mandyjw

@Surfingthewave No, you didn't make me feel that way, I was just making a joke in general about the feeling toward organized religion here. Actually I've been amazed how open-minded everyone is. Our culture worships the individual, and the path to finding oneself so the path of devotion isn't understood well as being productive. Neither path ends in enlightenment but in combination, they do. Enlightenment is the combination of two paths and realizing the truth of both simultaneously, I am nothing, I am everything. I don't believe that Trump supporters of Christian groups are capable of any sort of devotion, though some of them certainly admire Trump because they like to see their own reflection. They are almost entirely built and fueled upon being against others.

@Leo Gura I know he's probably not on the level of rich and famous you're talking about, but Tim Ferriss is doing a lot to change people's perception of psychedelics and funding research for them.

@Bodigger I'm not sure if struggle is the right way to look at it, though to my memory it certainly seems it was sometimes. I now realize that I chose without choosing the path of devotion, I was born into it and Jesus was my chosen guru the whole time. I've had plenty of others, especially since moving beyond Christianity but they are all the same in the end. I have the same pattern where teachers that I would find and really resonate with I would quite quickly develop very strong emotional love toward. Looking back I understand it as the path of devotion and I think it is a common path for women and plenty of men. There is a lot of potential for abuse as you can imagine if they chose a living "guru" or pastor or teacher who doesn't understand the path of devotion and doesn't live by a very strong moral code. Now I'm trying to pick up my love and take it with me wherever I go. It's easy to fully give yourself away to something when you're blind to everything but Love. It's harder to forget yourself and be blind to everything but Love when you're all that is. Training wheels are off, I've got lots of skinned up knees but goddamn it, I'll suffer through because I'm sick of you all making fun of my training wheels.

What kind of creative projects do you do, start and not finish? One thing to remember is that while we have a society that is really blessed and advanced, it puts little value on what we're trying to develop here. So at the same time that we develop ourselves, we are here to experience things we don't want so that we can build what we do want. We are building upon lifetimes of wanting. Wanting a secure country, wanting a society with more equality, wanting a way to communicate to people across the world in no time, all those are recent wishes granted in just the past 100 years. How many times have you found yourself wanting some sort of new innovation and a year or two later, someone has created it? What I'm saying is, there is a lot of value to God and the Universe as a whole for us in wanting what we don't have. This is the very reason Leo if doing his conscious politics series, we need to build a world where these obstacles are dealt with. So know that you are exactly where you are meant to be, and you are instrumental to the evolution of the world. It's when we make our wants personal and focus on lack that they harm us. It's from that place of being connected with the whole, that you can know that what appears to be lack, is not in fact lack at all. We can only move forward to where we want to go if we love where we are on the journey now. If time existed that wouldn't be true, but it's an illusion. You have the gift of knowing that, the challenge is training yourself not to forget it so much as you create in the illusion of time. Please set out some time for your creative projects, or time for yourself to do whatever makes your soul speak. Even if it's a tiny amount of time once a week. Again time doesn't exist and it doesn't matter how long you spend doing it, it's our intentions that matter.

Try to read The Power of Now but don't force yourself, it's not for everyone. I absolutely love Eckhart Tolle but I'm a little bit aware of my self-biases. I can handle a couple different books at a time but I know that not everyone likes to do that. It looks like you're doing a great job with your business. If we deal with the anxiety itself we find that we have more energy for creative solutions and if we try to find creative solutions then we find that we have less anxiety. It's always most effective to pay attention to both sides. So glad you think you be able to do the jogging! I had great results from that. I'm keeping an eye on your journal. You mentioned the groggy thoughts, and what you call "dreamlets", I love that term by the way. Those will come up. We aren't trying to completely drop thoughts, we are watching our thoughts and determining which thoughts we are "thinking" through efforting and which thoughts just appear on their own. You can see visions, images, have memories and all kinds of things. Stay open to them, don't judge them as bad, but don't try to make them happen either. The more general thoughts about life are just to be watched and let go of. You're building focus. You're becoming aware of how your thoughts create your world. You're doing awesome!!!

The fox is reclusive, but he has to come out of his hole to catch his prey. Then he leaves feathers all over the place.

@Truth Addict You balanced Truth out with Addict, so you're ok.

There's a point where studying hits its limit and love is the only way through. My dad is stage green and does nothing but rail against conservative Christians and Republicans, when he used to be one. He doesn't understand fully yet that he only hates himself. The ugliest reflections in the mirror, those are the ones you make the most progress with.

Stick with a moderate meditation practice, continue with listening to great teachers, doing self inquiry, watching your thoughts and emotional state. Continue reading books and even doing basic personal development and plain old enjoying life as it unfolds, including appreciating all the seemingly mundane parts.

So there are two things to understand, and I'm in a similar kind of place so I can really relate to this feeling. This new understanding of life takes time to integrate. Habit, routines and practical goals for your life are still just as valuable as ever. Going back to "beginner" subjects on personal development might be necessary. You've gone full circle. Another perspective is that you see life in an entirely new way and you're like a newborn deer learning to walk on wobbly legs. You've been born again. Once you glimpse how you're creating your world, you need to learn to use intuition and work on things through pure inspiration. We have seen that drudgery and forcing things through doesn't work. Abraham Hicks is a master at teaching this. I highly recommend her at any stage! Envision the life you want. Create goals and go for desires. But also be open to the fact that those desires aren't yours, they come from a high place and they were in place before you were even born. Those are the ones we want to tune ourselves into. Sometimes you have to head down the wrong path a little ways before you know to turn around and find the right one. That wasn't a waste of time, that was a valuable experience in giving you clarity. When you get back on the path that is right it feels SO GOOD and you learn to know by feeling a little better next time when you're on the right track. @Buba You might like my advice above, but I highly, highly recommend Abraham Hicks. Check out her videos on youtube. She's amazing for getting you beyond all those problems and at the same time will take you further with spirituality.

What is Christianity in practice but people trying to intellectually understand 2000 year old stage turquoise pointers with little guidance? There's a lot of cognitive dissonance required to do that, right from the start. It's no problem whatsoever for them to embody stage orange in their lives while keeping the comfort of their religious background. Come on Leo, Chick-Fil-A, Hobby Lobby, Walmart? Money and Jesus go together in this day and age like peanut butter and jelly. Spiral dynamics evaluates different sets of beliefs for each stage. Because the beliefs of a religion are arbitrary, since the foundation of religion is beyond belief, those beliefs can and do evolve and change. Even in the video the guy won't go so far as to say that Christianity is evil, he basically defines good Christians as those who pick and choose the "nice verses" the ones that fit with stage green values of course. Yellow is the first stage that makes a false start at moving beyond a belief system. It's starting to get agnostic about having a belief system, but ironically their "not knowing" becomes itself a belief system. I experienced consciousness of the Holy Spirit in stage blue. Maybe that's only possible if you're a child at stage blue but I doubt it. All the stages are gauges of one's intellectual understanding until stage turquoise, when one finally moves into nonduality. It's very possible to have mystical experiences at lower stages. We know this well from the example of stage purple. We also know that no one purely embodies stages, they are often or usually mixes of two or more. Most Evangelicals are at least very well rooted in orange. Many churches and ministries are run like businesses. Being a Pastor or even a missionary means being a salesman complete with marketing skills being a necessity. I started life at stage blue and I was Christian through almost all of stage green. Being a stage green Christian is the worst stage to go through. You LOATHE your fellow Christians for their materialism. They hate you and think you're the devil. The church and the fact they belong to it is a status symbol. You can't really relate to your atheist fellow stage green counterparts either. And yet, you know love is all there is for life to be about. But you don't actually love anyone. There are just about two things left for you to love. Jesus and trees. In stage yellow you realize that Jesus IS the trees, well maybe you knew that all along really and you drop your faith. I mean, you can see and hug trees but where the fuck are you Jesus? There's no need to separate Jesus from consciousness or God or other religions. Then after an awakening who shows up on your path again? Jesus! Because you denied him, you didn't actually integrate him so he's come as part of your psyche to help you fix that. The whole entire time your life has only been about trying to understand those pointers, and that time when you denied him only served to speed up your progress in doing just that. That's a mind fuck. I just want to make the point that it's important to realize that religion is a path and not to judge entire groups of people as being at one stage. It's just not so neat and tidy as that.

AWESOME!!! Distractions are ok but try to get your husband used to your new routine if you can.

Your focus is the present moment. Your power lies there. By the way have you read The Power of Now? My best friend just shut down her grooming business when she and her husband had to move away for his job. Anything you want me to ask her? I'm fairly familiar with the grooming business, from the outside looking in anyway, and I know complaints and impossible to please customers is a given in that business. Other than having great policies of how to handle them, talking to as many other groomers you can and seeing what they do to mitigate complaints, just accept that it's a nature of the business. Work on really making the customers feel cared for. Contemplate this question, how can you bring your heart into the business more? What do you love the most about it? Instead of focusing on worrying about complaints how can you make your customers really happy? I know some grooming shots have photo props and take pictures of the dogs for the customers as an extra. People love that kind of thing. Is there anything fun like that you could get excited about adding?

How do you know they won't? You can't make an impact or any positive change unless you really understand something inside and out.

@Leo Gura Here's what you don't see just because you're looking from the outside in, most Evangelicals are 100% secular. They profess God with their lips but it doesn't go beyond the mind. Most have never known or felt what the Holy Spirit is, they have never felt what it is that they are supposed to be devoted to. Devotion is something entirely different from following the rules of the religion. As long as the religion is based on laws and rules it is secular, it is not faith based or religious. Most Christians literally believe that if you simply think a thought, maybe even say it out loud, then you go to heaven. Religion is beyond thought, devotion is beyond thought because God is beyond thought. They worship a thought. It doesn't get more secular than that. There is something called "Prosperity Gospel". It's the belief that if you do what God asks, God blesses you. That mindset allows you to take your stage blue rules along with you to stage orange quite smoothly. Many churches are very focused on money, on dressing nice to church, on tithing. Christian colleges are godawful expensive. At home, the other 6 days of the weak, money and materialism runs their lives. Most care more about the tax code and their own pockets rather than anyone else, including unborn babies.

Evil is created as a result of belief in an other. Whenever we try to separate ourselves from that which is us, (everything) we create evil. The Devil himself is the final boss to one on the religious path to integrate that which he separates himself from. But if you start out as a Satanist, then you'll have to integrate God as your final boss. Did the word Evil come from Eve, the first woman? The snake is also a symbol for kundalini energy, which is feminine energy that rises upward from the Earth. Our belief in the devil and the other has caused the repression of women, all because Eve supposedly listened to the Devil and corrupted the man. But of course the real reason is the tendency of the mind itself to cause separation. So instead of blaming this VERY tendency itself, this story allowed men to blame the woman and the Devil instead of seeing them as key to their own enlightenment and paradise.

Most evangelicals are already deeply into orange, though they still profess stage blue values, their hearts are elsewhere. I think that's the lesser known reason why Trump got as much support from them as he did.

The initial response to Trump from Evangelicals was disgust. In the primaries they campaigned HARD for Ted Cruz. But once the primaries were decided and it Trump or Hillary, it was over. They had already painted Hillary as a devil in their minds, mostly just for being a woman who wanted to hold a powerful position. Add to that the fact that she was the wife of someone they already didn't like for being a well liked Democrat who ALSO had a sex scandal in office... and it was very easy to gloss over Trump's immoral behaviors and stick with their party.

Yesterday I went out for a run in between thunderstorms. I ended up at the cemetery so I went in. I love the old trees, the fact that that's where my mystical experiences started and all the Easter eggs of names and dates and poetry. Poems about death and the afterlife, masonic symbols, what better place to study and feel oneness than an old cemetery? When I left Pomroy's grave the moss on the steps was wet from the rain and I slipped bad. It was one of those near disaster kind of falls, the narrow sharp stone steps would have done a lot of damage but I somehow swung my arms back and caught myself on the higher steps. "What do you so badly want me to see?" I went back and saw some new crow feathers in the huge stone bird baths. To my surprise the bases of the black feathers were white. Last night I had symbolic dream downloads again. I dreamed of the infinity sign. I saw that it was two interconnected paths, The grail path and the Hero's journey. The two as one sign keeps showing itself over and over again in things I find or see significance in. Then in the dream the infinity sign was turned on its side and spun until it went from 2D to 3D and it became a donut and I remembered it from Leo's strange loop video and how there is no inner nor outer but it's a vortex on itself. Then the donut became a tunnel and I saw the ring I so often see when I close my eyes but this time it became a tunnel then a starburst. Today was a really difficult day. My son told me twice that he dreamed of moths that breathed fire. I ended up being led by crows back to the cemetery and there was a white moth on the stone covering Dr. Pomroy. The crows cawed and flew over me the whole time. On the way back one stood over me on a power line crossing the road and stared over something. It was a half eaten apple.

Perfectly timed.

Can you do both at the same time? That's the balance that we are trying to strike. Often you must first go too far one way to realize that you have to go the other direction, and then you over-correct and that's how the center is found. It's all done by feeling, if we try to draw a line or make a rule for how we should act, then we are seeking ground in a world that is constantly changing. In addition our ideas of what balance is for us is never who we came here to become, if we try to form to our idea of balance or our idea of a loving person, we live in disconnection. We were all born to fulfill a unique roll in every moment and every lifetime, we were born with flaws and imbalances and those very things are our grace and salvation.

Everyone I've responded to so far is all I feel comfortable taking on at the moment. Thank guys!

It's crazy how much our habits affect us. I wanted to make this point too. There's a difference between unconsciously enjoying something and consciously enjoying it. For example if I mindlessly spend lots of time on entertainment and waste a beautiful day, I feel like crap. But if I watch a funny youtube video when things are really falling apart and I need to raise my spirits, that's a huge win. The difference is when I engage in an unconscious habit, I feel bad at a low level while i'm doing it but I am not conscious that I'm feeling bad until it hits me afterward. In the other scenario, I'm conscious that I'm feeling bad, perhaps I'm overworking myself or I have a cold, low energy, etc, so I consciously use a tool to improve my state and hit a reset button. Ice cream, caffeine and all other pure but possibly addictive pleasures are ONLY pleasures when we consciously use them.

Of course! Sure, you can either choose to the answer the questions I asked the others above or is there a specific issue you'd like help with?