for it, forget about it and then boom it magically appears. When I was a kid we and everyone else tilled the soil but it turns out that the mycellium networks in the soil shouldn't be disturbed for good soil health, and are part of how nutrients from the soil make it into the food. And it's also less work. I was just reading about how you can introduce mycellium to your garden by making a compost tea out of forest soil, it's like witchcraft marries science. So much to learn and discover.

@Christer Nahm is a wizard. Not sure if he lives up to Leo's particular vision of what wizards are as stated above though.

Look for a buckwheat meditation cushion, then put a blanket folded up under your legs. I've also found that starting a yoga practice really helps me to sit to meditate more comfortably too. I do a few stretches before I sit to meditate first thing in the morning and then have a longer yoga session later most days.

@Victor Mgazi It's love. It's more than the mechanics of how your eyes focus on how your mind engages with a thing. It's resonating with it as yourself. Focus is love, samadhi What happens to you when you truly focus on something? Not when the mind says "wow, I'm really focused" but when you're truly focused, what does that FEEL like? What is "behind" it? As soon as a thought of behind, drive, will, mechanical power comes up you've split the phenomenon in two, which is a funny strangeloop joke because focus is One. @Christer actual focus, is not a thought of focus. How do separation, Oneness and focus all resolve?

@zeroISinfinity Love you!

Focus requires an ideal (a preferred or ideal point of focus, even including the ideal of focus itself) and time to exist as a concept. It does not exist beyond mind. It could be said that "focus" is creation itself. The detail that was revealed never was until that moment of what you call your focus upon it. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? No.

@Christer If you were writing a paper and someone was watching a movie in the background, you might find yourself distracted. You want to focus on the paper but your awareness is drifting to the movie. But if you take away the time progression of that scenario, you see that in the moment you are either a. focused on the paper, b. focused on the movie or c. focused on the fact that you're distracted. So focus is always your experience, always. The mind and the illusion of time, preference, shoulds and stories create the abstract idea of being unfocused. It was never a thing. Having a concept of focus creates the concept of unfocused. The purpose of meditation is to reveal the experience of this focus beyond ideas of focus.

@Christer Kinda like Leo suggested, sometimes you have to run around screaming "I'm a tree, I'm a tree, I'm a goddamn fucking tree!!!" before it dawns on you. And that's why ego backlash and loss of progress just isn't what it seems to be.

I think it's an attempt to snap out of it, not quite a conscious breath though.

@Zigzag Idiot

So you say almost invisible, but because there's no duality, there cannot be in your awareness both focus and nonfocus, there cannot be something you focus on, and something you ignore in exclusion. In your ignore-ance you'd actually be focusing somewhat, aware of, the thing you aren't choosing to focus on. So the mind's idea of what focus is is pretty ironic when you consider the actual experience.

That's all part of the magic of it, there's no one to own or progress, no point to progress from, no point to progress to, and yet you get to live the adventure as if there is. That "thing" sitting back watching and worrying about its own progression is the very thing in the way, it's the thing that thinks all the thoughts about itself that feel awful are warranted. But it was never actually a thing, so what is there...? Just the thoughts. When those thoughts flare up just meditate for 5 minutes or how ever long it takes. One thing I've noticed recently is how meditation feels like a "cheat" to me. It's the easiest quickest way to what I want, but I worry I won't be able to integrate day to day life if I rely on actually sitting to meditate several times a day. And that's where all kinds of distractions pop up in its place, food, internet, anything the mind can use to dull the painful thoughts it's spinning without actually having to look them straight in the eyes.

Infinite Intelligence meets Stupid Love

I do, but on a small scale. I have a garden and grow most of my veggies in the summer, but it's only for about a month of two that I have enough that I don't have to buy any. The quality is unsurpassed though. Gardening is also harder than you might imagine and takes a lot of practice and learning, and every growing season is so unique that you'll have new challenges, some things you grow will thrive, some won't, you'll get pests one year and not the next, your soil quality is always changing etc. Growing food in healthy soil or foraging for food on undisturbed soil will give you all kinds of vitamins and nutrients you wouldn't get otherwise. A lot of plants that grow wild have really interesting properties and benefits, and it's really ridiculous how few foods we eat, grow and even have studied. Foraging has an even higher learning curve than gardening, if you can (especially if you forage for mushrooms or tricky to identify plants) get a mentor to actually show you in person what you're looking for. Be respectful with that though because a lot of your success depends on finding and knowing the right spots to go to, so be mindful of that if someone shows you their spots. Foraging has the extra fun of being like a treasure hunt though. Hunting, gardening and foraging can really help you hone your intuition, a deeper kind of knowing and feeling and connection with the earth, nature and your food. It's a ridiculous amount of work for few calories but in my experience the rewards are more than can be measured.