mandyjw

There are no cons to spirituality, there is suffering that we cause ourselves sometimes trying to figure out what direction we should go in and what we really want. Spirituality is inseparable from the rest of life. Some people know on a level of thought and speech that they are interested in it, and others don't yet.

Well if YOU'RE God what does that make me?

Keep in mind that the judgement of the coworker chewing his finger is the very same thought movement as judging yourself for being triggered by it. Those two judgements are not actually separate.

You're so beautiful that you don't have a face. You're so intelligent that you don't have a brain. You're so wise that you're a fool. You're so valuable and important that you're disposable. You're so loved that you're all alone.

I was feeling prone to depression off and on today, knowing with even greater clarity that in these cases meditation = self love. I started feeling frustrated and impatient because I had to walk across a sheet of ice and I just stopped and was present with it and remembered how ridiculous it is for someone to complain about walking on ice when that same person tells themselves that they love to ice skate. What's the difference really? Choice and intention. What does one really want, but to make every moment a conscious choice (acceptance) and to have intention. This becomes more necessary and harder when you're interrupted with kids and disasters frequently. I was feeling lonely, and contemplating why I would feel lonely after realizing that I'm completely responsible for my feelings. I took a shower which always improves my mood but my daughter came up after two minutes with a tantrum of crying and screaming because she ate all her cheerios. I tried offering her solutions and telling her to be patient but she wasn't having it. Again I meditated through it. I also noticed a sort of effortlessness to it, like I just wasn't tempted to join her in her intense frustration. This idea pleased me and then it really just struck me as funny that I was feeling lonely and having a screaming child was what finally cheered me up and just then she stuck her head in the shower curtain and saw me laughing, which made her scream harder and me laugh more. I got so overzealous with dancing and Pilates over the past week that I hurt my foot. Probably due to my misinterpretation of self love. I got under my goal weight I had written on my vision board so I wrote down my absolute ideal instead. I need to get more even keel on dieting and fitness and let the foot heal. I am still somewhat shocked how far I got in a week by envisioning and loving every minute of it.

@Emerald I wonder if when we awaken or experience wholeness if when the mind comes in to interpret after the fact, that it points to the thing that we were repressing previous to the experience. It points to the piece that wasn't seen or accepted before and says that specific part is what I experienced. I recently would have said that I had an experience of the Divine Feminine too, but now I'm interpreting the experience differently. An awakening after the fact is always still a story open for interpretation.

Eh, yeah a large percentage of them are seemingly quite stuck on one subject. I often try to interpret the lyrics in a way that the singer wasn't conscious of. Remember, that you create the meaning. When music starts being an annoyance rather than enjoyable I just take a break. Or there's always chillstep or instrumental music.

You only ever care about yourself, what you define your "self" as determines what or who else you care about.

Curiosity killed that cat?

You have to be able to see only what is true about them, the pure being of a person. You have to see only wellness if you wish to heal.

"Do you LOVE AIR???" asks my son to our puppy. "He doesn't KNOW there's air he just breathes it." I replied.

I'll love myself when I'm enlightened.

Oh shit. It's funny but it's also true.

Since the realization about how I've been mistreating my husband on a level of thought and therefore action, and having the vision of what life could be my intuition has increased but there's still doubt and fear that comes with it. Yesterday I didn't follow an intuition to go back in after I dropped my daughter off and nothing seemed to come of it except fear and doubt and a lot of contemplation about why this happens to me. The only thing odd was that after this I saw a bald eagle right on the side of the road eating something dead, a porcupine I think. It's rare to see them up close. When I picked her up I was nervous that something bad might happen because I didn't follow the impulse and absolutely nothing happened or came up. I saw the eagle again a second time. It later reminded me of the symbolism of communion, of the symbols of the animals eating themselves up and I mentioned that in another thread. I messaged Nahm to ask about what was going on with the intuition. I elaborated on why I felt the fear and doubt and some other fears related to those. He said it was self judgement. Then it hit me. I relegated my abuse and mistreatment to others, then was completely blind as to how these thought patterns played out in the mistreatment and not appreciating or respecting my husband. I thought he should act a certain way to earn my respect. When I saw through this it was amazing. I didn't see that I am him, that exactly how I speak to myself in my own mind is how I speak to him when I'm not at my best. That's why The Empowered Wife book is all about self care and making yourself happy so you have the mental reserves to treat your spouse how he deserves to be treated. Because you love you, you free your spouse to be able to show you love too. I thought I understood and knew this connection, I know that we are one, love another as yourself blah blah blah. I just didn't see how my thoughts were destroying our connection, and then didn't see that the root of this is that I let them destroy my own connection with myself. I watched and loved Leo's Self Love video and I'm all about self love. I just didn't understand how sneaky I was being. "I'll love myself when I'm enlightened."

For me Christianity was the start of contemplation. Culture and family planted the belief in my head that Jesus was very important, and that sparked an intense desire to understand all the things he said. A revelation was understanding that he reached a state that I could too. I'm now still understanding that enlightenment is another belief planted in my head of something to understand and live up to, meaning by default there will be an I who always falls short. An idea-l of perfection that is not. It doesn't matter if an idea spans religions or cultures or if it doesn't, it matters how it affects one's relationship to Self Love.

"There's something I don't want to show to you, (shows giant horse head sculpture) but um the beauty of perfect awakening is that nothing needs to be hidden. Your whole life you've been hiding and keeping secrets and secret shames and things you've been embarrassed about that you didn't want to reveal to anybody. Why didn't you want to reveal these things? Because it threatens your survival."

There's a reset button programmed in to it. The Devil. The symbolism consumes itself in the end, that's what communion is.

Gut wrenchingly may imply suffering but I don't think that's case. The suffering is all in the thinking before you throw up, wondering IF and when you're going to throw up, then when you do it's a huge relief. So much of a relief that you feel like you're on top of the world. Hedonic adaptation is a cheap explanation for it. @28 cm unbuffed This sounds like a paradox but there's a careful balance between curiosity and meditation. Meditate, shut your mind off when you need to, get curious rather than complain, dream, go in the direction of what you want, do what makes you happy. Accept that you are responsible for and attracting everything in your experience and get curious about seeing how and why. Another paradox is that you do not want to get stuck in blame and shame, yet you also want to be brutally honest with yourself. The focus this requires is why meditation and having clear mind intervals are so important. You need a dream, a vision, a charge and a love for this moment in order to have the Self Love to see yourself clearly.

I've loved Mike Posner since his "Cooler Than Me" song. Then I loved "Took a Pill in Ibiza", which is about the fall out from the rise and fall of fame and ironically turned into an insanely popular song played in clubs. I've listened to a lot of interviews with him, and followed his spiritual journey. There's something really cool about recognizing when your consciousness raises seemingly in parallel with "other's". We're all in it together.

It's so simple, envision/dream, appreciate, love, and when it seems like you can't, meditate and get in touch with that which is limitless love. I assumed that my husband and others were responsible for their actions. I didn't understand that the reactions and interaction I get from people is my responsibility. Ironically when I believed he was responsible I tried to take on responsibility for the results, responsibility that was his, and thought that taking on the mental burden of perceived deficiencies was what was necessary to have the life I wanted. As that failed and failed, I tried less and loved less. When you love someone less, you love yourself less. When you love yourself more, you love everyone else more. You cannot separate these. I don't know why I didn't do this with my kids as much. I think because they are so young, I didn't expect anything from them and understood that my responsibility was truly, in a practical nature my responsibility. I forgave them for everything and put all the blame on my partner. There was an exception to that though, I fell into resenting the kids themselves in a big way last year and The Empowered Wife book's suggestions of appreciating self care helped me more in that area than with my husband. It's almost incomprehensible that I read and enjoyed The Empowered Wife book last year, had an awakening, "understood" the Law of Attraction and stayed so blind, so long in this area. Of course this feeling is ego. It's the remnants of thinking I was good and intelligent and now grappling with the understanding that that was a flawed belief. How pervasive the need to be "good" is that one will sell their own soul just to identify with one out of fear of the other. I didn't read that book for me, I read it for my friend, to connect with her, and to prove that I was open-minded to conservative anti-feminist bullshit. Instead I found pure Law of Attraction, minus a few personal reflections of the author's own examined side. It is a very dangerous thing, to look and see these flaws in a book, or a person, and focus on them and fail to respect and receive the gift that is there for you. I know that all along, my resistance to the law of attraction and anything associated with positive psychology, was a deep deep desire and commitment to truth. I should have known, the truth is, it's all fantasy. The deep love I had of all the stories and fairy tales of my childhood exist in every moment. The truth is it's all imagination. After I awakened to this, I fucked off for a really long time. (Of course it's flawed perception/story telling to not love myself for needing some time.) The duality between fantasy and reality persisted, I thought that I wanted fantasy and magic, to the exclusion and repression of reality. What I really wanted was integration of the two. It took this long to see that that is what I want, not what I should do. There is no acceptance until there is desire of what is.

Living on love, buying on time Without somebody nothing ain't worth a dime It's like that old fashioned storybook rhyme Living on love It sounds simple that's what you're thinking Love can walk through fire without blinking It doesn't take much, when you get enough Living on love No, It doesn't take much, when you get enough Living on love

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

From the Gospel of Thomas http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html 7. Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human." "For there are five trees in Paradise for you; they do not change, summer or winter, and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death." Are these the senses? Aren't nerve connections shaped like trees? 48. Jesus said, "If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and it will move." 83. Jesus said, "Images are visible to people, but the light within them is hidden in the image of the Father's light. He will be disclosed, but his image is hidden by his light." 112. Jesus said, "Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh." 101. "Whoever does not hate [father] and mother as I do cannot be my [disciple], and whoever does [not] love [father and] mother as I do cannot be my [disciple]. For my mother [...], but my true [mother] gave me life."

Why does opening up to feeling, such as in meditation or whatever sort, open the door to the subconscious? Then it's like there's a windstorm out and shit just starts blowing around everywhere. If you avoid feeling you cut yourself off from who you are in various ways. Thinking thinks it has considered everything, it thinks it sees everywhere, thinks it's avoiding the spooks and the boogeymen, whereas the most obvious things that "other people" seem to see instantly. Matthew 7:3-5 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Luke 11:25 24 When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it passes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ 25 On its return, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and dwell there. And the final plight of that man is worse than the first.”… Is this really about repression, or believing that you've cleansed yourself and in reality, rejected more of yourself? Of course the concept of the subconscious, is itself a separation and limitation of the infinite Self, and what we call the subconscious is just oneness. When you first tap in the spooks come in. You either slam the door or invite them in to the party. If you don't want to sit there in fear and awkwardness, you should find some good music, get some decorations and good food to eat, become a great party host. Then the spooks become fun entertainment, and if you dance along with them you'll hardly notice if a few of your nice things get broken in the revelry. If you don't consider this important step, you're in for some real discomfort as the spooks sit along a dreary wall staring at you with dead eyes.

Overcoming fear and vulnerability, ceasing to use thinking for fear of survival rather than feeling and trusting the actuality of one's experience, which is all there is, which is nothing but love... this is not just the key to being a good wife. It's how you be.