mandyjw

Made this especially for TruthAddict, but also myself and everyone else.

@Nahm You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken hallelujah I was returning from a run today, and I saw my neighbor's trash and her bending over it putting it out. All within the same time frame as seeing this, I thought, ugh I really don't want to interact with her right now and felt my heart contract. I noticed what happened, how the thought and sensation arose with the seeing and when I looked again, she had never really been there at all, all that was there was just a trashcan.

Sigh.

I was born high. I was taught that high = evil. High = shame. Being high is not safe. So I tried to cover it up and be something else, other than high. That just created suffering for me and everyone around me. My mom said that Leo has "cocaine eyes." To me that's love. High = Love.

@Dumuzzi But I want heaven on earth, NOW goddamn it! No, that's not right. I don't want paradise on earth, I want to lose myself working towards paradise on earth knowing all the while that it's already here within.

@Dumuzzi The same "privilege" of heaven applies no matter what the religion, the idea that there is a cycle to break free of and one who can break free at all creates a game of winners and losers. Just because this is the thing that ruined Christianity for me says nothing about Christianity, it says something about the model of religion itself. The same exact problem exists in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Actualized.org. If God himself was ever whole and perfect and decided to disperse into this what we often call mess and chaos, and you are God, and were never separate but always whole and always that... how could you ever get to state of realization where you would not make the same choice again to disperse into illusory form? Illusory form, the world just is what it is this moment is just occurs on its own, it just is. The question is why pursue enlightenment, why does this story line play out of a singular being breaking the illusion then continuing their life in the illusion enjoying the coming and going of forms, enjoying the illusion of other beings who are completely caught in the illusion. Out of compassion one tries to teach others to follow suit, but there is no one to follow, there is nothing to achieve and there are no others to teach. Yet to story of teachers and insights and the notion of a spiritual path is probably the most tantalizing entertaining thing you could do with your life. But it is delusion? Should we all just admit, we're just here to have a good time? I never could understand why almost all the videos on America's Funniest Home videos were people getting hurt. Why is it funny to see someone trip and fall or have some bizarre accident and get hurt? Could my compassion and love strictly my ego? Is the will of God that I am able to laugh when someone suffers? Does God enjoy everything that's happening? I don't want that. I want to be sad for the movie characters. I want to be happy for them. I want to live in illusion and delusion, even after I've seen through it to the perfection of love, even after I've awakened and lived in a state of bliss and seeing through eyes of perfection, I came back to this because I chose it. I like it better. I prefer it.

If you've ever read Harry Potter, why does Harry's story start out with him living in miserable conditions?

I live in a really isolated area, I never thought I would stay but circumstances have kept me here. I've frequently felt very stuck though. I ended up developing a strong spiritual connection to it, and started realizing how very little of it I explored or appreciated, just by exploring and appreciating it. I found some beautiful places I didn't know about and started waving to the guy who drives his lawn mower everywhere because he lost his license for too many DUIs. Noticed how much around the town is changing for the better and started meeting new interesting people. I decided i wanted to leave about a year ago and couldn't make it happen, and then the connection I had ended up deepening even more, in really strange ways. I bought a house here that was in really bad condition and it took years to renovate. By the end of it I got really discouraged and thought it would never be a nice home. Eventually I gave up on being miserable about it and started appreciating my house anyway and shortly after that we found the right people to hire and it ended up being way better than I ever imagined possible. The house taught me an important lesson about appreciation and feeling stuck.

@28 cm unbuffed No, just be very aware of everything you think, feel and do around that subject, pay attention to the structure, not the content. Things are not as they appear. For whatever reason I still really like to believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene never had sex.

@28 cm unbuffed Sex and attraction seems to be one of God's favorite ways of getting our attention. It's so similar to the feeling of ego death and desire for unity, and yet also potentially such a powerful distraction from that thing itself. Awareness, awareness, awareness.

Not crazy, but let's take one step back and one deep breath. Ready? You are Mary Magdalene and Goddess Kali.

Genesis 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

This is Muninn, he'll be coming home with us in about a month.

I'm not sure that having the concept of a dark night of the soul is helpful to anyone. Or having the concept of someone or oneself being spiritually gifted. I don't say that to correct anyone, just to say that in my own experience they've lead to confusion and distraction. If God is love then go directly there, if a troll stops you and keeps you from crossing that bridge, that troll is yourself and the only way it's "killed" is through love. Love can be pretty terrifying when seen through the lens of limited self, but giving the monster under the bed a name like "dark night of the soul" only perpetuates the belief in the illusion of it. Having said that I don't think denying that there are major challenges that come up is a mistake, in fact I think it's quite compassionate when it comes from the right place.

Moss is really, really beautiful.

This is a great illustration of how sticky the hold is that belief has on us and how we all live in different thought and belief created realities. Even within this particular topic of discussion! In Leo terms, the disagreement is the content, the more we all train ourselves to see through the content to the structure the more we can interact with love and more efficiently share knowledge without getting stuck on it or dismissing it as foolishness.

My suggestion is to take up running or somehow find a meditative activity that you enjoy. There are tons of different activities that you can do consciously that are powerful. I ran in place of meditation for years, except I didn't know I was mediating, I just realized that the running staved off depression and was also really enjoyable. It just sort of turned into meditation the more conscious I became. Also watch your thoughts closely throughout the day whenever you can, go out in nature whenever possible, tie meditation together with daily life. Get creative about ways to painlessly fit it into your own life. When boredom comes up investigate what's beneath the boredom, what's the sensation of boredom other a judgement of the mind?

@Preety_India For sure, knowing what you want in a partner is important. What is love really though? When my husband is absorbed in a video game or whatever else I don't exist in his world. Whether I feel loved or unloved in that moment is completely up to me. Of course if he never ever gave me attention, I'd probably leave out of love for us both. When I'm buying groceries nothing exists in my experience except the cashier and the store. Whether I feel loved or unloved in that moment is up to me and independent of the circumstances. We believe love comes from someone else but how could it really? How could love actually be a biological need and not be neediness but also love? Because love itself must be ever present and unconditional. Hope that makes sense.

@Preety_India That's what we all want from any relationship at all really, whether it's with a cashier, a bird, a stone, the sky or ourselves. There are varying levels and ways in which its appropriate to display and act on that love, sure, but that's what we really want. When we limit ourself to needing and expecting to get all that fulfillment and wonder from one other person, we're bound to be disappointed.

This. Life has enough spark on it's own, or rather the spark is within you, expecting a relationship to be the source of the fiery spark you're looking for in your life is the definition of neediness. Sometimes that spark appears within a relationship with another or it seems to come from a relationship and we mistakenly attribute it to another person. Hollywood has not helped us to dissolve these needy expectations of each other.

@Mikael89 I have relationships with many stones already, but I'm always happy to meet a new one! Leo told me to notice why I don't have a relationship with my vacuum cleaner, but it's hard not to be needy with the vacuum because I get really pissed off when it doesn't work the way I want it to. Honestly though, I've been married for 10 years, in a relationship with him for 14 years, close friends with him for 17 years and there's been LOTS of back and forth of neediness on both our parts during that entire time. Everyone is needy sometimes, eventually love is big enough to forgive it. But loving ourselves or love itself also dissolves neediness.

Well if you think about it, why do we not like to have needy partners? Because we don't want to be responsible for anyone else's happiness. We want to be seen for who we truly are and not seen through the lens of what someone needs us to be for them. Because we know we will fail to be that. If they have put that expectation on us, on needing us to make them happy, then we might as well end the relationship sooner rather than later because there's no way that person won't continue to be miserable. Only if we stay we will risk being blamed as the cause for their own misery. Basically it feels as if they are seeing us through such a cloudy lens that we aren't even there, we aren't even seen as a soul or a being in ourselves and might as well just be a blow up doll sitting next to them.

Neediness is not just an issue that exists within a certain category of life. It's something deeper than that, a general feeling of not feeling complete. That means that if your relationships/attraction with the opposite sex isn't going well, you can choose to focus on the parts of your life that are going well. The neediness will start to dissolve on its own and then you can revisit the subject (dating/attraction) with less self sabotaging. That's probably why people with successful relationships often meet each other through work or shared interests. If you're going to a club or a bar, there's a dynamic there that makes the game and the "rules" of attraction very obvious and competitive.

I became conscious of this underlying thing that is and the I tried off and on to own that. Then sometimes I tried to berate the I for doing this afterwards.