mandyjw

During this mornings meditation session I was able to tap in feeling the energy in my body quite often off and on. Feels good. There's a lot of just tolerating or sitting through sensations that goes on and my vision for meditation is to further purify it into self love, so meditation feels amazing. I guess that's the entire point? There's the concept of surrender and the concept of working through fear and blockages, but these things are not actual. Love, now is actual. I've always had a closely defended personal space bubble, due to fear and shame and only recently realized how I let it affect my marriage, the one relationship where I'm technically supposed to have the freedom to let personal space boundaries go. If these were just thoughts, then they would be, but it's a weed that grown a fantastically strong root system without my realizing it had roots at all. There have been times when I was really in pain when I asked my husband to put his hand on me, and I really, really felt like he could heal. I'm supposed to take a reiki class, but I've been waiting almost a year for the teacher to find someone else to take the class with me. The teacher of the class has always made me a bit uncomfortable,(I made myself uncomfortable) is incredibly quiet and I always thought that he acts "odd". He happens to be the partner of the Buddhist woman who mentored me from the time I was a kid. Both my friend from childhood and my sister have taken reiki classes from him. I was really skeptical of reiki and he commented about what a skeptical person I was at the time. His partner told me last spring that he had quit his meditation practice and wasn't feeling worthy of going on a pilgrimage trip with her. She came to our grandmothers funeral and did reiki on my sister afterwards and I just sort of sat there awkwardly and watched this feeling like I wasn't part of the secret Illuminati club. Physical touch for emotional pain? In PUBLIC? How bizarre. I remember that day, being determined to touch my Grammie's dead body. I'd held her hand the last time before that, and it was the most amazing exchange of energy. Then when I tried to send her tonglen, it bounced back and I received it instead and an hour later Mom told me she had passed. She didn't die of any disease at all. She just left the realm of the physical slowly and died. There was a lot of self talk going on about touching her. What will people think? Will they think I'm creepy? How clean are the embalming rooms? Will I get MRSA? Why did they paint her nails like that? It looks so fake. I touched her hand and felt... nothing really. She didn't feel dead. Dead doesn't feel like anything because it isn't. Because for the past 12 years I have spent most of my time alone, I have a lot of habits and postures that are comfortable or self soothing, because I haven't been concerned with looking normal. One of these is that when I'm stressed or thinking about something uncomfortable I unconsciously cover my nose with my hair or shirt. This is exactly what I did with my blanket when I was a little kid. There's an intuitive art to doing this, you want to filter the air, but cover the left nostril more than the right. I never thought about this at all, until a few years ago I started listening to some yoga conference talks on youtube and they mentioned the energizing and calming effects of covering one nostril. I also have a problem with inappropriate laughing sometimes in social situations. I asked my neighbor to plow my driveway and he asked what happened to my previous plow guy. I told him his name and he said "OH!" because he knew that he had died in an accident and I could tell he felt awkward so I wanted to relieve the tension so I... laughed. I'm assuming these things happen because if I practiced self love I wouldn't attract them and wouldn't allow tension to build up that needs to be released by inappropriate laughter or verbal diarrhea. A lot of my fear of people and shyness comes because I've been so brutal to myself AFTER and during interactions. When I ran competitively in high school, there were lots of beliefs like "no pain, no gain". There was a certain amount of glory that one felt if they puked up their guts after a race. It was the seal of approval that you didn't hold anything back and didn't have to question your performance after. Or else, you got yourself so worked up before that the nervousness all sort of built up to it. A good race meant you gave it your all, and you'd be in a lot of pain the whole time. There was a lot of pressure to please my Dad who took great pride in our performance in meets. I've always enjoyed throwing up. Just not at all the part leading up to it. Sophomore year I had gotten lazy and unfocused dealing with all the stresses at school and hadn't trained enough that summer. I got shin splints and had to take ibuprofen to keep running which made me really, really sick until we figured out that ibuprofen on an empty stomach was not a good idea. I felt like I was disappointing everyone. I always saw my stomach pain as an annoyance and a hindrance, not an indicator. Just try and disconnect from your body while you beat it into submission, and expect it to say nothing. In practice, I let myself zone out a lot. Often during running I would "write" to myself or imaginary others in my head, usually about inspirational, self improvement or religious topics. I gave up running when I graduated, then took it up again shortly after discovering Leo and Eckhart Tolle, this time purely for myself. The strange stomach and back pain started last year when I started to "use" running again, in an addictive way to stave off depression. A year or so ago, I got this dream vision for my life but felt like I was too busy to achieve it. I'd meditate, do lots of yoga, run, hike, cook healthy food, and maybe do some creative work. In the winter, in layers of sweaters it's so easy to disconnect from the body and slog through life. The magic of yoga, of being barefoot and in shorts and moving around is transformational. Feels amazing to wake up and stop beating your own self into submission. The path of least resistance, going with the stream. Dr P has a beautiful section in his book in which he describes his almost spiritual love for this town and describes the flow of the landscape as if you were looking over it from a high vantage point and it ends with a line about how by and by all the wandering streams make their way to the sea.

Ex p ire ire -noun - anger. F ire In sp ire inspirit When I discovered Leo years ago it was because I searched youtube for how to deal with anger. "I don't really get that" he said. "I don't experience it myself emotionally" I always thought that was a bit curious, maybe somewhat insulting. But regardless his advice was great and I got completely hooked on his videos. How to deal with anger? Put out the fire, the phoenix will rise. "Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes." — Kahlil Gibran

"A maze is a complex branching (multicursal) puzzle that includes choices of path and direction, may have multiple entrances and exits, and dead ends. A labyrinth is unicursal i.e. has only a single, non-branching path, which leads to the center then back out the same way, with only one entry/exit point." Which is it? Amaze a maze? Self Love is the way. It's so easy to explore dead ends. ex p lore. "lore noun a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth." ex a mine

I'm think I'm starting to see that.

@Nahm On the drive home I noticed that the date on my car says its 02 02/ 2020 I saw the speed limit sign and noticed that speed/deeps and was trying to figure out "limit" which didn't work but lead me straight to Timid/ Dim it, so let your light shine, and THEN I drove by a fire burning on the side of the road. So yes, I am on fire.

Evolve, spelled backward evlove evolve evol/love Eve ever love everloving evolution evil/ live "The traditional meaning of Eve is "living". Devil/lived Actualized actual actuality, actually, it's an act Well, HOLY FUCK.

If you want to play "right" I'll play "wrong" for the sake of the game. If you want to play doctor, someone else has to play sick. The point is, it's all just play. The question is... are you having fun?

If you believe in the concept of important and profound then you create things that are deceptive and silly. All are truth. Truth is deception. The profound is ridiculous.

You should read what you are intuitively drawn to. There are powerful pointers, symbolism and even prophetic elements in the stories that resonate with you. You are the larger story, so the stories you love or write yourself within the greater story are elements of the subconscious (Oneness/nonduality) coming to light. So stories within the story can be a powerful way to unravel your own story and discover how you are creating it, and what you want to create.

I was talking with my husband about saying to people that you're teaching "it's easy", and he said that he never does it because he thinks it's cruel and mean. He said it's more compassionate to not say that and assume that something that was easy for you is going to be easy for them. But difficult and easy are relative, arbitrary and capricious concepts and we choose the story we tell about achievements and realizations after or before the fact. Do you want it to be hard or do you want it to be easy? Or do you want to limit yourself by making one thing easy and the other hard in comparison? On one hand if it's difficult, it seems like it's worthwhile, you wouldn't appreciate it fully if you didn't work for it. If it's easy anyone could do it, and then it wouldn't be rare, exclusive or special. Enlightenment is not exclusive and it is not an attainment. It's so easy, it's already done. Congratulations! Feel as if you are it and you will become it.

Do you know what era is, spelled backwards? Are. I just noticed that 10 minutes ago, because I was looking closely at my daughter's shirt which says "Unicorns are real". There are a lot of thoughts and stories we can fall into about life and how we fit into it. Our true nature is that we are one with it, we just are. As you know meditation is a powerful way to get in touch with that peace. Your isness, or in a greater sense your areness , because everything is perfect as it is until thought says it's not. Make a list of things to do that lift your spirits, cat videos on youtube, drawing, painting, music, time in nature, whatever does it for you and make a big effort to do three of them every single day. Continue with meditation and mindfulness using them as tools to build on one another. Focus on where you want to go, focus on the story you want to write in your life and inspiration, purpose and vision will flood in.

It's so easy to fall in love.

I read this years ago and it sounded beautiful but I never knew how it would unfold so... literally. "Since time immemorial, flowers, crystals, precious stones, and birds have held special significance for the human spirit. Like all life-forms, they are, of course, temporary manifestations of the underlying one Life, one Consciousness. Their special significance and the reason why humans feel such fascination for and affinity with them can be attributed to their ethereal quality. Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings' perceptions, they can sense that there is more there than the mere physical existence of that form, without knowing that this is the reason why he or she is drawn toward it, feels an affinity with it. Because of its ethereal nature, its form obscures the indwelling spirit to a lesser degree than is the case with other life-forms. The exception to this are all newborn life-forms—babies, puppies, kittens, lambs, and so on. They are fragile, delicate, not yet firmly established in materiality. An innocence, sweetness and beauty that are not of this world still shine through them. They delight even relatively insensitive humans. So when you are alert and contemplate a flower, crystal, or bird without naming it mentally, it becomes a window for you into the formless. There is an inner opening, however slight, into the realm of spirit. This is why these three "en-lightened" life-forms have played such an important part in the evolution of human consciousness since ancient times; why, for example, the jewel in the lotus flower is a central symbol of Buddhism and a white bird, the dove, signifies the Holy Spirit in Christianity. They have been preparing the ground for a more profound shift in planetary consciousness that is destined to take place in the human species. This is the spiritual awakening that we are beginning to witness now." -Eckhart Tolle - A New Earth

On second thought, I think enlightenment and transcendence is the best possible way to survive. That's what survival is. "Jesus" "saves" after all. Thinking about Eckhart Tolle's flower analogy and the awakening/true evolution of consciousness on the planet and how it fits in to the concept of survival. https://www.penguin.com/ajax/books/excerpt/9781101010891 The programmed limitations are transcendence itself. Brilliant.

I think you presented them really well, I do think you're right that those are the ways we measure the success of relationships. The tricky thing is you never really know what anyone else's relationship is like or how they actually rate in those ways, so our standards are always our own completely imaginary ideals.

Survival is just a rule that exists within imagination itself. Death is an illusion. The purpose of survival and karma itself has to be higher... love, creation and imagination. You can't bust through something by believing in it. The belief of survival has to be dropped/loved to clear karma. You keep reminding me that I'm a silly self in a story trying to survive. If you're afraid of having followers that fall into unconcious devilry for survival reasons, that's what you see and that's the story you write yourself into. I want you to write me back into paradise. This is what I came here for.

@Serotoninluv Ideally there's no judging or measuring at all, just appreciation/passion/sharing a vision. Actually, all partnerships and relationships should be valued that way in my opinion.

Been listening to this a lot for the past week or two.

Women are the keepers of the relationship. We start em', and we end em'. Relationships are about emotional connection and because emotions are typically the woman's strength she takes the lead in the relationship. But because women don't understand the power of their emotions or the fact that they are responsible for their own emotions, they often fall into a pattern of blaming their spouse for their own being unfulfilled and seek to abandon the relationship. This is all just an effect of living in a society that doesn't value emotional connection or even happiness over measurable and external indicators of success.

@Leo Gura If we take it a step further into contemplating the nature of oneness and assume that karma itself is part of the greater light, is the actuality of karma a positive thing(love)? Is karma choices (consciously or unconsciously) that create the "character" that we are, all made out of love? Without those "filters" we would be blinded by the light, or not have eyes to see it at all. But because we don't see the actuality of karma, we own it, see it as a limitation and suffer for it. If you can love your karma (shine the light right on it) you transcend it. So for example if something crappy or odd happens to you, and you accept and love it and get curious about it, it might reveal how some defining event in the "past" created a belief out of fear. Then it was seen that love was actually there. But there can't be any complaints, resistance or believing in coincidence if this is going to happen. It requires a radical foundation of faith that everything is happening for you, is you, all out of love. Then the specifics of your karma can be revealed to you as such. Your most painful/embarrassing moments were all bizarrely manifested pointers or opportunities to wake up.

Open Your Eyes I wanna take you home boy Come with me out in the light Living as somebody else boy Open your eyes You gotta try boy Open your eyes Squeezing the palm of my hand In these bodies, we are alone What could I have changed your mind Tell me What good when we're out of time Won't say that I never tried Will you Set me free by the river side I wanna take you home boy Come with me out in the light Living as somebody else boy Open your eyes You gotta try boy Open your eyes Who doesn't need another friend In these bodies, we are alone And let it Take my body Take my body Let it take me Back to the river

If awakening is not with the mind only, how do emotions affect or indicate karma? How about the differing ways we feel about everything that is the Self? For example loving our own family is a thought or a belief, and not the love itself. To the mind that is an agonizing problem, but focused love is like a beam of light, it itself illuminates what it is focused on, and never had the power to exclude anything from that love at all. Is it not feeling that is experienced that indicates what your karma is at any given moment? Can you say that karma is what blocks Self Love and feeling is the indicator of it? The mind can say that it sees, that it has let go of, but it's the knife, the focus, never the light itself. How can it unsee what it never actually saw?

One thing to really watch as you move throw the stages that judging yourself... having an ideal that you hold yourself and others to in your head, is a very pervasive belief.