mandyjw

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.

It makes sense that like the entire universe was scattered when the big bang happened, that the same would happen with ourselves. Therefore we all have to travel in different directions to meet. If we both wanted to meet at the statue of Liberty, coming from opposite ends of the country, the directions we would need to follow would look very different, that is until a certain point in which they might converge at the end.

@peanutspathtotruth For sure, both need to be acknowledged, and there's no need for a war between the two. Although the thing about war is, it can never go on forever and then everyone has to refocus their efforts to build a better world in peace.

But we come down off them and live in a world made up of symbols and perspectives. Integration is part of awakening, integration with the appearances of the world. What does it say when we are willing to submit and give ourselves fully to a substance, but not to another person? Which possibility is more terrifying? Which turns our stomach more?

@Leo Gura It's a type of deep surrender or devotion experience. The psyche only allows it to happen if there is someone to literally talk to and surrender to. The love that arises in the letting go of old things you never knew were blocking you is incredible. When I was a kid I started to develop what I later decided was OCD, but it was mostly targeting my biggest fears, embarrassments or my religion. Most of my life was spent with a compulsion to keep myself pure. My parents had extraordinarily high moral standards about how you should treat other people. I got compulsions to accept the devil into my soul, voices out of nowhere that drove me into deep depression. I got lots of compulsions to confess things to people, that was maddening. One particular one made me literally sick for a week before I told my mom. Before I had an awakening a few months ago, voice from outside myself came back, all were tied to repression. Directly before they got stronger and stronger. I realized that I was very impure in spirit, I saw all my repression. I saw for the first time the Devil as an integral part of God in nonduality. I channeled confessions to the other member who helped me in the journal section. I never intended to confess anything to him, I thought he would help me let go of my first mystical experience because I thought I was deluding myself. Then I thought he would help me write a book. But I started channeling confessions, I realized that I was impure in spirit, I saw that my ego believed I was good and it was false. My love for the other member and for existence itself turned it into an experience that was absent of effort. Hashing out painful stupid details of my life was thrilling. The key is, that you cannot "see" yourself like another can. You also cannot experience the surrender of confession unless there is someone who appears to listen. Sure it's just God, but as surely as we exist on this forum, God exists outside of you, here to assist you and help you see and experience God's love. We raise each other up in the mutual love and understanding that we are One. Have you experienced all facets of God and the ways in which he awakens himself?

I've been reading a lot about the path to enlightenment for creative people. Ultimately it is possible to complete both paths, it helps if you think of the infinity symbol being composed of two loops that are one. Where you start and what direction you must travel is determined by what gifts you were born with or what kind of mind you have. We all start out with some imbalance. The Secret of the Golden Flower, which I just finished today is the most well balanced meditation guide I've ever read for acknowledging the creativity that flows through the space of clear awareness without allowing it to take you too far into getting lost in experience. I think it really helps explain the differences we see in people's understanding and their unique preference for different practices.

@Arhattobe Awesome and very helpful, thanks for not sitting by the pool ALL day. @Leo Gura You know how if you truly still your mind, true creativity comes through? What is the difference between that true creativity and Love? Is one a force that drives the other, or are they one? Is it possible that some people act as frequency holders and that others are overwhelmed with the energy and drive to create and express love?

@seeking_brilliance We are in this together, I did everything alone for years and have had much more rapid growth since becoming more active on the forum. It's equally problematic to be fiercely independent than it is to be dependent.

@Zigzag Idiot It's great to see you! I finished The Secret of the Golden Flower, it's really good. I haven't read all the commentary yet. There were huge problems with the earlier translations and Jung's misunderstanding of it.

@Zorka Why do two opposite ends of a magnet attract? Why do we need to love and be loved? The answer can't be found intellectually. You can't be sold on the benefits of it as if I were trying to convince you to buy a supplement from me. We seek the truth because we just can't help ourselves.

Well, the good news is you went really deep in a really short amount of time. Examine the fear itself, where does IT come from? Control and lack of control is a duality, neither is the actual case, or rather they both are true simultaneously. You're experiencing a bit of ego backlash from realizing this. We often get sold on the idea that happiness and joy will be the result of this work, but reaching a depth of understanding means we have to peel back layers of protection, so it helps to acknowledge that the process can be uncomfortable.

Living up to the title of my journal is a challenge. Can't we just skip ahead to the part where the boy wakes up and becomes a man? It hasn't been written yet you say?

You are right, from my experience, you can tap into information and connection from "past lives" that you resonate with, if the both you had/have a deep passion, shared interest or a shared goal, you may become energetically connected and receive certain communications to help pass the torch on. It could be any type of unfinished business. Source or Oneness uses different channels to communicate, past lives are just one way, ultimately they are an illusion but the same can be said about your entire world and your very self.