mandyjw

We Leo teaches us that we are God, so there's an unsettling realization waiting to dawn on us about how the Devil fits into all that.

During your awakenings you don't have a self concept, and Asperger's is currently part of your self concept normally. So if you're asking if you can use the state of no self to create a new altered self concept, then no. But in the state of no self there's no Asperger's. See how it's a tricky question to answer?

It's only when I give myself permission to waste my life that I feel free to make the most of it. Freedom is knowing that neither of those perceptions or judgement I could make about the value of my life is accurate.

@DrewNows Thank you, can't wait to watch the video. Do you have dogs or have a business dealing with dogs? @dimitri I loved reading your story. So glad you found us here. I got up wanting to journal about this but meditation was really good and now it's weird trying to think at a fast pace again. A lot of my pain is caused by the habit of thought to form a self concept to feel safe or find ground in. The safety and ground is a false promise of these thoughts. A lot of my motivations for doing this is, (well one motivation, fear) worrying about what other people think of me, worrying about being crazy. Last April, after I understood/experienced that there's no me, my behavior changed drastically, it took months to get to the point where I was... here I go again with self concepts. The awakening cost me my self concept, then I tried sometimes to make the awakening into a new self concept which doesn't work out so well because it doesn't jive with anyone else's self concept. Maybe if I made or found a community of "awake" people my new self concept would jive then. Nope. That's not what you want. As I journaled about in the past, the practice of tonglen came back to me. I made a video about it that I'll post this afternoon. I'm fascinated with how Buddhism teaches a half truth and Abraham Hicks teaches the other one. The three poisons in Buddhism are also the life blood. It makes me mad a little bit, like when I was sitting in church with a fire burning in my heart to speak out and knowing I could not. Yet turning "only focusing on what you want" into a belief has the same effect. If I wasn't still flip flopping between the two, thinking about them rather an being it, maybe I wouldn't react to either. It strikes me that my "fuck you" rebellious streak is as essential as it is harmful. Tonglen is a meditation that uses the power of my feelings and emotions rather than avoidance of them, which I unconsciously do with thoughts about meditation and conscious breathing sometimes. Since buckling down on meditation, the back pain gets bad at the end, and my thoughts flight around trying to escape it. One breath in, breathe and feel the pain, one breath out breathe out the peace. Often on my out breaths I "go" somewhere. Sometimes to the river. Pain is a feeling. Tonglen has evolved to me to simply being breathing into emotions. I spent my childhood doing things like reading books about the Holocaust, spending hours working in a cemetery, listening to Elton John and his deep depression and brilliance that shines through his music resonated. Music is such a beautiful analogy, how it builds up and resolves, the minor keys and major keys, how sad songs are beautiful. I know very little about music or making music, but I've always deeply appreciated it. I like it that way. What we want is to feel completely and not avoid any feeling.

Pretty sure my mom warned me about getting involved in this kind of thing at some point.

@SOUL Hakuna Matata

Then how do you know what it's called then? A thought that says something like "I'm not manifesting THAT in the FUTURE!" is a tricky way to avoid fear.

It's not going away, looks like it will be a big concern for the next year or two at least, likely longer. How long the panic and efforts to quarantine will depend on how fast it spreads. Slowing it down is necessary so hospitals can prepare. It is mostly a major concern for older people, so our focus should be on how to strategically protect the aging population and to prepare nursing homes and hospitals. We live in a golden age. We are better prepared to deal with this now than ever. Our interconnected world and the incredible means of travel we've created have made this sort of event long overdue, it's just a secondary affect of the kind of interconnected world we have built. Things that are stunning to me about the coronavirus outbreak, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. How incredibly and unavoidably connected we are. The fact that novel viruses originate in animals and often get passed to humans from people farming or exploiting animals.

And, with THAT realization and moment of clarity, I just manifested two lost Tupperware lids.

@Applegarden So many connections we never knew about! I've wondered for a while if my deepest darkest dreams and demons are incredibly mundane. They all seem to point to this. I wrote it down today. To feel in control of kids and house. In control of? Really? Don't I already feel like I'm in control of them? How does that feel? Awful. How do I actually want to feel? APPRECIATIVE of them. I want to feel like I'm on top of things because when I feel like I'm on top of things I feel free to appreciate the kids as they are. I want to have a clean home and be organized because then I feel relaxed and so appreciative of my home and surroundings. I want to feel worthy of being able to do things I want to do, trips, retreats. I want to be able to appreciate all of these things regardless, without condition. It's the feeling I'm after. The river I began taking my kids too was not some mystical place although stranger connections may have been made, but simply a place I found where I could truly begin to appreciate. I went there yesterday as they just happily played in the water, the sun reflecting off it almost blindingly, heavenly. Good book title idea, "Spiritual Enlightenment for Desperate Housewives" “If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

@Applegarden Crazy how much of my life I've spent running or shirking from perceived discomfort rather than investigating it. This morning during meditation I noticed off and on how much better it feels to be in the body, feeling the energy field of the body, then when my mind goes into thinking. I spent a day last week watching my thoughts like a hawk and connecting and over and over was surprised by how great that felt when my mind was telling me that I was "giving up" something and I shouldn't like to do that. My mom gave me parenting advice last night and said to first connect and then redirect. It struck me how profound "connect and redirect" is, not just for dealing with kids.

@TheAvatarState That's a necessary combination for all great conversations, in my opinion.

There's a lot to become conscious of, a lot to integrate and animal welfare is one of the more obvious areas of how our true interconnected nature affects things. It's important to stay curious about the areas in which we're still blind to and not to go so far into judgement and protest against something we already see and feel clearly, trying to control and influence the actions of others so that we miss that which we do not see about ourselves.

Please forgive me for obnoxiously trumping your metaphor here, but to me it's like filling the well up so little Timmy won't fall it down it again, and not missing the water until the well is dry. Again, love is the key ingredient for progression and evolution. If you don't love the subject and the person you're speaking to, no one is getting anywhere. Love is the ultimate state of "open-mindedness". Without that it's just butting heads. There's a lot of that here. There's a lot of people who come here assuming that only THEY will grow from a conversation. Or only THEY will teach someone else. When there's nothing left for THEM they leave. No real conversation is ever had in which both parties are not forever changed in some way. This forum does no exist for any "one's" individual growth, success or enlightenment. Things are not as they seem. The consciousness of this fact changes everything and is Love itself.

@DrewNows I LOVE that song, hadn't heard it before. Great quote too. I'm the "little" sister, by four years, so I have the opposite dynamic going on. Spent the morning unlisting videos from my youtube channel and making ideas for new ones. My self concept was tossed around all over the place this morning as i went back over past videos I've made. There are things to be observed which serve as contrast to helping me go in the direction I want, but sometimes I tell myself other things about that. I started the channel partially because I wanted to write a book, the book that I was inspired to write after finding Leo's channel because I started having feelings that fantasy and making up stories were the only outlet for. I knew that I had to have an audience of some kind if I was going to write a book. I also had the urge to make youtube videos basically ever since seeing this one. My initial vision was not necessarily to be educational. The purpose of the channel only got real direction a year ago and then I went perhaps a little too far down the rabbit hole for youtube. Spent much of the day outside. Not sure if I'm more addicted to being outside or on the computer. Maybe I could just accept that no moment is balanced in itself and balance is a concept that doesn't exist?

@TheAvatarState Nothing is wasted. There is no "time" to be wasted. If you are not willing to waste time, you won't awaken to this truth. If you see the outer as the inner, if you love others as yourself and they see what's not been seen in you and you in them, the mirroring effect can be quite enlightening. Without love their is no revelations, just butting heads. If solitude, meditation and time in nature, etc awakens you to love, that's what you need. If you only feel love in meditation, solitude and nature, then you may have to put yourself out there. It's a careful balance. Hopefully in the future, the need that this forum fills will change as more in person connections with those who understand this stuff will be easier to access.

@TheAvatarState It was the "result" of a LOT of communication over time, put together with realizations, insights and discoveries in "real life". Feel free to PM me if you want more details than that. In the end anything we did, saw, spoke, heard or realized is One and lead to or triggered an awakening or is leading there. The timeline is ultimately irrelevant. Yet this forum is a good place to look for remaining puzzle pieces. One important discovery was that I found that in my attempt at teaching others what I thought I already knew, I was able to see that I didn't really know at all. The participation aspect and the willingness to be wrong was key.

Oooo... that was coincidental timing.

Insight and knowledge is a necessary part of this beyond and including it all, Understanding. If someone has the slightest opening in a debate it can sometimes mean that they are on the edge of a major realization. I came here and started to read and post heavily a year ago, I had followed and loved Leo's videos for years and really disagreed with where he was going and came here basically to protest and debate. I thought a lot of people were really wasting their time here. Lots of strange things came together and I awakened on the forum, a month of two after that. Was not expecting that. You have some really valid points, it IS a trap, and nothing can be said however, it's so utterly paradoxical and counter intuitive that maybe the trap is the way. Your own intuition and feeling is what will lead you to what you seek. God works in mysterious ways.

Last night I had a dream which is a recurring one, in which I discover a hidden room in my old house that I forgot was there. The house in the dream is not my house as it is, but it's assumed it's mine and the room changes dream to dream, and usually includes it's own flight of stairs and an upper level. I'm usually intrigued and somewhat afraid of or overwhelmed by this room. Unlike the rest of the house it's unrenovated and probably full of rodents and would be a lot of work to get back to an order in which I could use it and it would be a part of the house again. I usually end the dream not really sure what to do about it. I've never thought to consider how it applies to my life but it's so obvious now. Is the house a metaphor for the brain or the body? Unconscious, subconscious? All of the above as their actually one? When we were renovating the house in real life, I found a tiny sealed off "room" while gutting a bedroom and it had it's own wallpaper and someone threw a newspaper in it to make it a time capsule. I did a hip flexibility yoga video yesterday and stretched before I mediated today (that should have been a no brainer, HA! ) and meditation was mostly pain free without shifting positions.

It's hard to be open-minded when you think you're open-minded.

@DrewNows This is so true yet so counter-intuitive to me. Sorry for the side note but it's funny I was just talking about this in another thread. My sister is an advanced yoga teacher and tai chi instructor and personal trainer. She always berated me for my posture. I felt judged for it every second. Last week I took off my sweater and she stared at me to see what shape I'm in. It brought back all those feelings. We're connecting more than ever as I understand the importance of connecting with the body and she understands the psychology part, but there's still stuff between us that can be healed. I followed my heart, and I discovered the law of attraction which allowed me to even more clearly follow my heart and shortly after my reality "broke". The stories and the subconscious connection came after that. I was not expecting any of it or intentionally did any of it. I'm currently studying or wanting to know the answer of how far it's necessary for people to go into past stories. It was part of my path, but it wasn't intentional and I don't want to draw the conclusion that everyone has to do the same thing I did. For me it was an experience of rewriting my past from a new perspective and seeing and feeling how everything was pointing toward awakening. As allowed this stuff seems to bubble up, call it karma clearing or whatever you want. What I don't know is if it bubbled up because it was the last thing I was willing to see, or if it was the only time I was ready to "see". It's all love. You have to be on the frequency of love to "see" through pain, to rewrite painful past beliefs. Sometimes my love leads me into a story, and the clairvoyant doctor story line was basically something I created (without having any physical means to create but unfolded rather) to focus my love and see that love is timeless. It's all law of attraction. I attracted the "assistance" of this unfolding story line in awakening. As far as I understand, or rather I allowed it. It's not about the story, it's about how it makes you feel, what it shows you. We are told to be careful of thought stories, rightfully so. These are the stories that we cling to as believing are "real". Yet metaphors, parables and little koans are amazing powerful teachers. The truth of a story is found only in how it makes you feel. I think my going into fantasy and stories that way allowed me to access the higher self. Then the clairvoyant doctor story was both real and fairy tale in my reality, and it helped break the duality. What negative energies do you refer to? Negative is our own interpretation. (Not above this, I read too much about corona virus today when I opened an email I was expected was going to be inspiring, not fear mongering and fell into an energetic nose-dive. ) We don't want to be blind to things and ignorant/ignore-ant of them. But it takes practice to hold presence and look a tiger in the eye without screaming.