mandyjw

@VeganAwake Well that's no fun. All the fun is in the illusion of the interaction. It helps to remember that you got on the roller coaster by choice, not force though.

Awakening is an inside joke. I love the idea of sharing experiences but they just don't translate into words well at all. It's like when you buy something for China off amazon and read the directions and you just shake your head and ask yourself "what the fuck did I just read?". It's because the way it comes through is so personally unique to you and the things you've wanted and experienced through life. Spiritual experiences are personalized gifts for you. And it's so interconnected and complicated with everything you've wanted or experienced over the course of your life that you'd have to write a book to explain it all and how it fits in. The awakening would just be the end when it's revealed how all those things came together in the end and fit together like a puzzle. My point is divorcing the "high" from the mundane "rest of the story" of life just doesn't work that well.

God be like, I want you to want me I need you to need me I'd love you to love me I'm beggin' you to beg me - God (Cheap Trick, whatever)

The discussion on vertigo starts at 6:00.

The universe's plan is so spontaneous it is actually planned. At least that is what I tell myself when my life is an unorganized chaotic disaster. The things that we love are our guiding stars for the direction we are meant to go in. The entire thing was designed for the purpose of love, so when something reflects that back to us strongly, we know we are on the right course.

I live in a small town, so here the cemeteries are all open and generally located in the most beautiful spots. My parents caretook the cemeteries in our town when I was a kid and I spent hours there working with them (skipped prom and worked raking leaves in a cemetery that night instead) so I always liked them and never had any fear of them, just thought they were pretty and interesting places to go, and we don't really have parks... so.... Cemeteries are usually a very important part of the history of a town or city, so check with your city or local historical society if you are interested in visiting one. Cities generally have more rules because the higher the population, the more likely people are to vandalize or disrespect cemeteries.

This is a huge problem with imbalanced masculinity and the delusion of independence, which came to light here in a big way when Obama said "You didn't build that." Sex or cannibalism? It was all only ever metaphorical. Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Also "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male shall not be male, and the female shall not be female: . . . then you will enter [the kingdom]." It was all only ever about nonduality.

Well, that depends on how loosely you define Jesus. Was Mary Magdalene literally a whore or only metaphorically?

@remember I think we're like trees. Trees don't define themselves, they bear both the fruit and the seeds within the fruit. Independence is a complete fiction within duality, but as One you are ultimately independent by nature as you are the whole. Independence is only a freeing revelation to you if you believed you were dependent, dependence is only a freeing revelation to you if you believed you were independent. Enlightenment is only realizing the truth of that which we would not accept about ourselves.

I have wanted to speak to animals my entire life. Turns out the only thing that was limiting me were my own limited beliefs about communication and what "I" was. @Derek White Crows are truly a link between the false duality of dead and alive, a messenger and have been recognized as such since ancient times. I noticed a poison nightshade plant growing on the grave of a herbal doctor from the 1800's. I thought this was incredibly hilarious and interesting. Other odd circumstances that happened whenever I visited his grave (I've always just enjoyed cemeteries) lead me to read his book, which later lead to my realizing that he was not just an herbal healer but clairvoyant, awake and described how he awakened. It was all just part of a story line that aided in allowing duality to collapse for me. The day I awoke I had an impulse to leave my most prized possession on his grave, which happened to be an antique ring from the 1800's. It wasn't until after that I realized the stone bird baths by the grave were for the crows, who dropped the nightshade seed there to begin with, who took my ring as an "offering." Crows and dogs are both incredibly smart animals that live in close connection with humans and observe them carefully. The entire world, including the animal world is you, so it makes sense that crows and dogs would act as messengers at certain times. They can channel and have impulses from greater intelligence just like we can.

@remember I guess my name isn't Mandy for nothin'. It's funny how "the bride of Christ", romantic, marriage and sexual metaphors in various religions over the ages, and when you get right down to it attraction and sex ITSELF is just one big metaphor for enlightenment, for the mindfuck that takes place within your own psyche.

The Heroine's Journey https://maureenmurdock.com/?page_id=366 Integration is supposed to be the ultimate purpose of enlightenment, The Hero's Journey or The Heroine's Journey. People just start from different points. "The final stage of The Heroine’s Journey is the Sacred Marriage of the Masculine and Feminine, the hieros gamos. A woman remembers her true nature and accepts herself as she is, integrating both aspects of her nature. It is a moment of recognition, a kind of remembering of that which somewhere at the bottom she has always known. The current problems are not solved, the conflicts remain, but one’s suffering, as long as she does not evade it, will lead to a new life. In developing a new feminine consciousness, she has to have an equally strong masculine consciousness to get her voice out into the world. The union of masculine and feminine involves recognizing wounds, blessing them, and letting them go. The heroine must become a spiritual warrior. This demands that she learn the delicate art of balance and have the patience for the slow, subtle integration of the feminine and masculine aspects of her nature. She first hungers to lose her feminine self and merge with the masculine, and once she has done this, she begins to realize this is neither the answer nor the objective. She must not discard nor give up what she has learned throughout her heroic quest, but view her hard-earned skills and successes not so much as the goal but as one part of the entire journey. This focus on integration and the resulting awareness of interdependence is necessary for each of us at this time as we work together to preserve the health and balance of life on earth (Murdock, 1990, p.11). In the Navaho Creation Story Changing Woman speaks to her consort the Sun: “Remember, as different as we are, you and I, we are of one spirit. As dissimilar as we are, you and I, we are of equal worth. As unlike as you and I are, there must always be solidarity between the two of us. Unlike each other as you and I are, there can be no harmony in the universe as long as there is no harmony between us” (Zolbrod,1984, p. 275)."

Planning out my next youtube video, feeling a bit self conscious because I just finished watching Leo's newest video and at the end Leo says not to copy him and make youtube videos, so I wrote in all caps on the top of the notebook page CREATE, and the word ATE jumped out at me. creATE There's nothing new under the sun. Consume, be inspired, inspire, copy, reproduce, you can't ever not be uniquely you, and you can't ever be separately and completely unique. Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. And... right now my daughter is banging on the keyboard and singing, " I don't care what you SAY, I just do what I DO!"

In the past week or so when I really look in my daughter's eyes there's this wild but impossible to describe quality there and I realize that it has nothing to do with me and I really have no explanation of how she or it got here. Going home for the holidays give you the feels Leo?

This is something that for awakening purposes you want to become conscious of on it's own or it can be like needlessly creating your own drama, which is fine, but not if you're not having fun with it. With that said, there is value in having the intention to address these things, you just want to let them arise when they are ready. Ask yourself, or whatever, I'll ask you, what are you seeking from doing this? What is the outcome you want? The inner child was a big aspect of the psyche I became conscious of with my shadow work experience. It's all tied with recognizing the stuff your parents left you to deal with and how it was dealt with, how smooth your transition from childhood to adulthood was, what parts of your inner child you disowned or traded in in favor of "maturity" and acceptance from others. Going through your old bedroom, or else old stuff from childhood, and really considering the things you either strongly loved or hated as a child can all be good places to look. In my experience it was a like a collapse of time or life flashing before my eyes and seeing how puzzle pieces fit in together kind of thing. I also realized that the most traumatic experiences I had had as a child were actually self created near awakenings that I lacked the understanding, support or maturity to follow through with. Go into it with the assumption that, it was all for Good, it was all Love and it all lead you to and is this very moment. You are the child, you will always be the child, the child never was.

@Raptorsin7 It was all purely by accident, I had no intention or desire to do shadow work beforehand. I started a journal with another member here, titled "Is This Journal Mine or Yours" because we had a strong connection but I couldn't tell who was helping who. I had had a strange experience in which it seemed someone was communicating with me from the dead, desiring me to read his book, etc, and I told him about the experience because I thought I was getting wrapped up in a story and I wanted him to help me let it go or make sense of it. Starting the journal and his presence awoke a creativity in me and it was as if everything written there was channeled. Once I recognized this, I remembered that I had a novel in my head for a few years and I wanted him to help me write it. But instead of writing a novel about a character I made up, I ended up writing to him the story of my own life, sprinkled throughout with other spiritual insights. Then the inability to sleep or eat normally and strong channeling started in. There was a lot of physical pain, strange bodily sensations, but the entire thing was too enthralling to be bothered by it except for brief moments of recognition. The entire thing was very book/story themed. Don't look for it, it's been deleted long ago. I saved just the start of it. I can now on my own do shadow work that is left to be done. A week or so ago I did some on a small scale because I felt the need arise on its own and the next couple days were wonderful. Release = bliss. I do think there's value to intentional or organized shadow work as long as intuition and inspiration are honored and included in the process.

@ivankiss The relationship between fear and love is an interesting one. The most intense forms of love cannot be felt unless there's fear there at first. That's why people love motorcycles, bungee jumping, have the fear of the opposite sex at first, etc. It's all programmed in to make the experiences of life deeper. Fear is just another indicator of how amazing you are.

“Child,’ said the Lion, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

@Raptorsin7 Yes. Shadow work transmutes fear into love. My one and only truly extended over a period of time mystical experience or awakening was in itself shadow work and the aftermath. I got an intimate glimpse into how shadow work is done from standing outside, with love. I stopped eating much of sleeping much and woke up in the middle of the night channeling insights, mostly about my memories. The best way I can describe it is I got a glimpse into how perfectly, sychronistically infinite intelligence created me and used all my "traumatic" experiences and things I pushed against. It felt like the end of a Harry Potter book when all the clues come together and are revealed in the end, and I saw the truth that my entire life and story was a creatively and brilliantly written fiction. It felt like falling deeply, intimately in love with the Devil. In the end, I accepted him/her as myself. This culminated in the most freeing and total experience of love I've ever experienced. This is leaving out a lot of details, it happened over a several days. I know that I went through an emotional path, which Sadhguru refers to here. There are side effects. I can see though, that most people here are going by a different path so I can see the aspect that they might be missing. I do believe that what we want to to embody and open to both the emotion and logical aspects of our whole Self. The thing about shadow work is that there is stuff that has to be felt fully to move through it. You can't intellectually tell yourself it's a story, a fiction, that it's in the past and gone. To truly let go you must embrace, fully letting the emotions go makes the entire thing this beautiful bon fire of passionate love that burns the whole fucking construct of you down. This sounds scary and painful, but it's so beyond that, it's not at all because you KNOW that you are just a person watching the movie of your life and nothing that happens on the screen can threaten you. You just sit there and watch the fire with a mad look of love in your eyes, appreciating the beauty of the whole thing.

What is the emotion, what is the feeling of it? Why do you choose to be here? What is that you want to experience, feel?

Overcoming selfish cravings does not look like any particular outward state, decision or life situation. Love without attachment is a paradoxical overcoming and surrender to.

Attraction itself is a beautiful thing, that can only exist if there is some level of incompleteness. You don't want the whole world handed to you on a silver platter at birth, you'd never appreciate it and you would ironically feel as if you had been robbed of something. You want to desire, you want to long for things. When you understand this, that you want to want, it almost cancels itself out just like a positive and negative magnet and the mechanism of attraction itself. There's the wholeness, within the wanting.

@remember I see. How does it feel though?

@remember What we are doing here with nonduality and spirituality is seeing through the ultimate duality of good and bad. It is the mechanism itself of judgement existing within ourselves, it is that separation itself that is seen through. Judgement and separation is self destructive and any cause it decides to take on it will ultimately destroy as well. If you love animals, love. Love the future world you want to see with peace and respect for all beings. If you split your energy, if you love the animals but not the animals who eat other animals, you give away all your power. You were never separate from any of it.

@remember If you want to make a change, moralization and shaming oneself or others is counterproductive and leads to backlash, and self hatred. There are lots of other ways to motivate yourself to go vegetarian, there are inspiring people who talk about the diet, there is the love of animals itself, the way eating cleaner makes you feel, thinking about the positive changes for the world and environment. I have a new puppy and having him around makes me want to eat much less meat, but other things around me to seem to be helping me make that decision as well. When a change should be made things start to line up to help you with it. We don't need to use the same tactics to get people to stop eating meat that religions use to keep people from having premarital sex because we all know how harmless and effective those are.