mandyjw

@tsuki If someone declares, "I am enlightened" or "I am no longer seeking" what good could they possibly get from anyone after that? If they were here to learn then out of love you'd let them stay. No one can teach without also learning. It's impossible. It's the universal joke. If someone here is to teach and only teach and is not open to learning then, what's their motive really?

In a classroom there are some students who one disapproving glance from teacher will feel like a knife to the heart. Then, there are others who will only sneer at getting 2 weeks of detention.

@Leo Gura You know it's a game of good cop bad cop, and you're playing the bad cop. You're actually asking people to destroy their understanding of love, love = feeling good. You want them to throw away their hope of love, belonging and inclusion as a worthless desire and switch out the word love for Truth Love, which seems like something akin to the Old Testament God of wrath and fury. Truth Love is not an understanding, it's a feeling that can only be felt fully if one lets go of their desire for feeling good over feeling bad. Huh. Nevermind. I get it now.

I worry about people who don't really know how to look past the pointer, because they are too aghast that you're using your middle finger to point with. At the same time it has a certain charm, but people are going to miss the pointer and feel the need to flip you off in response, instead of jumping into to the rabbit hole you're pointing at. I'm struggling with the loss of leaving people behind but you can't advance a teaching if you aren't willing to do that. I'm not criticizing but I am sad about it. Jesus lost a bunch of disciples at a turning point in his teachings. 59 Jesus said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. 60 Upon hearing it, many of His disciples said, “This is a difficult teaching. Who can accept it?” 61 Aware that His disciples were grumbling about this teaching, Jesus asked them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what will happen if you see the Son of Man ascend to where He was before? The only way I know what you're saying is true is through experience and opening to experiences that were subtle at first. This is the poem and a teaching on it helped me integrate what you're teaching a while ago. http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=2088

@Truth Addict It's ok, I'm free of my angry outbursts. For now.

I started it. "Brotherhood" like organizations like that seem to give men structure, acceptance and bonding with other men that's hard to get in our society. My sister's old police officer boyfriend was sworn into a brotherhood of cops he wouldn't talk much about. Then there are other groups like the Masons which do a lot of good for society, have nondual teachings at some level or another. Stage blue religion looks at general society and sees all kinds of outwardly unconscious behaviors, and says "look how refined and educated we are." Christian churches and colleges teach men how to present themselves very carefully and speak in a compassionate charming manner.I have a relative that went to a Christian college for a year and he got a lot out of it because now as a general contractor he just exudes this air of trustworthiness. It's all in the presentation. They are the "face" of religion, they are marketers. They don't see or care how Pharisee like they are. But the thing is, they do have honest beliefs bigger than themselves, dedication and self discipline. The need for belonging is so powerful. There's a lot of power in that, even if used for the wrong reasons. Having that kind of structure, a set belief system and peer pressure takes people away from their own gut feelings, it desensitizes them from their own inner guiding light. Either that or it requires that people be disconnected from it to join in the first place. I think that's the root reason why evil comes out of groups and organizations like this so often.

It's a necessary stage in development but if teachings that only go as high as that stage are worshiped, they will get stuck in that stage. Reality is really fucking beautiful, heartbreakingly, ego destroyingly beautiful. Beautiful things are terrifying.

YES, I came across that recently in a Rupert Spira video but had put it out of my mind. There's something feminine about manifestation, a link to giving birth to creation. Tantra is the everything isness side. I'll look it up Shaiva Tantra, thank you! I'm reminded of my humpty dumpty analogy, this understanding awakening stuff is always about pulling pieces from traditions and myths all across the world to put together.

Oh... shit. It was my own power I was scared of the whole time. There's no me, so it's not mine. I found Leo because I've always had uncontrollable passion, fury, anger, I wanted to learn how to deal with my anger. I remember specifically that Leo said he never had that problem in the video. Yet his advice really helped and I got hooked on his videos, so much so that I even tolerated the pick up stuff which bothered me. That was beginning the path to opening to Grace, masculine logical understanding. Years before I was driving home a lonely two hour drive on rural roads and someone passed me in a very rude manner and I got furious about it. 70 miles up the road I found the remains of his car on the side of the road all burned up. I always wondered about the power of my misplaced intentions.

Hmm.. you've really got me thinking. I'm very aware of the evils of Christianity, being on the receiving end of them has been a family tradition. Could my resistance be remnants of my moralizing ego? The church has always been terrified of feminine spiritual energy, they believe it's of the devil. The snake spoke to Eve, meaning woman is inherently filled with kundalini energy. Then as you've noticed, Buddhism carries on the tradition of honoring the masculine in its own way. Is witchcraft and the occult the only modern path that empowers feminine spiritual power? There are a bunch of things clicking into place now. It's almost hilarious and a bit unsettling. I saw through this defense during my awakening but I put my old beliefs back in place to keep myself safe. Thank you. Tada! I found this really old red marble at that spot at the river last week. In my limited experience you should be very general towards your desires and intentions and allow the universe to surprise you. You probably wouldn't want a girlfriend who demanded exactly what she wanted for a gift, you'd want her to be thrilled with whatever you got her. The Universe is the same way. There are times when you have to be specific but that would happen out of necessity and not just to please your whims or in testing of the universe, that is unless you desperately needed a sign. The key practice is to start to notice and appreciate all the little Easter eggs the Universal Easter Bunny has left for you to find in life. This is the same way as how the law of attraction works. @Matt8800 Am I on the right track here? Is it possible to become much more specific without letting ego take the reigns?

And if you take the concept of limitation out of desire, it becomes freedom which gives birth to art or creation, and the joke is it happens... within limitation. There's a difference between daydreaming desire and thirst desire. One implies creation and one implies lack.

I think most heterosexual women are this way, unless they are too affected by jealousy. Women are enchanting.

@Matt8800 Are places charged inherently, or charged by people's past there or both? A lot of the witchcraft resources I'm finding aren't very serious about the nonduality, self purification, moving beyond ego, and I worry about distracting myself, but maybe I'm being a snob about it. I was raised as a Christian and although I inherently knew the holy spirit was the same thing as what I was feeling from nature, I still had a lot of fear taught to me about spirits being evil. I go out in the full moon but I tell myself it's a "fear setting" practice. Magic and nature are one in my eyes. I just don't feel like I need to do much with what already is, I'm afraid of anything that will grow my ego but the more I learn and experience the more I realize that this awakening stuff is most definitely NOT what I think it is.

Awesome!

I've always been really connected to nature and fascinated by plants. When I bought my old house I started feeling presences around me in the middle of the night, I felt like there was a crowd around me and I wasn't alone. This happened off and on for a few years. After noticing poison nightshade on an herbal healer's grave in a nearby old cemetery, I looked him up and read his book which explained how he was born with, but also developed clairvoyant powers. After that strange things kept happening, I found the remains of the mansion he built that burned down. I started going there and getting insights. I noticed after the fact that I had had a number of little awakenings that happened all in this section of my town. The trees that I had had an epiphany about not being real, but just a projection grew by the brook that ran behind the cemetery. The place at the river I felt intensely present at and became obsessed turned out to be overlooked by his home. He grew up in the area up above it. I've become more aware of how witchcraft and magic work, how the bird baths and the monument and the stone pyramids on his grave are symbolic and the huge population of crows there and how they dropped the seeds of the poison nightshade there. When I awakened I gave this 1800's garnet ring that was my prized possession and left it on his grave. I didn't know at the time it was a gift for the crows, I just had the intuition to do it and it felt perfect and exciting. Yet it doesn't feel right for me to study witchcraft much outside of what I'm intuitively drawn to do. I could write a book about the little presents and synchronicity I've found there since and looking into his history. Is it possible for an area to be "magic" more than another? Or is it that I have less resistance there than other places and so the walls of duality start to fall away for me? Or is there a kindred spirit, or past life situation going on here? Does it even matter? Is that I have an inexplicable love for him and for the place itself and so when you smile, the universe smiles back?

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I'm hoping I can move on with my life.

Connection with others is our nature, whether sex is involved or not. Because sex is the most powerful physical and emotional connection you can have, there is a lot of disconnecting we do in order to get what we want or need and protect ourselves emotionally for it. We try to disconnect the physical from the emotional to become bulletproof. The more disconnection you engage in, the more work you have to do to reverse it and become connected spiritually with yourself. So which direction do you want to move in?

@seeking_brilliance Awesome! The timer obsession gets way better. Meditation by water is amazing. Let me know if you notice any difference in your thoughts after or for the rest of the day. I love the attitude you have describing your meditation sessions in the journal. You have a great balance between humor and dedication.

Chanterelles were growing all over Dr.Pomroy's so I couldn't resist and spent almost an hour researching making sure I knew what they were. They are an easier one to identify because if you mess up you get really sick but there aren't any poison ones you can mistake them for. I told my friend I ate wild mushrooms and she said "You know, EVERYTHING is edible... once." I have always really believed in the magic of spirit of place, eating local and foraging, now more so than ever. There's synchronicity on the origin of the name Chanterelle, after having learned about the Grail Path to enlightenment. The generic name Cantharellus is derived from the Latin word cantharus (initially from the Greek ‘kantharos’) meaning a drinking vessel (generally with handles), a bowl or a chalice. I just now found a bunch of mushroom art on facebook and am inspired. I also found this quote. "The little girl just could not sleep because her thoughts were way too deep, her mind had gone out for a stroll and fallen down the rabbit hole." ~ Lewis Caroll I woke up with a lot of energy today and there was a lightning storm early this morning. I went for a walk in the woods with my dad and my direwolf rescued blue doberman that I had to give to my parents when I had kids, and we found this strange ghostly looking mushroom and he said "There, I created that!" We talk about manifesting reality a lot. I finished The Secret of the Golden Flower. It's one of those short but challenging and profound books you know you'll want to reread and refer to a lot. It's incredibly well balanced between falling into nihilism, demonizing thought and getting lost in creation. I'm reading Jesus' Wedding by Mischa V Alyea.

I learned how to forage for chanterelle mushrooms today. I know someone who does it, and I was really careful to research to be sure of myself. They were yummy and I'm still alive, so it was a success!

@Nahm

It must have thought it was flying toward the light.