mandyjw

His description of LOC 800's really helped me understand my Jesus revival. You can't actually let go of something you really truly believed in your heart in the past or let go of the past because, there is no past. Awaken and it comes back like a boomerang. I guess because "letting go" was a concept to me when I thought I let go of my religion.

@Nak Khid Is delusion part of order or chaos?

Me too. You cannot judge a teacher based on what they speak about though. There's a reason why Eckhart reaches as many people as he does, why he is a super star of spirituality and made such a huge change in so many of us at the start of our journeys. He is a bridge. This is perfection. Should the bridge be judged as less important because it is not the land it connects? Whether he is conscious of more he doesn't speak about or not, we can't know. Whether Ramaji judged Eckhart using a filter of self bias, making the assumption that a teacher would only speak of the highest knowledge that he is aware of... or whether he used a metaphysical means of knowledge to judge this, we can't know.

Welcome to the forum! The most important beliefs to consider are our own. We have many beliefs without even knowing that we have them and they shape our reality. Some of them are so sneaky that the only way to see through them is to get really really in tune with how you feel. Ever had a thought that was sort of half thought/half feeling, and maybe at first it wasn't possible to articulate it? Try to catch one, then interrogate it. Kindly though, invite it in for tea, don't shut it in a jail cell.

The world is your mirror so if you see order and meaning you get and see more order and meaning. If you see chaos you get chaos.

Contrary to popular belief, pain is not gain. Great work to examine that belief itself.

Reading that book caused a huge war within my mind, I'm glad I read it but, Leo's advice here in this thread is really, really important. You gotta get really good with paradoxes! Also Eckhart Tolle I believe is a misunderstood anomaly, as we all are... and so it gets very very tricky when you start talking about specific enlightened people because that's all imagination. The book particularly indulges the imagination so study it, get lost in it, then go back to you own experience as if you'd just read a particularly engrossing novel.

It's never really closed. Pay attention to things you "see" that you don't really see. Colors and patterns when you close your eyes, especially when you are present, about to fall asleep, etc. The biggest obstacle to "seeing" is our beliefs about what we see, the filter of the ego itself. There is no real third eye though, "stuff" sometimes happens and the third eye and opening and closing is a good analogy for the actual experiences and sensations that occur.

It was satisfying, but the making of this video and watching it come together was a trip. I realize that I am pretty stuck in the duality of how I see and how others see me. The exercise of talking to imagined others while looking at my face and watching it back is a trip. The experience of making a video feels like this almost every time. I so deeply relate to and love the Grinch. It's fun though, seeing myself from a perspective outside myself and imagining how others might see me, and I feel less than whole if I don't find ways to get that experience. Feeling like an idiot and not loving the idiot is the flip side. Often we try to help others from the place of, "Oh, I really feel bad for your pathetic situation, here's a solution." How do we think of the Grinch in our minds. Do we think of the Grinch at the start of the story or the end? or do we think of him as a sort of amalgam? The Who's are already self-actualized, yet they are intolerable as characters with the contrast of the Grinch.

All your favorite childhood stories and dreams are real. You can be or do anything you want. You are never alone, angels, God, spirit guides, source, whatever you want to call it or form you imagine is takes is always there. You can tap into all the happy memories or future bliss anyone ever had or will have, now. Source/God/Oneness has infinitely different flavors and resonances as it comes through to us, it's not just like having one boring flavor of ice cream all the time. You imagine your reality so you have the power to guide and hold your focus toward the most beautiful visions and feelings you have, and in doing so guide the manifestations of reality towards that. A chipmunk in the woods eating a pine cone is as important an event as a meeting of the world's most powerful leaders. What do you have to add?

I didn't understand or appreciate the importance of theory for a long time. I didn't understand that by listening to teachers who talked about the importance of experience (like Eckhart Tolle) that I was learning theory. And for a long time I thought Leo was completely stuck on theory yet I continued to listen and learn. I started noticing old people around me, and I noticed that some had turned into absolutely miserable people and others like my grandmother embodied the complete acceptance and presence I was looking for, but they knew nothing about enlightenment whatsoever. It was obvious that presence was something that could be cultivated and at the same time just happen. I was happy with that. But intelligence is seductive and "happy" was a facade. I experienced the "download" that people sometimes talk about and the term infinite intelligence and open mindedness got entirely new depths of meaning.

@Mikael89 Sure I have a sense of self and experience negative emotions. I agree with what she says in the video. I never said anything to argue against anything like that in this thread, I only pointed out some realizations I've had that are wonderful. If you want, you can focus on things that make you feel amazing. That's all I'm doing. Sometimes I don't feel like doing the things that make me feel amazing, like going out for a run when the temperature is below freezing, but I've learned what my mind says feels good and what actually in my experience feels good can be very different. I can be the witness of how I feel, and in the witnessing I change my feelings. That's what emotional mastery is, I suspect anyway. I wouldn't want to feel bliss all the time, because it would no longer be bliss. I enjoy the drama. I'm not liberated, so to be honest sometimes I do NOT enjoy the drama. But what I have realized is that I have incredible power to create, and what I choose to focus on is one with what I create.

Actual mystical experience, experienced by a you or by a me, becomes a story that you can either believe or not believe just like in the first example. But yes, I have weird stories that actually happened to me that I sometimes remember or talk about. @peanutspathtotruth There's no me for you to be happy for, so we can just be happy, see how easy that was? @Nak Khid Oooo... that's one of my favorites. Oneness is an equal access opportunity, just not in appearances. @Surfingthewave Yes definitely, that's been my experience as well. I was the asshole kid that told all the other kids that Santa Claus was not real.

And on the seventh day God rested, and thought to herself "What have have I done? I'm not going to sleep for the next 18 billion years. "

Well see, I already decided it would be more fun if you seem to have your own free will too.

I guess we just need to get @Mikael89 and some others a little bit oneness drunk.

Yes Mikael, I forgot FREE WILL! Thank you! You are so free that you can deny all the wonderful implications of oneness, so free that you can choose bondage. I am magic every minute of the day, and so are you.

Symbolism is powerful, always pointing to something deeper, but it's popular to disregard it as silly, or simply a marketing technique. Why do we assign the meaning to colors that we do? Is it possible they have meanings and invoke reactions deeper than we are aware of on the surface? This is one of my favorite quotes from Moby Dick. "But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous – why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind. Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows – a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? (42.25-26)"

The most horrifying thing that I've experienced as a mother is that unconscious love for your children is such a violent back and forth that it causes a lot of suffering. Unconscious love means that you are terrified that something will happen to your baby, and you spent more of your time imagining all kinds of awful things happening rather than in appreciation of this new life. Our culture plays into this, and sells new moms all kinds of products to prevent SIDS, etc, that actually only serve to increase anxiety. You realize that you are now handicapped in taking care of yourself, yet you must take care of yourself for the survival of your infant. Postpartum depression is an interesting manifestation, and so poorly understood.

I'm continually having dreams about being frustrated. I try to do something I've intended and taken steps to put into action and my plans last minute get ruined by other people. The strange thing is that the things I'm trying to do in my dreams aren't even things I really want. Or do I?

@Leo Gura You know the red queen effect with survival? That the more survival plays out the more other things catch up to it? What is the relationship to survival and love? For example from a woman's/mother's point of view, how much of her love for her partner and children is survival and how much of it transcends that. Does she logically have to know there's a difference to transcend it? Or does love transcend it in itself. Is love itself the structure? Can love not also be the content?

Very cool. "Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing." "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

It's more about how you contemplate and "see" the event, rather than the action you take. For example if someone crosses a line and is using you, you take appropriate action to protect yourself and prevent it from happening again. But instead of blaming them for the event and being reactive you contemplate how you might have attracted the event and how the event may have served to show you something about yourself. It's less about the action you take and what happens and more about being present enough to witness how you feel about it, and how you can take responsibility for it. Blaming and going into stories of self and other is our avoidance of witnessing how we really feel and misses the opportunity to see how we are creating or attracting all the interactions we have. We can however remove ourselves from situations or speak up for ourselves just because it's the appropriate action to take, and we can do it without blaming or suffering ourselves.

First of all you are going through a major transition and most people your age have depression and weight gain when they move out for the first time. You've heard of the freshman 15 right? Its actually a really big life change so give yourself a break and focus on the things that are going right, so matter how small. I second the exercise suggestion a short run or walk daily will improve so many of those areas at once. Good luck!