mandyjw

We do depend on each other emotionally but we are trained to expect too much from a single partner in our society. There isn't enough importance put on the value friendships in my opinion. It's asking for trouble to expect to meet all your needs for human connection from a single partner. I wonder if stage orange society has brainwashed us into thinking that if you aren't having sex with it or making money from it, it's a waste of time. Of course the other possibility is that we also often look to partners or the material world to get needs met that aren't material at all but spiritual. Spirituality is what dissolves the independence/dependence duality.

I don't think you're as bad as you think you are. You are beginning to recognize and take responsibility for distorted thought patterns so it feels that way, but they are not you. You can take responsibility for them without taking ownership of them, subtle but important difference. Every moment and every interaction is a clean slate. Good luck!

Vegan cheese is probably not a good choice for a food staple. Rice isn't a bad choice if you are able to warm food up. I switch between jasmine rice and wild rice. Cleaning up your diet can be a process, the most healthy foods take a lot of time to prepare so it's good to strategically make small changes to avoid overwhelming ourselves.

Mediate in the morning, even if it's just for 15 minutes. It won't stop thought but it will slow them down so you can examine them more and feel how amazing it feels to just be. Read Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now if you haven't. Find things to appreciate or beautiful things around you to notice and start training your brain to see beauty. The mystical experience was just a glimpse of what life can be like without resistant thoughts. That's your true nature, your true potential. We just have the clear up all the confusing stuff that's obscuring that light. Do you want to feel good, or do you want something else? It seems like a simple question but it's not, really ask yourself, really contemplate this.

Everything we do is because we want to feel good. We can only ever feel good now. You do not have to chose between enlightenment or getting your life straight. This is a false choice, a false limitation in a world of abundance. You can choose to feel good though, and that guiding star of feeling, will lead you where you desire to go.

@ShinNo, I wanted to rescue an older dog and looked around for a while but it didn't work out.

There seem to be two approaches, truth and love, but the duality or difference between them has to be dissolved if you want either of those things. It's so shockingly simple to the intellect and the ego that there is nothing but love, that it seems to take a whole lot of work, study, and even suffering to get it. If it didn't, you would appreciate it, and if you didn't appreciate it, it wouldn't be love.

@DrewNows Actually, something strange happened as often happens when I put desires out there. Still not sure of everything that will come out of it or understanding fully what it's leading to. @Shin BTW I'm getting a puppy next week. Lived for 8 months without a single pet.

@LfcCharlie4 I was raised in a stage blue Christian family and in a stage blue Christian community but "devilry" in the church stopped my parents from going and they disconnected with the community when I was really young. I have spent my life and a good part of my spiritual evolution has been learning how to get along with and love stage blue Christians. The failure of Osho's community to appreciate it is sad to me. He came here for religious freedom and free love but could not even allow it to his neighbors. "Love thy neighbor." OH, THE IRONY! The drama! It's absolutely brilliant.

Good storytelling comes from a truly creative place that is beyond us, almost like channeling, so stories like that can be powerful pointers. Movies are just one medium for stories.

It's beyond weird, beyond understanding, beyond good and bad, that's for sure. As soon as I realized that I had awakened, in the same way Charlie Manson had been awake, I went through a "Jesus take the wheel stage". Unfortunately (fortunately?) the illusion that there is a wheel at all is self created though. Hi my name is Mandy and I enjoy morality when it serves me and not at all when it doesn't. Contrast between good and bad, dark and light helps us to define the things we want and appreciate balance. The Osho documentary was incredibly entertaining, I so enjoyed the varying viewpoints of all the people involved and the fact that they turned the commune grounds into a Christian youth camp after was so fitting and hilarious. It's a "true" story and a lot can be learned from it, and a lot of new desires can be born out if it.

The practice of Tonglen meditation was really helpful to me. I always felt like I was messing it up, but found out that the sense of the ownership between pain, forgiveness, love, me and the other is what it heals, not the other person.

Do you really want to pick just one spirit animal when you created 8.7 millionish species on Mother earth to be loved and appreciated, knowing that you are mother earth herself? Would mother earth pick a favorite? I find a lot of meaning in animals I encounter or see, but it's always changing, depending on what aspect of myself I'm wanting to experience or discover.

Because you want it to appear that way. In this appearance of limitation is the appearance and feeling of freedom and beauty.

@LfcCharlie4 This was written by Charles Manson. Stranger than fiction, I say.

Ah, this is the kind of conversation I've been missing having on the forum lately, thank you. It's not a must or a responsibility, it's more like a desire that cannot be quenched, and that desire is to feel good. All real, honest responsibility and morality comes from love, it comes from feeling or intuiting that hurting others hurts ourselves. It's all essentially about the desire to feel good, or to feel love. It feels a lot better to stand up with courage and say something rather than to watch something that feels awful continue around you. I believe that you are right about insights being distortions, and yet an insight is not an insight because of what is communicated from the insight, it's an insight because of the way it feels. The true "insight" is never what's communicated. However, insights CAN be communicated, because this entire game we are playing of awakening, is just that, a game. Where does the real story of The Lord of the Rings exist? Is it in the letters, or on the paper of the books? It requires your intelligence to decipher the words and give them meaning and your imagination and heart to make it into a story. You say that you love the books, and credit them for how you feel about the story. But you love much, much more than just the book. Nonduality never, excludes, it always includes. We cannot exclude insights as devilry, so they have to be like beautiful easter eggs on the scavenger hunt "story" of awakening. Love is the thing that includes. So love your insights, like you love The Lord of The Rings, knowing that it's much more than you can say. Love can only appear to be directed at something. There only appears to be a source of light and an object reflecting it.

Love is the only teacher, we're all just facades and pretenders so we're all off the hook. Phew.

Yes, but whenever we speak or type, or on an energetic level even think, we are responsible. This responsibility is shared yet, can only be owned by us in our current experience. That's the creepy magic of this work. You are 100% responsible for how you feel. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take action, or speak up, you should, but we have to do so with forgiveness and love, because it is only ever ourselves we are reacting to or interacting with.

The practices and teachings here are very much tailored to men, which makes sense because this is Leo's work. Obviously, there are plenty of "feminine" teachings out there, but enlightenment is including and transcending both. In a dualistic sense though, as a mom of young kids I'm currently excluded from doing most of the practices that are highly regarded as being highly effective here, and I've discovered that this really isn't a handicap at all unless i make it one. I've made huge progress from expanding from the heart centered teachings I easily resonate with to challenging myself to understand the more masculine teachings, to immerse myself in wisdom and intellectual understanding of spirituality so that I can understand the power of my emotions. It all ties together. It sometimes seems like the practices are being "sold" as these huge heroic achievements or experiences, just so you can open your heart and cry "like a girl." I admit, it's pretty brilliant but, I think there's a more fulfilling way to draw people in.

Teaching is a path. Focusing on teaching "others" is a trap just like focusing on your "own" journey is a trap. Beware, there are plot twists, because there is only one author behind this story.

Interesting. That was gratifying to read, but I also feel a little dirty, like I might regret it in the morning.

There's intense love and beauty within you reflected outward into the world, which is reflecting which? It doesn't matter. When you become lost in appreciation for a sunset, or some marvel of nature, that exact connection can be trained and can and will occur with any being you encounter. Human maybe the most challenging but also the most rewarding reflections we encounter. It helps to start with nature. Once you can connect with it seamlessly, once you are truly moved to tears by it you see that something in you has died and simultaneously been born again. When we die to love in our interactions with others, the same connection occurs. Your own life story is brilliantly crafted by infinite intelligence and so is everyone else's you could ever encounter. What could possibly be more endlessly fascinating?

LOA AF?