mandyjw

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!

I've had this happen too. I focused on the background sound (or silence) while mediating or meditated while running for a while and then eventually was able to focus on my breath without hyperventilating. You can also do Wim Hof breathing, or shamanic breathing while laying down, where hyperventilating is the objective.

There's a tendency to want to lock into a way of acting, having no drive to want meaningful relationships is something that can only be in the moment, we can never become someone who has no desires. Wanting itself is not from the ego, the idea of the one who wants or does not want is the ego. Wanting arises or does not.

Sorry about your dad, hoping for the best possible outcome. I think we master our emotions in waves. We make huge progress and think we've got it and then emotion bubbles up and we realize we had been repressing, or had been unconscious of subtle emotions as they built up. We may have identified with being someone who was a master of their emotions and that required us to be a little bit dishonest with ourselves. We think we've failed but then find that we have peeled back another layer of the onion and have to learn to master our emotions all over again, this time allowing us to feel them in a deeper way. Emotional mastery is not an achievement one can own or lock in. Ultimately there's no you to master the emotions, there is awareness of sensations and endless ways to cut ourselves off from feeling them through thought. In other words, allow what is in the moment, no matter what emotions or sensations come up. We shouldn't feel like a psychopath when we are nonreactive and we shouldn't feel like we have failed when emotions are strongly felt.

The image in my avatar appeared to me last night before I went to sleep.

Oh those are fun. These correspond to enlightenment and the spiritual path quite well. Creepy just gets your attention. 1. Brings to light your conflicting emotions of being uncomfortable but also having desire for love to be freely given and out in the open. Consider how you embody love in your everyday life. 2. Triangles are a symbol for ascension, intestines more obviously represent your gut, where deep intuition and intelligence lies. By giving attention to sensations there, taking deep belly breaths during mediation and checking in whenever possible throughout the day, emotions are witnessed rather than repressed, and what ascends from that is that we receive guidance and clarity.

As Leo said about the importance of framework, I think that the internet, access to Leo's and other high consciousness teacher's books and videos and forums like this are more important than access to psychedelics. That said there needs to be a balance of understanding and experiencing. For some like me, the experiencing is natural and I spent a lot of my life believing it was very problematic and trying to be more "normal" and "sane". The understanding I got from the teaching allowed the experience to bloom out on it's own once I understood it for what it was and was brave enough to cultivate/allow it... in a somewhat safe and controlled way. As long as the access to information and understanding exponentially increases ahead of the popularity and availability of psychedelics, I think it will be a good thing. I also think that having people who have been through deep awakenings available for support is super important. I have no idea what I would have done without the forum 6 months ago, and even then having no one who had been through it in person I could reach out to was very difficult at times.

The transition to winter in northern climates can have that effect. Do you take Vitamin D in the fall and winter? You were tested for mono I assume? I would try eating extra carbs and taking a multivitamin to see if it makes a difference, if it does you can try to determine what exactly is out of balance, you don't have to do it forever.

When you educate yourself and have the means to make better choices, it sure does seem ridiculous. We've got the abundance part down, you can imagine what a paradise a cheap grocery store would seem to a hungry farmer 200 years ago. We just need to bring the quality up to match. There have been years and years of people wishing for cheap food more than almost anything else, now we've got it and we're all like "HOLD UP NOW! It's too much!"

This is resistance. Resistance can take many forms, doubt, fear, regret, insecurity, etc. It makes no difference what your life looks like, thrilling or boring AF, if you're always splitting your energy it feels like crap.

It's always only ever you, so don't limit yourself. In my experience true excitement and thrill comes to you and demands to be followed as if it's not a choice. When I try to make it happen there's a lot of resistance, and when I do get the thrilling experience that means that backlash is always right on the heels of it. For example, you know how some people have to drink in order to have a good time socially? That's because the alcohol wipes out their resistance for a short time, then dumps it all in their laps latter. The same thing happens when there's resistance present no matter what choices you make. Follow what feels good and follow your bliss, but be wise enough to discern between wanting excitement without resistance and chasing excitement no matter the cost. Resistance dampens the heights of the thrill that you want anyway, so what you really want is no resistance. It's not the desire for thrill that ruins a thrill seekers life, it's all the resistance he has. Counter-intuitively becoming free of resistance usually means doing things that seem boring, like meditation. True excitement sometimes doesn't seem exciting at all, to the mind or from an outside perspective and that's what's so tricky. A lot of the work that's done in meditation is getting the ability to look at the sky or a little bird and have it move you to tears. We are heightening our sensitivity and the wonder of life becomes breathtaking. At the same time all the big thrilling things we really really want in life, we're often too scared of to let ourselves experience. By working through resistance we drop our fear and clear the way for big desires. Pay attention to the feeling itself of thrill and excitement, rather than trying to sort out with your mind what things are thrilling and exciting. Don't chase a future that will never come, excitement arises now. There's no difference between the feeling of anticipation and satisfaction, we only pretend that there is because we often add resistance to our anticipation. Abraham Hicks is a fantastic teacher for this sort of thing.

@dimitri @egoeimai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0WQ6W5TuWY

@Serotoninluv Fascinating! One of my favorite painters created his own color wheel and uses the primary colors cyan, magenta, and yellow like a printer does. You cannot mix every color with the traditional red, yellow, blue primary colors. The shades are too skewed. This famous picture broke a lot of people's reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress Also women see colors differently from men. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/men-and-women-see-things-differently-literally-180954815/

Had a really, really difficult day. I've always hated November. Everything seems dead. I know it's not but it seems that way at first glance. The lonely raw beauty and peace of this place that is so powerful in brighter times of year turns cold, dark and dreary. It's the end of the earth after all. This year I tried very hard to buck this pattern of belief about this time of year. I couldn't sleep well on Halloween night, we got another storm with really high winds. I had forgotten to go outside and do something so I went out in it and I just felt the intense and terrifyingly powerful energy of the wind. It didn't feel like love but it sure did feel alive. There was something nice about being able to write off things as just weather in the past. There was something reassuring about being able to write off bad energies as bad and not my own disconnection. I've been so emotionally bankrupt (not the right term at all but I don't know what is), today, it's been really difficult to be there for a feverish sick 3 year old when you feel you can barely take care of yourself. She insisted that she wanted an apple and I told her harshly that we were all out but there sitting on the microwave was a small gold apple I'd picked from out back and forgotten about. She later told me she wanted a flower. I went out in the rain and picked her two and she insisted I put one in my hair.

How do you think it is that Jesus was able to heal people, "drive out demons" heal mental illness and do other miracles? Do you think Jesus avoided the spirit realm and was afraid to open himself up to it?

@Girzo My mom ended up with a chronic diarrhea, and intolerance to fatty foods after taking antibiotics (for a chest cold) then found she could not tolerate gluten or dairy. Slowly she was able to add back in some fats and discovered that coconut oil didn't bother her at all for some reason. Last year I started getting chronic stomach pain and after many attempts to figure it out ended up following low FODMAPS too. It took me a long time to figure out what bothered me and what didn't but it was a great framework to start from. I still have to follow it loosely. Before the stomach pain started I was on a diet where I was eating a TON of beans and lentils and I wonder if that caused the issue. Now I can only tolerate lentils if they are canned, and only sometimes. I've been adding more higher fodmaps foods in lately and doing ok. I feel a little silly about mentioning this, but this past year I also uncovered a weird sort of connection with a clairvoyant herbal doctor from the 1800's who grew up where I live. He had written a book and has a recipe in it for chronic diarrhea. It's really old and it's a lot of work to make the recipe in full but it might point you towards some herbs to look into if you're interested in herbal remedies. If you're interested I can post it here.