mandyjw

"To lay inert and only dreaming of a perfect love is easy. It is an anesthetization from which we might never recover but for ruthlessly snagging something valuable, yet outside our awareness. For the naive and wounded, the miracle of the psyche's ways is that even if you are halfhearted, irreverent, didn't mean to, didn't really hope to, don't want to, feel unworthy to, aren't ready for it, you will accidentally stumble upon treasure anyway. Then it is your soul's work not to overlook what has been brought up, to recognize treasure as treasure no matter how unusual its form, and to consider carefully what to do next." -Women Who Run With Wolves

I can't even really read this past entry but the snap out of it at the end was palpable. I can't go along with it, it's mostly just utter drivel. Sitting on the couch with the puppy feeling crappy and looking at the sink piled high with dishes, then finding myself appreciating how beautiful my daughter's magenta plastic bowl looks next to the yellow forsythia flowers on the windowsill. It's both sickening, hopeless, a deadend... and paradise, Happily Ever After.

“One of the marvels of the world is the sight of a soul sitting in prison with the key in its hand!” ― Rumi, Is guilt/shame and anxiety/fear the same feeling? Well yes... I suppose it has to be in feeling, because nonduality, but holy cow, I never really saw how tied together they are, how one feeds the other. Last night I had a dream that I was throwing a dinner party but I didn't really prepare but this wasn't obvious to me until no one showed up anyway. I was sitting alone and looked up and I was sitting by the woods and it was windy and all these rotting, dead trees were hanging over my head waiting to fall and I realized I probably shouldn't be sitting there. I also had a really symbolic dream about clothing, the symbolism of which I've been becoming more conscious of lately over the past few days. I feel very stuck right now. Maybe the gentle practice I learned of following pointers, signs and feelings through shadow work, waiting, being patient, works with feeling as well. I'm dogmatically trying to force myself into allowing, which is a ridiculous strange loop. I'm opening to those disgusting feelings that come up so often during the day, feeling like I should be doing something else, or that I'm wasting my time, or just awful resistance to what's at hand. I'm feeling the sensations, the feeling in my body, the knot in my stomach. Am I, or am I thinking about them more? THINK MANDY, THINK! You're stupid, you never did think the right way. It's ok, you can avoid that shortcoming by demonizing thinking. Thought demonizes itself. The day before yesterday I told my husband that I felt bad for 8th graders and high school students missing their graduations this year. He said something like college graduations were more important, a bigger deal. I sat with it a moment and recognized that I was triggered, that he had had a college graduation and I hadn't. I wanted to react but then I came back with an answer that I told myself was only half reaction of what I wanted to say, half trying to one-up him. "Well, a very small percentage of people get to experience a college graduation. So high school graduations are a bigger deal for more people." That night I dreamed that I went back to high school, not college but high school to take three classes, and it felt really strange. Then the dream shifted and I had bought my Grandmother's house and committed to fix it up and make it mine. Life in general can go take a flying fuck right now. What the fuck did I do to deserve this existence? What the fuck did I do to deserve this existence? Same question, same words are asked following great appreciation or great suffering. I didn't do anything? I don't own any of it. What if I'm imagining all the pain in my body, all the blockages, the powerlessness? Isn't that what I've been taught here? It's imagination? Then how is it not my fucking fault? How am I not to blame? Or how am I not a victim? How do I forgive a self that doesn't exist, how do I love a self that doesn't exist? The depths of nihilism itself. I won't deny love. But I would deny myself. I would kill it. I would wish it was never born. Just fucking die already. I've seen behind the curtain, there's nothing to kill. The desire to kill it persists. Sometimes you have to let some punches out in thought. This was all pretend to me. All play. I saw how it unfolded, I saw the mind blowing connections, I felt them, I've seen through the charade. But I still pretend, doubt and live and feel as if it's real, life and death. "I've been knocking and no one answers. And I've been knocking most of the day." Why is Self Love, utter alignment? It is existence without existence. I just binge ate an entire dark chocolate bar and some other things. It's getting ridiculous. Getting fat is what every woman fears the most and yet wants the most. Maybe if I make myself completely undesirable to others, I'd actually love me. Oh Jesus Mandy you're so dramatic. Creed, now? You can try, but you know none of this even sticks anymore. My newly found carefreeness terrifies me. Just read that again, oh God, that's funny.

Congrats, you win a prize... nothing.

@Serotoninluv

So that's why we're either petrafied or just batshit crazy. slive/evils, I missed that one! ?

I love your user name together with your avatar. Perfection.

Because the Truth is that you can't discern between truth, and not truth. There's no one who can do that.

Positive emotion is not a problem at all unless it's veiling something or a front to avoid feeling its opposite. Usually we know when we act happy or joke to avoid a feeling, part of us feels cut off in that situation. Sometimes it can take a lot to become conscious enough to see if this is truly the case. It's not about how you act, or how you imagine that others "see" you, it's about giving up all those thoughts and concerns and paying attention to how you feel that you really become aware of your truth and aware of which of your actions are truly authentic and which are a front.

@Soulbass

Oopps 16.

10

This was a "hit you where you live" moment. Which reminded me of this old favorite 80's Christian song. "Hit you where you live, you can't hold back When you're struck by his love you will know Hit you where you live, it's so close to home When you're all sold out the mark will show Let him hit you where you live The evidence leads to conviction When we don't live everything we say There's got to be a crucifixion We can live dying everyday" How fitting, the flaming sword? The unsafe, afraid feeling in my belly that I've been "working" with. The description from Rupert Spira to the tantric path and the symbolism of the apple. "Juicy apple, pear, and banana, Gooseberry ... They all speak of Death and life in the mouth ... I have a presentiment ... Read it from a child’s expression If she savours them. It comes from far, from far ... Aren’t you slowly becoming aware of something inexpressible in your mouth? Where a moment ago were words, a flowing discovery Is released, startling, from the fruit’s flesh. Venture to say what your apple is called. This sweetness, which originally condensed itself, Spreading out, slowly in being tasted rose up To achieve a clarity, awake and of transparency, Resonant of opposites, sunny, earthy, of the here and now -: Oh the experience of it, the feeling, the joy -, immense!" -sonnet to orpheus While listening a memory bubbled up of probably the first instance that I felt completely not ok, and had that horrible anxiety feeling in my stomach. My sister and I were playing in the woods by our parents house. It's funny because that woods only exists in my memory and now that section was cut and grew in again and it's like that old part never existed. I was really young and was playing with my t-shirt pulling it up and down showing my belly and covering it up again. My sister, a kid confused about nudity said that uncovering yourself like that was illegal and I shouldn't do it. For whatever reason I took this to mean that I was going to jail and I waited for them to come for me... the rest of the day, living in this feeling of horrible guilt/anxiety. Eventually it got bad enough that I told my mother and she set me straight that I was horribly mislead and confused and I felt great relief. A minute or two later, my daughter brought me my phone that she was watching a show on and the show had a couple of dachshunds dressed up as prisoners and was titled "Prison Break".

It felt good, why not leave it that? You don't have to label it as morality to try to lock it down, you discovered something that felt good, discovered a behavior pattern change you could observe and change that felt better. Stick with the feeling, stick with the love and connection and go in that direction, don't try to create rules for it because rules are made to be broken. We all have this tendency, the mind submits for a minute then recognized that it did something good, then comes back in and tries to own that good or that positive change. This can hinder it from making another breakthrough into feeling good.

Who or what is it that judges negative from positive, good from bad, moral from immoral? By pointing at or defining one of these dualities you unconsciously create the other in thought. It is only through feeling and intuition, connecting with the deeper Self, that you can discern without discerning. No one goes around harming others consciously, just like no one in tune with their body eats junk food all day. So giving people rules to follow can temporarily help them connect to feeling and intuition until they hit a wall and have to drop the judgement and rules to go deeper. When people turn "no morality" into a dogma before they've gotten this realization, and connected to feeling on their own and you create zen devils... until they too hit a wall and see that they have to go deeper.

@SilentTears I hadn't thought of that. It seems like I'm becoming more and more conscious of how sneaky thought can be, but how could I trust that thought or judgement itself? Should I trust a self review from a corrupt politician? Yet, the corrupt politician has become conscious that he's only hurting himself, and his desire is to change his patterns. This is not a story of impeachment but redemption, change of heart. Thought itself is in service of the whole. It tries to serve itself thinking it is above rather than connecting with feeling and serving/governing the whole. To serve is to rule. To rule is to serve.

@nexusoflife Beautiful account.

I had a shadow work experience...? for a lack of a better word. Things in my past that had been significant both good or bad, came bubbling up and I saw them all in the light of Good. Journaling was key for me, but the impulse to write things down lead to more being revealed as I was writing, it never felt like work at all. You mentioned music, I found that music helped with the journaling of and on, it seemed to go hand in hand with the flow state I was in and on occasion old favorite songs aided in bringing up feelings of my "past". Pay attention to how you feel, go in the direction of feeling good, yet don't resist or label in thought. Intuition and inspiration are your best friends here. The more we see our trauma or blockages as trauma and blockages the more we hold ourselves apart from seeing the actuality of them. The more we think about them as being good, and try to convince ourselves of that the more something wants to resist and argue that. Thought can jump in and hold itself from moving forward. As the thoughts of past memories start to bubble up from going in the direction of feeling/being (meditation breathwork, etc), the key is to see it, feel the desire to work through it, then let it go. There is no one who needs to work through their shit, nothing that needs to be done. Thought says and claims this statement "there's nothing that needs to be done" as dogma. That's resistance. Thought says and claims this statement "I must work through these blockages" as dogma. Both of those thoughts/beliefs are resistant. Don't fall for any one of them.

As above so below. I found this old thread today, and thought this was particularly well written and thought I'd share here. "Back to those of us who are able to disengage from thoughts. There's a TRAP here Cause when MIND says that a THOUGHT is NOT REAL, it also tends to brush away the FEELING associated with the thought. That feeling right there, is what KEEPS the thought coming back. Actually, most of the time, the same thought comes back over and over again (sometimes about different people and situations), because it is somehow FUELED by a feeling. Body has stored some type of information by constricting or expanding some cells. When that energetical information is triggered, it will communicate to the neurons a way to "fire up" so that it has the same (type of) thought. So once you've dismissed a THOUGHT as NOT REAL and / or BAD, all you did was to DISSOCIATE mind from body. No further understanding/integration comes with this, only more frustration and more searching. So once you have found your way through dismissing thoughts, there's a "part two" that is CRUCIAL: feeling the emotion "underneath". Now I won't lie to you. Even though you are aware of it, even if you know and see it for what it is and are able to put a name on it, it WILL feel like what you ASSOCIATED IT WITH: fear, anger, sadness, jealousy, discontentment, etc. You will see that those LABELS will still try to stick to your actual experience, but if you just give attention to the PHYSICAL SENSATION and not to the THOUGHT, the "discomfort" will pas - or better said, what you will discover is that there is no discomfort. That physical sensation will reveal the thoughts you associated with it throughout your life. Once you truly are able to see thoughts are not true THROUGH feeling the sensations that bring them on, you're free "

"Back to those of us who are able to disengage from thoughts. There's a TRAP here Cause when MIND says that a THOUGHT is NOT REAL, it also tends to brush away the FEELING associated with the thought. That feeling right there, is what KEEPS the thought coming back. Actually, most of the time, the same thought comes back over and over again (sometimes about different people and situations), because it is somehow FUELED by a feeling. Body has stored some type of information by constricting or expanding some cells. When that energetical information is triggered, it will communicate to the neurons a way to "fire up" so that it has the same (type of) thought. So once you've dismissed a THOUGHT as NOT REAL and / or BAD, all you did was to DISSOCIATE mind from body. No further understanding/integration comes with this, only more frustration and more searching. So once you have found your way through dismissing thoughts, there's a "part two" that is CRUCIAL: feeling the emotion "underneath". Now I won't lie to you. Even though you are aware of it, even if you know and see it for what it is and are able to put a name on it, it WILL feel like what you ASSOCIATED IT WITH: fear, anger, sadness, jealousy, discontentment, etc. You will see that those LABELS will still try to stick to your actual experience, but if you just give attention to the PHYSICAL SENSATION and not to the THOUGHT, the "discomfort" will pas - or better said, what you will discover is that there is no discomfort. That physical sensation will reveal the thoughts you associated with it throughout your life. Once you truly are able to see thoughts are not true THROUGH feeling the sensations that bring them on, you're free "

I've been digging through some dirt, metaphorically. Feeling as if rather than digging memories up like the past year has been off and on, it's energetic. Dealt with an episode of rage over a week or so, then another and threw a can of green beans across the room. I went outside a moment and came back in and resumed destructive lack of control. My husband shouted at me to leave and go for a walk, so I did. I went to the cemetery and sat on Dr.P's grave. A small fly came and sat on my hand and stayed there. It reminded me of the poem I shared here weeks ago. “Trust your wound to a teacher’s (God) surgery. Flies collect on a wound. They cover it, those flies of your self-protecting feelings, your love for what you think is yours. Let a Teacher wave away the flies and put a plaster on the wound. Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That’s where the Light enters you. And don’t believe for a moment that you’re healing yourself.” Rumi— I knew what to do and sent a message to Nahm and he helped me understand it. Muninn dug a hole randomly in the middle of the yard yesterday like he was possessed. I got my nightmare of alders and invasive roses cut and cleaned our of my neglected shade flower garden. Last year at this time I was riding the wave of bliss from the awakening. I'm so glad this year at this time that my reality was broken. Yesterday I went for a hike somewhere that had been written on a my dreamboard, I haven't been there for months. When I got there the tide was just right and it was spectacular. I've been thinking about (as you know) pyramids a lot lately. I cut off through the woods and went to a shore. There were rocks shaped like pyramids, I hopped down to the beach and looked out a while. Instead of being happy or at peace I felt a kind of anxious energy along with other feelings moving through. I saw a seal pop up for a moment and then I thought of the symbolism on the dollar bill, the eye of providence, the pyramid, the seal ( seal). I want to see an eagle I told myself. At first I judged myself for making the intention. Then my desire grew stronger. I went out and sat on a rock that overlooks the water, and closed my eyes and tried to connect with the power of it, feeling the fear of the water and the impulse to push through and join it and knowing that it was metaphorical currents within I wanted to allow and join. Then I glimpsed an eagle, impossibly high in the sky, I recognized him for a moment until he flew even higher out of sight and recognition. The sunset last night was a spectacular pink pyramid. “The day of resurrection is determined in this manner. The first Sunday after the full moon in Aries is celebrated as Easter. Aries begins on the 21st day of March and ends approximately on the 19th day of April. The sun’s entry into Aries marks the beginning of Spring The moon in its monthly transit around the earth will form sometime between March 21st and April 25th an opposition to the sun, which opposition is called a full moon, The first Sunday after this phenomenon of the heavens occurs Is celebrated as Easter; the Friday preceding this day is observed as Good Friday. This movable date should tell the observant one to look for some interpretation other than the one commonly accepted. These days do not mark the anniversaries of the death and resurrection of an individual who lived on earth.” ― Neville Goddard Say Yes Quickly Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up. You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray. You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many. Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar. Reach your long hands out to another door, beyond where you go on the street, the street where everyone says, “How are you?” and no one says How aren’t you? Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and torn tonight, thrashing in the dark. Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about. He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight. If you are here unfaithfully with us, you’re causing terrible damage. If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love, you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen. Is what I say true? Say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe. - Rumi Don’t let your throat tighten with fear. Take sips of breath all day and night. Before death closes your mouth. There’s no love in me without your being, no breath without that. I once thought I could give up this longing, then though again, But I couldn’t continue being human. -Rumi You are the only faithful student you have. All the others leave eventually. Have you been making yourself shallow with making other eminent? Just remember, when you’re in union, you don’t have to fear that you’ll be drained. The command comes to speak, and you feel the ocean moving through you. Then comes, Be silent, as when the rain stops, and the trees in the orchard begin to draw moisture up into themselves. -Rumi

Having a strong morning routine can really help to break out of that cycle. Put into place piece by piece, add one task until it feels good to add another. Also making lists can help you focus. Sit down with a piece of paper and write down what you want to accomplish, then your brain will start to get to work on how. No one can give you a daily plan that's inspiring enough for you to stick to, you have to create your own and allow for some spontaneity and fun too.

There's also a backwards effect of visualization where things are revealed or shown to you and seem to be surprises or revelations. Meaning before symbol or symbol before meaning, time is not linear which is why it can occur both ways.