mandyjw

This is the point in the video that really matters for anyone who missed it. The reason so many young men are having so many issues attracting women or in relationships is partly because the entertainment that has been sold to them has encouraged them to think of women in a way that has only made it more difficult for them to relate to. Of course they have trouble talking to women, understanding them and attracting them. This type of thing hurts young men just as much as it does women.

Your sister is likely very overwhelmed. Is there anything you can do to help her out? Perhaps offer to take your niece or both kids for her regularly so she can destress? Ask her how she is doing? There's something that happens when you become a mother, and immediately all your family member only care about the children and how they are. There's a very strange thing that happens with kids around their primary caregiver, sometimes they act much worse around them and vicious cycles are common. It can take a lot to break the cycle if you don't get time apart to reset and reframe. In the past we had a much more tribal community settings where we weren't isolated as small families as much as we are now.

At the very end of meditation today "The Old Man and the Sea" inexplicably came to me. I read it in gradeschool, but that was a long time ago so I listened to it on audiobook today. "It is easy when you're beaten he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beats you? NOTHING" he said. I went out too far. Themes throughout the book, his dreaming of lions on the beach, the color purple, being alone, suffering, the love between him and the boy (his student.)

The true cause of loneliness is deeper than the amount of time you spend around people, or how many close relationships you have. But we need those too.

It means you're very wise for your age. I'm not sure matching pace can be a major issue. I think the real key is that we really resonated with it just because it happens to clear the mind and we enjoy it. Because God/Source is love, if a practice can evoke love and clarity of mind together it's golden. Bonus points if you're completely oblivious to the idea that it's a practice and have zero expectations.

Comparison to others is never a game you'll win. It's a difficult topic to consider and avoid doing just that. People and their stories can be really inspiring though. People do not appreciate the extent to which running and nature, or more so the combination can alter consciousness. Having been involved with the running community I've been aware that addiction to running is actually a common occurrence because of this lack of understanding.

He explained why in the original post, availability.

But everyone LOVES a good villain and what you resist persists. My suggestion would be to go to a print shop and put your portrait up everywhere and worship it daily Kim Jong-un style. Cardboard cutouts could also be a good idea. Leo, would you send me a lock of your hair? Oh wait... never mind.

It's not a "normal" thing for someone to have a massive impact on your life, and never have any sort of real connection with them. It's a brand new phenomenon created by technology. The subconscious brain will try to sort out that discrepancy through dreams.

This should be discussed a lot more I think. There are certain traps that come with being close to a guru and different dangers with the maverick approach. Sometimes you even end up attracting a trap you were hoping to avoid by choosing the approach you were less afraid of.

There are many, many ways we can improve our entire food system to be more friendly to people, animals and the entire earth.

Soul seems to be a concept that describes the vague sense or knowledge of God or something timeless. This sense the word soul points to is uncovered to be One in this work. The spirit is another thing, something in between Source/God/Oneness and dualistic scattered creation. There has to be an inbetween, or you couldn't be physical and also part of the whole.

My first mystical experiences started when I uncovered the history/story of a clairvoyant doctor who lived in my town. He built a mansion here later in life and it burned down long ago and now it's forested over and what's left are stone foundations and a whole bunch of surviving strange apple trees. I got really into the symbol of the apple and the story of the garden of Eden and lots of synchronicity happened around his story and the connection. It wasn't until recently that I thought to google the meaning of his name and it means "Apple King" or "Apple Forest". The biggest apple tree had a bone from an animal beneath it when I found it. After I found the meaning of the name I picked an apple from it and left it on his grave, the next day it was gone. And that's how Mandy accidentally became a witch.

If they're delicious and nutritious it's not a waste of time, it's the apple.

Ya awful. Awful.

@SoonHei

We really need to reframe how we (society) look at mental illness and disability. We're living in a dark age. We all praise God in different ways, we all came here to experience reality in a uniquely limited way. The better a person is at thinking usually means the more they suffer, because unconscious negative thinking is the cause of suffering. Negative thinking also commonly resonates as the "truth" to intelligent people. When the mind's grasp on truth is surrendered, that person experiences a full circle glimpse/becoming of infinite intelligence. Enlightenment as we speak of it here is a journey, but the illusion/intention of the journey may not apply to everyone.

When I was a kid the thing that started to "break" Christianity for me was becoming conscious of how powerful love was and how core it was to Jesus' teachings, yet there was supposedly a "hell" and a way of sorting people out into heaven or hell. This could not align with love. No one could answer my questions of what happened to people who lived in other parts of the world and died without knowing about Jesus, or before Jesus even lived. Did they go to hell? Any explanation I could get that was satisfactory sort of the broke the whole religion apart into pieces. I eventually satisfied myself by dropping my belief in hell, and almost exclusively focused on the teachings of Jesus, ignoring the rest of the Bible. I found scripture and studies to back up my revised beliefs but I was still left with the problem of the reward of heaven, which I did not drop. People were still sorted into eternal life or... not. Well now, here I am today somehow still left with this problem. As long as there are other people, they either are given the opportunity in life to self actualize and pursue higher truth, or they aren't. The only way I can solve this problem is by believing that consciousness is itself beyond needing to be "seen" or recognized by the illusory "owner" of the consciousness. The only way it can be solved is by saying that there is no such thing as enlightenment, that there is no such thing as people who are enlightened. I tried to turn this belief into dogma several months ago. I was furious when Leo or others would talk about levels of awakening. And yet all of that blew up in my face, and I'm very aware that there are at least in this illusory story of awakening, something that can be described as levels, of the role that intellectual understanding plays in awakening, and that past and future are an inherent part of timelessness. I still really really want enlightenment to be available to anyone and everyone. Am I playing the role of the observer? When I watch a movie, even though only observing a story I still feel pain and joy of the characters to such a high degree that I don't like to watch movies at all. When I have a dream in which I don't have a character to play, I'm still emotionally affected by what happens. Is this as it should be?

@SoothedByRain @Consilience I love the synchronicity, it always seems to get really crazy when I'm excited about life. You're never alone! It's delightfully creepy and also comforting.

There is no problem of morality. We all want to survive, so morality helps us to survive as a group. However we often are unconscious of why we have moral standards for ourselves and others. All arguing with each other on this forum, all the correction and criticism aimed at Leo takes place because of survival reasons, because we notice that our morals are not aligned. If we are a passionate vegetarian and Leo becomes a vegetarian we don't have to worry about the planet being destroyed, or about animals being abused and we will have validation of our own choice. At least until we find some other meat eater to focus our attention on. There's a difference between being a vegetarian and feeling great about our choices and inspiring others to feel great about theirs. If Leo changes his teaching style to suit what we think is most true we no longer have to feel shaky about whether we actually know the truth. We can even trick ourselves into turning love itself into a moral ideal, in which case it immediately stops being love All need for validation is survival, but we convince ourselves there are very good reasons behind it and often fail to see how it arises within. It's reaching for feeling better because we feel threatened, but we can't control others, yet we can choose how we feel. That doesn't mean that sometimes there honestly aren't threats within a community or to yourself. But if there's a real threat, you do what you need to do without resistance, disagreement or second guessing. When the shit really hits the fan, everyone automatically becomes aligned in their goal to turn off the fan and clean everything up. A lot of our threats are self-created. Even the ones that aren't grow bigger the more we push against them. There's no right or wrong actions, but we know where our thoughts come from based on how they feel.

@assx95 Why do you want to do that? Intentions and the "why" behind a desire is really important. For example, there are a lot of reasons why we desire reality to follow certain rules and laws. So there has a to be a power or a love, a will or a reason, strong enough to break the laws of your physical existence (which normally serve you and others very well) for magic to occur.

People are attracted to people who make them feel good when they are around them. All we want is to feel good, whether we translate that desire as a desire for sex, a partner, money or enlightenment. Enlightenment ultimately makes that desire a very general one, and we no longer seek it through specific things, or seek it in the future but learn to recognize it as our true nature always here in the moment. We don't get enlightened through denying ourselves things, or hiding from the world, but sometimes we deny ourselves for a while so we can see through the attachment, the ups and downs, we want a break from the dramatic ups and downs of getting things and losing them, so we step off the hedonistic treadmill to catch our breath. This is good. However denying ourselves those things is still materialism and for materialism to be transcended, we have to let ourselves see the world without judgement and let ourselves have desires and fun without the attachment, rather enjoying their beauty in the moment but not in a self or future pleasure seeking way.

Last night I had a dream/insight. I haven't had one recently. It was just the vision of a white board being wiped clean along with this amazing feeling of perfection.

The way I would describe it is that awakening is like falling in love with the world/authentic "self". The "work" is making the relationship a lasting good one once the honeymoon period is over. You're big on life purpose for a reason, because meaningful work is supposed to be a blast. Otherwise, it's not that effective, and it's not even that helpful to others. So overemphasizing work too much can be a disservice too. Sometimes I enjoy moving the lawn and other times I don't. Why? It's not about what I'm doing, it's all about how I look at it. How you look at spiritual "work" is extremely important. If God is Love, it makes sense that loving the work is gonna speed things up quite a bit.

I feel the same way about the exchange of money part of the equation, but I'm not sure if that isn't my own problem. If it wasn't for the exchange of money, I wouldn't have any reservations, would you?