mandyjw

@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?

I'm not around people very much. I used to have a lot of resistance about being around people at all. Today I was at a craft fair and I felt so much love and appreciation for people around me, in my interactions with them, in just my observations and people watching. I've attended these in the past with a very different mindset. I thought about how around my awakening my ability to accept gifts became a big theme. I had an insight at the fair where the nature of love, of everything being love is just that. This scenario I found so many things to pick apart as I sat there all day in years past, was seen as a huge expression of love, that I was partaking in whether Mandy was seemingly part of the interaction of just watching different manifestations of it. It's all love. It is true, it is simple, it is wonderful, but oh, what a gift to accept.

Try not to think so much about the separation between those states. Would the world be as beautiful without the sad and melancholy flavor to it sometimes? Wouldn't you get sick of it quite quickly if you lived in a cartoon like world of wonder, rainbows and unicorns? You chose it all when you came to experience life. Intend to feel joy more. Look for it, even a tiny bit of it wherever you are. You can feel joy, and be in the flow and be very productive, and that IS a state of high consciousness. We do not want to split our energy, that's what feels bad, thinking we should be doing one thing over the other. There is no state that's better than the other, we want to be one with what we are doing or feeling. Paradoxically the way to the state that we want to be in is by accepting and loving the state we are in along and at the same time, accepting and allowing the desire to change it.

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.