mandyjw

MAD idea?! Santa is a lovely idea! He brings joy to the hearts of children for Christ's sakes! I was raised thinking Santa was a stupid story made up by nonbelievers and Jesus was the TRUTH. Then I figured out that Jesus is also Santa. Now they both bring magic to my heart.

Love is beyond and also including survival, and morality exists only because of survival. You can evolve so far on the scale of morality that you will no longer survive, literally. Love transcends and can make one aware that they do not have a separate self without killing the body. I believe the goal of the evolution of consciousness is to kill the separate self, not to kill creation physically. But who can say? A plant doesn't care if it lives or dies from one perspective, from another it cares greatly. The perspective is an illusion just like our own, and that oneness ultimately dissolves morality completely. At whatever point morality stops working or makes one suffer, they will desire to move beyond it. It think we all have different tolerances for it.

Enlightenment is where the concern with taking spirituality too seriously or not serious enough goes to die. Love just is. It is not something we have to take seriously or avoid taking too seriously. You do not have to leave one teaching for another, right now I have so many teachers I'm utterly in love with, it's lucky for me that I don't have more time in the day for it all. Because as you said, real life is where the work is really done. I highly suggest Abraham Hicks, she sounds like what you're describing in what you want. Don't pick just one teacher, if you do don't stick with them too long. Every teacher is presenting you with one side of the story, and you are the thing that resolves and combines all the paradoxes in peace and love. Good luck.

@Raptorsin7 Lots of insights over time, one pinnacle event that exists in memory which I would call awakening.

It blew up all my ideas about who I was. It was like being born again. I saw the perfection of the design of my life and realized that the intense passion and love I've felt off and on all my life is not evil but it is IT. It's more of a feeling than an idea. But I also had to learn not to get too attached to a feeling, but rather pay attention to how I'm feeling and from there I can steer towards the direction of what I truly am. So yeah, it can be said that it's nothing, I am nothing, but also HOLY FUCK it's the most beautiful, wondrous thing you ever saw/felt.

@Raptorsin7 Felt like one big kerbang. I am that, I just want to align with it more of the time, get out of my own way so to speak, so I can be in the position to better help "others" see it and live it too.

@Raptorsin7 I was just going to keep it separate from the rest of my thoughts and do the practice described but it turned out to worsen overthinking for me at times. The intention is great, I just have my own way of contemplating things after the fact and sometimes moving on quite fast after recognition of an old thought pattern is the best thing for me right now. Other times it's good to really stop and interrogate it.

I am a real life Disney princess, mother fuckers! And so are you, I don't care who you are. Is this journal living up to its original intention? Probably not. Am I ok with that, right now? Yes.

Yes, BUT you are uniquely special in your own way.

Rupert Spira says all spiritual teachings make concessions, so popcorn for everyone!

You ARE special!

That "life flashing before your eyes" occurrence people talk about is real and can happen when or just before you experience ego death. You will see in that moment from the ultimate perspective of God, and you will love yourself deeper and purer than even a mother loves her child, unconditionally. Anything less than this is not "death".

If you were in a new romantic relationship, and your girlfriend or whatever started leaving presents around for you ALL the time, would you tell your jealous single friends who have given up on love and expect them to be happy for you? Once you awaken to oneness it really hurts to try to add "other people" back into that equation. Also I've experienced this and also reacted the same way, we all lose focus sometimes but it feels so good to focus again. You certainly can return.

Your nature is to love suffering, why else would you watch a movie or read a story about characters who face challenge? You just don't want to be the one who suffers. Does that mean you want a flat, boring, unfeeling life then? Probably not. You probably want to have an amazing, incredible life. You want to experience the highest highs and experience the lows knowing that they are inseparable from your experience, that you chose them, that they are the very thing that make the highs so sweet, the very thing that guides your experience TO the things you want to experience. It's your life, it's your journey, and you are the hero. Own it.

@Raptorsin7 You will grow to appreciate when you are disconnected, because you are the entirety of the experience and re-connection feels so damn good. You know the way food tastes SO good after you've been hungry all day, or coming in where it's warm after you've been freezing outside in the cold? Those highs and lows, that's the color, the flavor, the variety, the BEAUTY of our experience that we came here for. You will love it all. Yes, and the way you distinguish is by noticing how you feel. Everything we want ends up being a facade, a mirage, a representation of the real thing. But that deceptive facade is creation, evolution and beauty itself, gone full circle again, inseparable.

@Serotoninluv @Raptorsin7 Whenever you feel good, or you are in the flow, are creative, or you feel oneness, peace, stillness, are asleep, are inspired etc, you are connected with source. In fact you are always connected with source, because that is what you are but you can also think things that cloud your connection and make you "forget" because you are so identified with thought in that moment. Thought itself is not evil. Good feeling thoughts are not bad, they are from source. Insight, appreciation, expressions of love, all these thoughts are beautiful manifestations of creation. We do not wish to be free of thought, we wish to be free thoughts that make us feel bad. Once you pay attention to how you feel you know how well connected you are with source and the more you pay attention the more you will notice thoughts that are off or feel bad. The trick or practice that helps us gain this sensitivity is to learn to slow thoughts down. That's what mediation does. It does not stop them. If cars are zooming by really fast you can't make them out very well, but if they go by sloooowly you can carefully examine them, and if you do that then maybe you can even ask the driver of that goddamn rusted dodge neon without a muffler to stop driving by so much, because you have by now realized that you own the road and are in charge of it. Meditation makes you better and better at noticing which thoughts feel good and which don't, and it's also an invitation and space for entirely new thoughts (insights and ideas) to come in.

You are loved, you are loved. Self love is also self love. It seems too good to be true but it is. If you love yourself, you will never truly want anything that is wrong or bad for the whole as you are inseparable. This fear that that could is unfounded, it is based in the belief of self and other.

You cannot want something for others because there are no others, you cannot want something for your self because there is no self. You are always acting out of pure Selfishness or selfishness. Sometimes selfishness feels like jealousy, comparison and threat because you've fragmented yourself between self and others, which cannot be true if we are One. Other times it feels like love, freedom, and wholeness (One) and when you feel great you know you're acting out of Selfishness. Ultimately, anything you want is only because of the underlying desire of feeling good. It's not ever the thing itself you want, you want to feel good. Feeling good is also connection with Love, with the One. See how that came full circle?

Personal, meaning the self or the Self? What's the difference between self and Self in your experience? What is the will of Self?

Are the dots not actually moving but disappearing and reappearing so that it creates the illusion of movement?

So, I was randomly reading about this castle. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/europe/germany/neuschwanstein-castle-fairy-tale-king-ludwig/ The king who built it was hated and eventually, it seems, murdered for being so extravagant in his lavish spending and plans for it. The castle has since paid for itself many times over in tourism revenue and has awed and inspired millions. Was the king's wish to build it truly egoic? Maybe our greatest inspiration is also our greatest gift to the world? Do you chose what inspires you?

In Hoc Signo Vinces

Birds of a feather flock together. I'm not sure how a conscious community could have rules that excluded others though. If a community arose on its own because people gravitated there, that would be another thing.

There are more facets of awakening, or explained alternately, there is a wider variety of life experiences that Source desires to experience as the story of a specific human form, than are appreciated and known about on this forum and within the realm of spiritual "work". So it may appear that some people have a head start but then from another perspective the awakening process and intellectually understanding within duality nonduality is just an experience you chose to have in this life.

It's really helping to appreciate the despair and negative emotions I feel. Instead of feeling bad because I still have them I understand that it's an indication that there's a really strong desire with a lot of power behind it. Then curiosity arises to define that desire. It's interesting that this forum seems to trigger some of the more intense feelings. I'm starting to question more why I chose to experience the contrast I did, the degree to which I've experienced isolation in my life, whether by circumstance or choice have led to some pretty powerful desires. I expressed a desire to do mushrooms to my husband and his reaction was pretty spectacularly negative. He's still acting a bit cold and suspicious or maybe that's my biased perception. How tempting it would be to be mad and blame him for stalling my spiritual evolution. Of I could blame the fact that I have kids, maybe the kids themselves, or the government or I could blame the people who made me ever even dream of wanting to try them in the first place. The things we expect of our partners are ridiculous. Here, help me survive, I'll expect you to keep me safe, agree exactly with me on decisions affecting out mutual survival and you also need to completely understand me and align with me on a spiritual level especially when I can not understand myself or align with myself.