mandyjw

OHHH! THAT'S the cliff from the story! I knew one of the scenes I wanted to write was when they go out on a cliff to watch the lightning, but there aren't any cliffs in the area I wanted it to take place in and I couldn't picture where it would happen. Past, future, fantasy, I don't even know anymore!!!

I tried to articulate my understanding of "my awakening". Before I would think that sharing this was a sin, but I don't think anyone cares and if some do, they are meant to. Stories are meant to be told. Confession, I still feel very odd about tsuki and his part in it and if he seemed open to it, I'd love to talk about my understanding of what happened. Do I need to do shadow work over what happened after I did shadow work and how it was done or is that a never ending distraction? Yesterday I felt very out of sorts. Eventually I settled on going for a hike by myself. It's an obscure hiking trail and it's connected with the old ghost story of the maiden on the red isle. The first time I hiked it, it was very "trippy". Yesterday I found a small animal skull set up on a fallen log. I also found where a blue jay had been killed, beautiful blue feathers all around. At the crossroads are a few old apple trees. There were strange and beautiful mushrooms everywhere. There has never been in my life a summer with more consistent rain and a better apple crop or mushroom season. When I got out to the end of the trail, I found that the trail continued onto a sort of island connected by the beach that I had never noticed. I'd never walked the whole trail. I walked out to the cliffs. It was windy and sort of gray and the mood of the afternoon was very somber. I found a group of trees that had burned partially from lightning strike. I took a piece of charcoal and drew a lightning bolt and a snake on the tree. Then a crow called and stood over me perched on an a tall tree. He looked and called and then flew two circles around me and flew off.

@Zigzag Idiot Thank you, I "listen" to youtube while I work, so I have plenty of time for videos during the week and really appreciate the suggestion. I'm looking forward to watching it. There was a strange progression of visual changes and noticing colors years before the awakening. It reminds me of the book "The Giver" when the main character sees a red apple for the first time. The apple symbolism is pervasive. Looking back I see the awakening as a speeding up of the process I've gone through my whole life rather than an event. Of course to confuse understanding even more, time is illusory. @DrewNows I was stung by a caterpillar as a kid so I learned that lesson myself.

The first insight I got at the doctor's stone foundation was that I was afraid. It was a pretty obvious insight, I was in the middle of the woods, I didn't know who or what was around or what I would find. But the significance of it the the benefits that could be on the other side of that fear really shone through. I quit drinking coffee and saw how it fueled my anxiety. The second was that, I was still afraid, but this time it presented in the way of feeling like I was unworthy to be there, trespassing on someone's property. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I knew from the feeling of the insights that they were important. If I went back too soon for another, I wouldn't receive it. If I returned when I felt really drawn to go back, I would. The third insight was from a literal tree. It was an ash tree that was one tree until it had grown into two trees at about height of my chest. The trees were really damaged there and were splitting apart. It was a little windy and the tree actively made splitting sounds as I looked at it. Then I understand that nonduality also included duality. I've seen the same illustration from others before with the tree. I had been unconscious of how much I moralized spirituality and denied my own desires. In order to control my anger, which is the reason I found Leo's videos in the first place, I had also tried to kill the fiery passion I've always had. I had demonized and let a part of myself die. My mind had taken the present moment and made it into an ideal and a thought. The shadow work intensified and I lost the sense of doership. Revelations came in the middle of the night and strange connections were made between things. The best thing I can compare it to if you've ever read Harry Potter, it's like the conclusion of those books when this complicated interwoven story with at the time, seemingly insignificant clues from earlier in the book comes together and all makes sense in the end. It was like that with my entire life. Reality is stranger than fiction. Sometimes thinking back on my life, particularly turning points and times of major conflict, or events like how my parents met, I've thought about how it's too strange to be real. The shadow work showed me that my hunch had been right. Lots and lots of pieces came together. I realized that in a way I had always been awake. The things my kids and husband said to me were channeled and had deeper meaning. Everything fell together in a creepy magical nonduality. All this time I was just managing to hold me life together, dropping off and picking up my kids. If anyone asked why I had been crying (there was tons and tons of tears) I told them it was because my dog was dying, which was true. The dying dog was interwoven into the story. I hadn't asked for the dog, I took him as a favor for my best friend. He had always been a creepy dog, nothing like the purebreds I bought as puppies. Sometimes he would just stare and stare at me and sometimes I had the thought that he was possessed or had been human in a past life. I realized then, that he was more than just a dog. When things started getting intense he literally stared at me all day long. After the awakening, he got so sick I decided that week to have him put to sleep. I had to hire an excavator for some plumbing work, and I had the man dig a grave for me under an old apple tree. The very next morning he passed away on his own. There was a lot of shadow work dealing with the repression of my Christian upbringing. I realized that I was figuratively a whore all along regardless of how pure I had been and I realized the significance of Mary Magdalene being a whore. Verses I had always understood were understood on an even deeper level. Matthew 5:27-28 27 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. I had the insights of how psychedelics are themselves a trope, a thought, an element of the story and my reasons for judging them so harshly were gone. It couldn't really be possible to take something external when everything is you. How I had benefited from other's use of psychedelics! My bizarre experience of sort of tapping into Leo's "Enlightenment Experience Happening In Real Time" live video and having been in a near bliss state for hours after made sense. Months before this I had really started disagreeing with Leo's videos. A little part of me felt guilty coming to his forum and using his website when I so disagreed with his approach. I basically came to the forum to try to help set people straight because I was concerned that he was deluding people and I was concerned that people were ruining their lives with psychedelics. Whenever I saw his picture on the homepage I was disgusted. I finally understood how incredibly valuable and integral his work had been for me, how the forum had been. I had given Eckhart Tolle all the credit, but never fully appreciated Leo. I made the connection between Leo and the symbol of a lion. My shadow work started getting religious. I fully understood what the Devil was. He was truly part of me, part of my psyche, part of oneness. Leo had made me intellectually understand and accept this fact, but you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. I was Voldemort, I was the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia, the books that made me start believing in Jesus as a lion, as a kid and helped me reconcile Christianity and my deep love of nature. There's something associated with me, an area code that is 666. As a Christian I was always horribly embarrassed about this. Now I understood how fitting and how funny it had been. Jesus came back into my life. If my own life and memories were just a story what was Jesus? I understood communion, "you must eat the body of Christ." The hamburger I had for lunch became a "holy cow" and the body of Christ. Nonduality and oneness gave this a whole new meaning. Other smaller revelations and synchronicity fell into place. Then, on my 666th post, I was awake. My third eye had opened to synchronicity and insight before the awakening. Now my heart chakra was open. It felt completely light, like it had lost its physical substance. In my sleep I felt weightless. I started manically posting on the forum, professing my love for everyone. I was literally high on life. My vision changed, literally. It was like a scene in a movie when everything is enchantingly bathed in light, that's how I saw. The picture on Leo's homepage changed and I saw the honest love in his eyes. I could scroll Facebook and love and see the beauty in every single face I saw as if it were my child's. I went to the beach where you can find fossils if you spend a lot of time looking. I would have the insight to turn a rock over and it would be covered in fossils. As a normally extremely shy person, I lost all shyness and inhibition in conversation and I became magnetic and always had the right thing to say to strangers. My balance became perfect, and I could walk across any surface without tripping as long as I was focused. I had to drive somewhere in slippery dangerous snow and spent the entire drive in a bliss state knowing that I could never die. My mind had been blown open. It felt like there was space between my eyes that didn't exist. If I looked at a tree or my baby niece I would feel the space expand or tingle. I understood hidden meanings in symbols and signs. Things people said to me often felt channeled. I realized the importance of my dreams and how dreams had shaped my entire life, including dictating who I fell in love with. Devilry set in. Everything I had been repressing for so long was coming through. I had been very tight with money for years, and I bought myself a new wardrobe, books, tarot cards, anything I wanted without a second thought. My conversations with men online weren't considerate to my husband or appropriate. I had been repressing my femininity ashamed of all the girly things I'd always loved, letting society make me think they were silly or insignificant. At the same time repressing my own feminine power. I was very confused between believing that everyone was already enlightened and just had been waiting for me to catch up to them and feeling like "the chosen one." My American patriotism I'd had as a child hit me full force and I realized that I had repressed gratitude for my country in an attempt to be politically correct. Other insights came from this. After the devilry played out, I had a religious revival. I did not want to live a life of devilry and didn't know what else to do. I was scared of myself. I realized that people like Charles Manson had also been awake. So I said "Jesus take the wheel." Like with my lack of appreciation for Leo, I had not fully appreciated how far Christianity had taken me on my spiritual path. I even started praying again. Then I discovered Ramji and his understanding of levels of enlightenment. This explained so much, it explained the stages I went through, the devilry I fell into, and it fully explained my religious revival. "if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." It's very easy to misinterpret realizations and how they should be embodied after the fact. As the effects of the awakening died down I started meditating and found that it grounded me. I continued to return to the place where the doctor's house had been and I dug deeply into his history. His house had burned down when my Grammie was 20. He died a few months before she was born. She died days after I found the remains of his house, a month before the awakening. Visiting her had always made me incredibly sleepy. I always thought that it was because she was boring but it was uncanny how strong the effect was. Her parents were buried two lots away from his grave, not one had ever told me that they buried in that cemetery. I found a piece of glass that had been part of the highest window in his house and made it into a tear shaped necklace. To this day I find little signs there and I enter states and places where everything is channeled and fits into place of a greater story. Over the months I made many connections between his history and symbolism. I met a woman at the place by the river and she had a very old pug dog that my daughter played with. A week or so later someone donated a photo album to the historical society and it had lots of pictures of the doctor's pug. There are several old apple trees on his property and just about every old abandoned place I go around town. Years ago when I first moved here, there was an active graffiti artist around. On a telephone pole they painted the word forever and right before the telephone pole was an apple tree that had been broken off by a storm. That summer the apple tree flowered and bore apples as if nothing had ever happened to it with the word "forever" in the background. In the winter before I discovered the remains of the doctor's house, a small fox ran across my path while I was running right by there. I discovered fox holes in the woods by the cemetery later. This summer I went up the steps to the platform and on the other side feet from me was the fox. We both ran away from each other. Later, when I went back I found the remains of a white rabbit, a huge pile of fur and just one foot. The white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland comes to mind. There have been too many signs and strange connections like this to mention, strange apple trees, mushrooms, trees with eyes. Time in nature has become like a psychedelic trip for me. If I get the inclination to go somewhere, I do. I looked a lot into the history of witchcraft and the use of poisonous plants including nightshade as a hallucinogens. The nightshade plant that the crows planted on the doctor's grave was purely symbolic. To me psychedelics and poison are a trope, a symbol, a pointer. Death without physical death. The color red became very symbolic and kept coming up again and again and again since the awakening. The story "The Scarlet Ibis" that I had loved from highschool came to mind. I read it again, understanding the allegory and symbolism and in the end was stunned that Doodle's body is found under a red nightshade bush. Elements of stories that I grew up with like the poison apple in Snow White, living in the forest, falling asleep and being woken up, all came alive in my own life. Everything is channeled. There are pointers everywhere. Just examine what you really love and have always loved or have feared. Write down your deepest desires and fears. Dig up childhood memories, dreams that you haven't forgotten. Write your own story. Hone your intuition and sensitivity. That's how you enter the rabbit hole. It's all up to you, how far do you want to go? We have free will, we ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and were kicked out of paradise. It's not just a story. We were split between male and female, God and the Devil, good and bad, past and future. We gained the ability to intellectually understand, remember and plan. We gained the ability to tell stories. Instead of living life with the heart we lived split between the heart and the mind. By opening the heart, you open your mind. Open your eyes and ears and understanding to the love that makes up this phenomenon of us. We are all born with unique gifts. Some are born with hearts open and some with sharp minds. Enlightenment is about combining the potential and duality of the two. The power of love was always fully awake and alive but I didn't have wisdom and I didn't know how to control or channel it for good. I read Proverbs as a kid and ever since I always prayed to God for wisdom. Passion and wisdom are the perfect match made in heaven. But one without the other creates a sort of hell. We live and write a story that never ends. There's no rising above the drama, only seeing it in a different light. It's not personal, it's not OUR story, it's OUR story. The show must go on. Embrace it, enjoy it, become it, savor it. It's beautiful, delicious and a tiny bit poisonous. Take the apple.

I'm sorry to hear that it was disappointing. We are still pioneers, so I think going to psychotherapy is a total crap shoot but well worth trying. I mentioned in the past that my shadow work took me by surprise and happened channeled in the middle of the night in the journal section on this forum. Parts of it were probably irresponsible and inappropriate although at the time nothing was stopping that train. So it's probably not a model that can be replicated, but here's what I gleaned from the experience. I wrote out my life story, not just things that I thought were traumatic but also things that I loved my entire life and didn't really think much about. There were certain symbols that I had been attracted to. I had a barrage of insights that came with a force of energy that only allowed me to sleep in chunks of a 2 or 3 hours. My dream dissolved into LOUD insights that played through my head until I wrote them down. The key thing is that they all happened to me while I was looking from a perceptive of an outsider, hysterically laughing or crying tears of release at the absurd story of my life but at the same time with a very strong compassionate love. It was as if I was the author of my life, in fact the theme of my favorite childhood books especially Harry Potter came up quite a lot. I saw that there was no duality between my own history, or fantasy. I also really needed someone to listen. Not only did I highly respect this person to begin with, the feelings that arose in a mystical state went way deeper to dissolve the duality between him and me.

You know the cliche, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle?" I wonder if it applies to awakenings and trips. How did the ear ringing resolve, did you find a reason behind why that happened? @cle103 I'm not sure if this suggestion is helpful but I thought I would through it out there. I had an awakening without the use of psychedelics, following it I had a lot on my plate to integrate. When I felt the need to I tried on a few occasions to go on literal trips that scared me. Going into the woods in the middle of the night, that sort of thing. The whole theme before and after was dealing with fear. It presented in some pretty strange ways. If you have sort of tied together in your mind psychedelics and fear it may help to separate the two. Just be smart and stay safe.

Tim Ferriss just shared the work of this artist. Very channeled. https://www.instagram.com/danielpopper/ I made an impromptu video. It's shot on Pomroy's platform and when I got home I identified the caterpillar. It's an American Dagger moth caterpillar and it has poisonous spines. I had an impulse to go back to the little park lately and on the milkweed there were all kinds of monarch caterpillars. Me and my daughter kidnapped a couple. One made a chrysalis on the chair arm in my porch. It really has metallic gold spots. I can't believe how blind I was before to the magic of nature, how busy I was with work to see it.

WHEN I READ THE BOOK. Walt Whitman WHEN I read the book, the biography famous, And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life; Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my real life; 5 Only a few hints—a few diffused, faint clues and indirections, I seek, for my own use, to trace out here.)

I love it. I also think there's some interesting poison and hallucinogenic plants in among the beautiful flowers and nutritious vegetables in life's garden.

@Emerald No one can actually shame anyone else because shame is a feeling. It's as ridiculous as saying that you can "happy" someone or "sad" someone. You can't. Trump is a great example of a shameless leader. No amount of shame is going to change how he feels about himself, in fact the more people try the more he is emboldened. The higher you go on the scale of consciousness, (until a certain point of ego dissolution that is), the more intensely shame is going to be felt by someone. Shame paralyzes such people in fear. The people who have the biggest hearts and feel the most intensely are afraid of speaking out. They are afraid of making waves, they are afraid of making the mistakes they have to make in order to evolve and grow. Shame only inhibits the good in someone. And repression grows like a weed under shame. Do you really want to repress racism? I think the results would be tragic. If you want courageous confident kids, you don't use shame as a parenting tool. A democracy should use the same values in "parenting" its leaders.

What would happen if you got so lost in the story and so consumed by it that there was so longer a story of you, or a story of an experience "you" had or any separate stories at all, that there was no one to listen to the story or tell the story, or write the story? What would happen if you realized you were the story itself? You are Little Red Riding Hood, Grandma, the wolf and the hunter both in truth and in fiction. The story is such complete and utter BS that it's TRUE!!! The only one who can think the story is just a story is the person who thinks that he himself is REAL! Do you realize how fucking terrifying and disorienting that would be? Not being able to tell your life from a story, being permanently on a psychedelic trip? That's what loss of self really means. You are afraid of the story.

Last night I had a bizarre and disturbing dream. Before, this would be the type of dream that I would try to forget as soon as I could but the message is quite profound I think. I dreamed that I was doing surgery on someone, they were out but didn't know or consent to having a surgery and we weren't supposed to be doing it. I was with a man and a woman and "I" wasn't really Mandy at all and had very little to do with Mandy, a common thing that happens in my dreams. I was supposed to be doing a face transplant or some incredible type of surgery that's barely possible in real life. Only I had no surgical skills or hospital setting. Someone walked in and we tried to hide what we were doing. I was supposed to make a first cut with the scalpel and I chickened out. I left at some point and the other couple had done the surgery. The woman we did the surgery on resembled a woman I know, someone who I've been a bit upset with lately. I was so worried that she would die, and felt the horror of what had been done throughout the process and after. She woke up and was completely herself, her face looked slightly different but it looked fine and she didn't notice a thing at all. She was completely oblivious that anything had happened. Message, when I try to change other people superficially, I only hurt myself and cannot achieve a thing. So many times we only see people at "face" value. I wonder if I've given up on teaching others to their faces. I'd like to move to a type of "faceless" teaching through stories. My own story will not have a conclusion, so if I want that satisfaction, I have to tell stories within the timeless story. The satisfaction will only be temporary. Never say never. Nevermore.

@Truth Addict Shhh... it's just a story. I love you. I know what you mean though, it's annoying as fuck.

I woke up and feel asleep again somewhat and heard/thought "When nothing is right, write harder." I understand a few things better now. I am going to write a novel at some point. The line between my real life and fantasy is blurred and gone forevermore. The novels I had in my head were allegory and predictions of my own life. It can't be rushed. Eckhart Tolle warns "Don't write your book too soon." It is going to be written for me . From source. Writing is my form of intoxication.

Follow what your heart says. If you know you will waste their investment don't go. If you do go commit to make the absolute most out of it.

God wants entertainment, drama, and a good story. God wants to experience the infinite spectrum wheel of colors and the heights of all emotions.

I can't figure out the caffeine thing. Coffee- slight headaches and issues staying mindful and grounded. Green tea and black tea - full of fluoride. Out of concern for my pineal gland I cut out almond milk (calcium carbonate) and all tea. Green tea was the perfect level of caffeine though. 90% chocolate- high lead and cadmium levels plus weight gain because of high calorie count No caffeine- weight gain. Right now I drink 1/3 to a half cup of coffee on some days but not all and am trying to limit my chocolate intake.

I need to ask my dad for a complete description of his Pastor when he was a kid. Dad always felt like this Pastor was just playing a game and had moved beyond what he taught spiritually. He ended up leaving the church because he had an affair with another woman in the church. Dad had a friend named David Mushrow who was a foster child and may have been abused. Dad described him as being incredibly spiritual and highly evolved morally. He died when he fell off a wagon haying. Dad came to church one morning and saved a seat for him like he always did and they told him there at church. He became very angry at the whole thing and blamed another boy for his death. My Grandfather died of a heart attack when my dad was 17. He started feeling bad and drove himself to the ER. Dad was going to take him but has lost his license for some small traffic offense and couldn't. My Grandfather died in the ER alone waiting to be seen. Dad was in hay field working for a neighbor. He knew immediately that his Dad had died and when they came to tell him they were afraid of him because he already knew. My dad loves to tell stories and he loves drama. That's how he experiences the world. My mother's reaction to this is to be overly stoic and to disrespect it. My Grandfather on my mom's side was very quiet and stoic. My dad worked for him and would always come back after the day with a wild story to tell. One day my grandfather got ahead of Dad and asked what wild thing had happened that day. What my mother and grandfather don't know is that, you get what you give attention to. If you want an exciting life, you'll get one. if you see everything as mundane, it will be. Dad's life and experiences were just as colorful and vivid as he told them.

Edgar Allan Poe To the River Fair river! in thy bright, clear flow Of crystal, wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow Of beauty- the unhidden heart- The playful maziness of art In old Alberto's daughter; But when within thy wave she looks- Which glistens then, and trembles- Why, then, the prettiest of brooks Her worshipper resembles; For in his heart, as in thy stream, Her image deeply lies- His heart which trembles at the beam Of her soul-searching eyes. https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/poe/lake.html

@Emerald Have you heard Brene Brown's views on shame and racism? I think that's what is at stake here. So many people even comfortable TALKING about racism because of the risk that they will be so severely shamed for our mistakes, so they remain ignorant. Using shame as a tool fuels fear and fear is essentially what racism is at its root. In the end racism persists. If you give people a little breathing room, and they take down their defenses, then the true collective shadow work can take place.

If social scorn worked then Donald Trump would never have been elected President after the Access Hollywood tapes came out.

I have a son who is autistic so I have done a lot of research on autism and its causes. We do know what causes autism and it's an incredibly complicated mix of many factors. To add to that we have become much more understanding and compassionate as a society and have become much better at spotting autism early and diagnosing it. We also got rid of separate diagnosises and include them all on the autism spectrum. All the statistics on autism rising cannot possibly figure all the factors in for changes in how we diagnosis it. In the 70's if you had Aspergers (now no longer exists as a diagnosis, it's all autism spectrum) you'd be bullied and shoved into a locker. Now if you have Asbergers, you would receive extra help with speech and social skills, go on to be really successful in a field of interest, have a family and have children on the spectrum. Autism is caused mostly by genetics, which are affected by gut bacteria changes, which though it's possible gut bacteria could be affected by vaccines, antibiotic over use, pesticides in the food system especially the persistent use of glyphosate, are much more likely to be the major culprits. Stress during pregnancy, early infancy and different changes in lifestyles due to the use of technology are also a huge culprit for changing gut bacteria, which in turn changes the way genes express themselves. The prenatal and postpartum care that mom and babies get in this country is abysmal. When I brought my son home from the hospital, the amount of education the nurses were required to give me on SIDS was ridiculous. I came home with severe anxiety and forced my baby to sleep in a cool room on his back on a firm mattress because that was their directions. He did not sleep in those conditions and I didn't either. If I had been told it was ok to co-sleep his early infancy would have been so much healthier for him. I was not given hardly any information or support on postpartum anxiety or depression and was left to figure all that out on my own. My point is vaccines save lives. If you want to save the most lives that you can with your money, you vaccinate kids in third world countries. Vaccines are miraculous. Yes, we should study their negative affects as much as we can. But there is a lot lower hanging fruit that can be changed if you care about human health. The inherent fear of needles and having something foreign injected into you or your baby fuels all kinds of irrational reasoning for that fear. If you want to live in fear, intellectually it makes a lot more sense to be afraid of your glyphosate ridden Cheerios you eat for breakfast every morning.

In the end of Leo's "How Fear Works" Part 2 he says that mastering your emotions is harder than waking up. The topic of emotional mastery keeps coming up lately. I spent years working to master my emotions and made huge progress in my life and as a person. I thought that enlightenment WAS emotional mastery. At first I repressed my emotions and had a few blow ups but I learned to go into the emotions and go into feeling them in my body and I thought that I had learned how to work through the repression problem. I got really good at this, and life demanded that I had to be. I could handle my son's autistic meltdowns like a pro, I could handle nearly anything life threw at me, or so I thought. I didn't understand that I had demonized my emotions and I had tried to control them, not master them. They were like children obeying me out of fear, not love. I started going backwards, strange things happened in my life and learning about the law of attraction was a huge missing piece that made puzzle pieces fall into place faster than ever before. During my awakening, I saw that my ego had split itself, it was the very thing pointing the finger at and rejecting itself. The awakening was stunning... and disruptive as fuck. It took weeks to get my life back together and I acted out all kinds of things I had been repressing. In other words emotional mastery and all my work went out the window. Then I was left realizing that I had a LOT of work to put the pieces back together, this time understanding that emotional mastery did NOT MEAN absence of emotions. I guess this means that you can have your cake and eat it too? You are here to feel. You are here to follow your heart, follow your bliss, and experience bliss. Yet you are also here to be wise and to see that wisdom is the greatest deepest pleasure that can be found. The tricky thing is that the bad stuff isn't what it seems. You can break through the illusion of pain or depression through acceptance, or you can appreciate them and use them to guide you to where you are meant to be. I would really love to hear your thoughts and insights on this. What is true emotional mastery, and what does it look like? Is enlightenment feeling the deepest depths of emotion fully and also being as master of them? How do we move from a relationship to our emotions of control to love?

Check out Mr. Money Mustache. I prefer the "do what you love" or find a way to love what you do approach, but the truth is most of us waste most of our money because everyone around us does the same. We don't think through our priorities in life properly and can retire much earlier than we would think. He's quite ranty and hardcore stage green but I've learned a lot from his blog.