mandyjw

A couple weeks ago I took my daughter out for a walk and as we walked back a huge cloud had appeared. I was walking by a massive field, which is rare around here, so I got to see the whole thing without trees in the way. It looked like a thundercloud bank but white and was this magnificent mountain and became heaven in my eyes with faces of men, angels, lions and gargoyles. The feeling and absorption and beauty of the moment stuck with me. I remembered how the first novel I wanted to write that I had an idea for after reading Harry Potter the second time through started. It starts with a girl lying in a field imagining things in the clouds and losing track of time. After that I had a similar experience, trail running at my parents. There's this "sacred" spot that I used to go to and pray when I was a teenager. Recently though, my Dad and his friend Tom cut wood there and "ruined it" so I haven't thought it was sacred for the past few years. I went there and took a break from running. There with this mushroom there in the sunlight, with subtle beauty beyond measure and I lost myself again like in the clouds. Little birds surrounded me and I asked for something there again. Last evening I went for another run there and went back to the mushroom. It had rotten and turned black but now was in the shape of a raven with one eye in the center of its head. I went through Mom's garden, she grew scarlet runner beans this year and they are gorgeous. This year the apples did exceptionally well from all the rain, I've never seen them better. There's this small apple tree by my parents driveway and it makes tiny apples. I never bother with them but there were so many so I took one and tried one. I remembered eating them as a kid, and I remembered this memory I have of eating them and being incredibly depressed and terrorized with my OCD. And I remembered how I used to bite faces into the apples to entertain myself. Then I remembered the beads I started making this year, the poison apple from Cinderella. I haven't had a bead style be so popular in a long time. It's like every little tiny aspect of my life is flowing together. I had a thought that our life could be split into three. "Real" life, dream life and creativity/imagination. I really want to compare the the holy trinity but I'm afraid Zigzag Idiot will be pissed at me if I do that so I'll refrain. Real life seems boring at times but it's the foundation where everything happens and can make sense and come into being. Dream life is a kind of communication and integration but it feels like it's happening to you. Creativity comes through and visits and links both worlds. This "insight" is half baked and could use some work, I know.

@seeking_brilliance @Zigzag Idiot I'll check it out, thank you! @DrewNows Yes, the thoughts that come in can either enhance and preserve and learn from an experience or they can cut you off from it. At first it helps to stop all thoughts and just sense, but later on you learn to use thought in a productive way or they just come to you. When I was a kid, I thought something was wrong with me for just experiencing experiences, like a bad smell, or doing work I wasn't supposed to like doing, I really thought that I was supposed to judge things as bad or unwanted. Last night my kids disrupted my sleep a lot, but I really got to "save" my dreams and thought processes. The first one was trying to remind me of the significance of talking to the "crazy" guy who lives near the river the night before. I had looked forward to talking to him all summer but gave up on the idea and significance of where he lives. He came down just to talk to me. He said that he saw a pileated woodpecker and I remembered seeing one and being quite close it it by the largest apple tree at Pomroy's, the one with the bone underneath it. They are gorgeous birds, bright red, black and white. We laughed a lot about the people in the town and he told me memories of what it was like in the 70's including a few hilarious but sad stories about a woman who just threw her trash in the river and had a son who was enormously fat and drove around in a ridiculous old car and told everyone he liked 14 year old girls. I ask him why he came here, he said they lived in NYC and Philadelphia, and came her in the 70's as a part of a "back to the earth movement" and came here in particular due to "odd circumstances". It was funny that I was replaying that even in my dream thoughts because the conversation was pretty dream like. I kept hearing someone call "Mom" and I got right up and went to my son's room, he was sick the evening before so I was worried about him but he was asleep and didn't even wake up when I spoke to him and asked what he wanted. Then I dreamed that I was in a library, and I remembered this as being a dream place that I have been before. It's a massive library like you'd expect in a city, only the books are on quite deep subjects, and the librarians are horribly bitchy. The downstairs is creepy and mysterious, but the upstairs is an expansive creepy book collection with no lighting except for maybe a candle flame to go by and the books are very very old. No one goes upstairs. Think the restricted section of the Hogwarts library, but being an entire floor and even scarier. The feeling of the upstairs and this entire experience came back to my consciousness like a flood, like I had just experienced it, and had never forgotten the previous dream. It was nighttime and I decided that this time I wasn't going to go back upstairs, instead I was going to leave the library. As soon as I left it was daytime again and I had traveled back in time. To exit the library, I had to go down a very tall series of steps. They were dangerous and there were no rails and no one seemed afraid but me. People coming up oblivious to my fear almost pushed me off the edge. I have had thoughts recently about how in real life I seem invisible to people, and how I often sneak up on people and surprise them when I'm trying not to. Then the steps turned into chains and you had to swing from one to the next to get down and I was just tall enough to make it. Then it became an apple orchard and I was back in time, like back in the middle ages it seemed like, sort of like the upstairs library felt like. There was a girl gathering all kinds of apples in a basket. At the bottom of the "stairs" was this amazing apple tree, and it was a variety that doesn't exist. The apples were pale and variegated colors, beautifully shaped and HUGE. I picked a couple of the biggest most beautiful ones for someone else, (friends who just appeared?) and decided I had to try one. The next nicest one I found was a little off looking. A woman standing under the tree said "You're going to eat that, that apple is HIDEOUS!". And I said "No, it's beautiful," even though I partially agreed with her, I started describing why it was beautiful to her and birds appeared on the apple as I described them, complete with bright colors and feathers. As I described them, a peacock appeared and a blue jay, their feathers sort of melded into the thing like it was half bird and half apple. I heard "Mom" again over and over until I thought I was hearing ghost voices and eventually went to my son's room and he wanted me to cuddle him. I told him it was the middle of the night, and stayed with him and reviewed the dream in my head until I could remember it.

@Nahm It kind of is/has. The haughtiness with which I posed the question and his answer was like a wall that got broken through and ever since then it seems like peace is falling into place ever so lightly like a feather falling to the ground.

What is desire without the mental construct of time? What does that feel like? It feels like bliss or truly feeling alive. If you don't allow that state through repression of desire you can't really experience the present moment. The problem is that sometimes we experience the flash of a real desire and feel the bliss of it and let it knock us off our feet. Then we go right into agony of trying to figure out how we can manifest it too soon or why we can't, and since we do this so much we start to think that desire itself is bad. The trick is to learn to stay with the desire/vision without bringing in resistance and inner conflict.

It's partly because you have to be creative in language use to talk about spirituality and followers of a specific teacher will use a lot of the same terms, so it can seem creepy and like everyone is parroting. As for who is enlightened and who isn't, things aren't always as they seem and projections run amok. It's easy to get lost in a maze of trying to figure out who is who and what's what but always bring it back to your own projections and state of mind/emotion.

Yes, it's in duality but duality is also magical if you appreciate duality with an understanding of nonduality. It's in that place where they meet and intertwine where enlightenment as experienced by humans and magic happens. Creativity is channeling, it's just includes its more gentler forms. Harry Potter, Star Wars and the Matrix aren't powerful pointers to the nature of reality for nothing. They didn't become wildly popular for nothing. They were a creative message from God send to us in a fun package. Have you ever been in a deep flow state, when it felt like the creation was just creating itself or the story was just writing itself or like you weren't the one running the race or playing the game? There's no limit to how powerful and all consuming those flow states can get.

So say you experience an awakening, and become pure being and lose your "self" in that moment. Wouldn't it makes sense that in that state creativity could flow through you so strongly, but there would be no "you" to take credit for it anymore, so wouldn't it make sense to describe that as channeling? That you became a channel for infinite intelligence when you lost your identification with self?

I LOVE looking at advertisements or any creative work/ideas at all really. There's always a pointer there, even if the person who thought they came up with the idea wasn't conscious of the depth of the meaning.

So does creativity always come through clearly or can it get clouded? Does it come through in the same way through different people, or does it come through in unique ways?

In a way I've integrated my awakening from almost 6 months ago, by that I mean I have my focus back and am able to go about daily life normally like a responsible adult. I've even gone back to watching youtube videos of middle aged women who have impeccable homes film themselves while cleaning so that I have motivation to actually pick stuff up off the floor and throw out old food from the fridge. Don't judge me. I'm really enjoying my work again especially with the fall and Halloween season and making money is a joy most of the time and not an obligation. My mood is pretty even keel again. However, it's only been integrated on that external level. there are still lots of realizations, re-framing and "ohhhhhhh.... fuck..." moments. I never understood how creepy the nature of reality is. I never knew how much I avoided creepy things or being associated with them. Also I hated technology and video games. Yet life is just one simulation. Why on earth would it be FUN in a video game to buy things, to improve, to learn, to meet people, to uncover a story line? Well... because that's what god is doing all the time. I've realized that I'm here to want things and to collect data, and I have chosen to experience everything that comes my way. When it's logical to hate the place I live, I adore it. Because God wanted to experience itself this form for at least 30 years anyway, living in the middle of nowhere. I don't have to care about other people's experiences or have fear of missing out, because I am all experiences and this is the one that I am choosing/ has been chosen for me. The rabbit hole of personal development and taking "personal responsibility" is deep. My life is beautifully orchestrated. If no one ever hears the music, it doesn't matter, that's also beauty. I see the nothingness in the everything. I see beauty and art as communication from source. Mikael's post about being a leg man gave me a huge revelation about men and their obsession with women's looks. Of course! I looove this time of year. Summer is dying, but good Lord, the colors. The leaves start to change and the mushrooms bloom in the woods, and there are still flowers everywhere and ripe apples on the trees. Of course I'd chose to be born this month, on the full moon.

@whoareyou Where does creativity come from?

Because the perfection of nonduality includes duality, "you" come back from a no self experience, the ego comes back and you have to integrate what you now understand. You also see the perfection and joy in doing mundane survival tasks.

Very interesting, thank you! I'm curious to know if there's a sort of positive feeling, or resonance or love felt when you experience another life. Since I was a child I had these kind of daydreams and sometimes visions of things that would make me feel a certain way. It was a strange but really good feeling. As I got older I identified an antique clock and a certain kind of old chair design as things that if I came across them would make me feel that way. There was also a vision of a meadow. I used to wonder if they were early childhood experiences, but I found out since that I linked to certain memory fragments. The town I live in was thriving in the late 1800's and I can feel the remnants of energy from that time period strongly. As soon as I moved here I started becoming fascinated and obsessed with antiques and old houses without consciously acknowledging the energy they held. Most people would say that it's flashes from a past life, but I feel like past lives are more ephemeral than that because of the true nature of time (it is not) and the nature of Oneness. Your video helped me understand this all from a different viewpoint than how it came through in my own experience. Abraham Hicks is one of my favorite teachers and she says to learn to stay with the day dream and stay with that feeling. We often move to finding tangible meaning or trying to manifest too fast. Not that there's nothing wrong with trying to find proof, but it's easy to forget that physical manifestation is meant to be looked at as an extension of the adventure, rather than a task.

Spirits only exist in your own psyche, but the potential of your own psyche is infinite intelligence. An awakening opens you up to infinite intelligence. Her teaching are about connecting with source, she is well aware that Abraham is infinite intelligence's translation to her. Channeling is explaining what can't be explained. The way she explains Abraham also allows her to talk about Esther, Esther's life lessons and the times when Esther is not connected with source. This allows her a kind of connection and compassion for people, as well as an authenticity that makes her teachings so powerful. Spirits comes through with their own flair and flavor. Just like the true essence of your personality is God ordained, you will resonate with different facets of infinite intelligence. If it's speaking to you, it chose to limit itself, so it will have a certain frequency and a unique feeling to it. God can choose to limit itself on the level of both form and formless.

@DrewNows I don't skip, I lurk. I had a conversation with my husband and asked why God wants to experience life as an unconscious person. He said because being conscious isn't better than being unconscious, which he later expounded upon to say that the meaning of conscious automatically creates the unconscious. In the woods today with my dad, I told him that God loved the world so he gave us free will, and that automatically created the devil or the potential for devilry rather. So I understood that my husband was giving the same answer I explained to my dad but from the angle of being spiritually awake or asleep. And I understood that there was no difference really. So I asked why and he started talking about artificial intelligence and how robots learn and are programmed. He said that if you allow robots to learn by simulating free choice with randomness they perform much better than if you choose a perfect scenario and program that in. We're here to learn and evolve. Of course there's not really conscious and unconscious and there's not really free will and there really isn't any time that we can evolve over. But I'll play your game God. Most of us say God, I don't want to meditate that would be boring as FUCK, obviously I'm here to do things! Then you decide that the thing you WANT to do is to mediate and you realize that you turned the light around and BAM. Gotcha.

@Mada_ Sure! Any questions in particular? Otherwise answer these if you would please. What is your age, gender, how did you find Leo's videos? What are your biggest pain points in life, and which are your greatest strengths in spirituality? Which thoughts or feelings that don't feel good are most repetitive in your experience? What do you currently do for spiritual practices? What are you working toward in life, or what is your greatest vision or goal?

I wanted to create this thread in response to seeking_brilliance's request. I enjoy teaching when I can informally but I've had some realizations lately that developing my teaching skills is necessary to continue my own path, so this is entirely selfish of me. With nonduality, teacher and student are one, so of course, how could it be any other way? As suggested I'll start by asking questions to first determine where you are. If you're interested in participating please just request below in the thread.

Why is my life one big unending psychedelic trip. I only LOOK at the mushrooms. I only eat the nonpsychedelic ones. It doesn't matter, we're inescapably one. Poison, nurturing, psychedelic. Fat and skinny, beautiful and ugly. I am them all.

He definitely does but the vulnerability of being female seems to be a constant go to example and theme. Am I the only one who notices or is bothered by this? Maybe he is trying to point something out to a male audience? My father in law said something similar once, about cleft lips and how awful it would be for girls. It's like girls have to carry the weight of judgmental beauty. Beauty is destroyed when standards are imparted upon it by people who don't know how to truly see. Dad and I took the dogs out for a run in the woods again and he told me about an extremely large woman he saw at work. He was talking about manifesting mushrooms and shortly thereafter we saw this massive bloated ugly mushroom and he said I manifested it. I told him no, HE had manifested it with his story of the obese woman. He also talked about a woman who manipulated her uniform to show off her shape and how all the men noticed her. It's hard to listen to and tolerate these stories from his point of view and know how objectifying he is. Later we were talking about psychology and I told him how addictions and problems can serve us, and that sometimes we aren't conscious of how. I used the example of a woman who overeats so that she won't be seen as a sex object or subject to men's advances anymore. She could be free from the distraction and confusion of being seen as an object and be distraction free to focus on herself. She could work alongside and with men and be seen as an equal instead of a distraction and object of desire. I could tell by his face that I had caused my dad to have a sort of revelation.

@Zigzag Idiot Thank you, I watched them all but need to watch them again when i'm more focused. Synchronicity, we ran out of toilet paper downstairs and then watched Leo's video. The "dark" side of me deeply enjoys those rare glimpses into Leo's shadow side. He constantly uses the example of having a daughter and being afraid of something happening to her. In this video he talked about having the fear of an ugly child, ESPECIALLY a daughter. I'm just going to leave that here without drawing conclusions right now. The fear of poison example of Trump going back to the Russians rather than woman's/witch associations with poison was so fucking frustrating/tantalizingly revealing I could scream. Sigh..... Deep breath. Going for a run now. Still have about a half hour of the video to go.

I went on a short trip four day trip this summer and it completely wiped me out energetically. Trips are funny that way, we often get something completely different out of them than we expected. You're doing amazing. Really, really. Ego backlash is a sign of great progress. Make sure to take the time to appreciate the progress that you've made. Also make sure to add in times for breaks, reading a funny website, making it a point to do something (fairly healthy) that lifts your mood. That's really important when we're trying to break habits, make big changes and are running into ego backlash. It helps to sit down and make a list of things that lift your mood and pick one from the list to do at regular intervals, at least once a day.

We love stories because all good stories are pointers to truth. The best kinds are the ones we lose ourselves in. Choose the ones that feel the best, the ones that are just bursting to be told. I'd love to hear them.