mandyjw

Yes, shortly before my awakening I started studying the law of attraction, and I realized how dead I was inside, and how my ego had co-opted spirituality to steer myself away from a life of following passion and inspiration. The magic of life was already starting to unfold before my eyes and it just needed me to open to it. Can you see what a masculine trait/bias it is to say that talking through issues is highly inefficient? A woman with that kind of past trauma and a tendency to hide from her own pain would need a lot of emotional support and guidance to handle psychedelics in that situation. Kundalini energy is partly sexual in nature and works differently in many women. It's dangerous to risk overloading it, opening up to raw sexual energy without having done the ground work of depersonalizing the trauma. One thing that I uncovered during my awakening was how much fear there is inherent in being female and living in this world. We conflate our self worth with being sexually attractive, and that becomes a source of daily fear and insecurity in itself even if we are never abused. There are a lot of collective shadows around identity with gender and repression or neurosis about sex itself that awakening can show you, but you still have to live in a world where they exist. The freedom comes from letting go of it being your own personal problem and viewing it as a collective "pain body" or energy that only exists as a sensation beyond one's own story of it. Talking with others and seeing/feeling that those feelings are shared rather than being unique to you is the first step in letting go of the personal story. Many women are wired to talk through their feelings naturally, many men are not, hence men have tremendous breakthroughs with psychedelics.

The choosing/chosen duality merges. We are all the chosen one, because we chose ourselves, and we are all One. Love directed toward something is focus without effort, the word focus implies effort so it's probably not the best way I could have chosen to describe it.

No, I've never taken psychedelics.

Are you sure that the conflicted motivation isn't just a sign of not being ready? I'm not sure any method would work if you weren't really passionate about doing it. I believe the desire to do it is key, at least is was for me. Thank you. My experience was a bizarre combination of a lot of those things. I had no idea what was happening at the time, and am still working to understand it. I feel the need to pay it forward.

I'm really embarrassed to admit this but I think it's important. Someone on this forum acted as a nondual therapist for me in the journal section a few months ago. I started channeling my past stuff and doing shadow work, it got really messy. I could see exactly how I had as God written the story of life, and how every traumatic experience I went through was an opening of some kind. I could see how perfectly beautifully it all was designed and orchestrated. I had an awakening, third eye opening, mystical experiences, heart chakra burst open, bliss states for days on end. I had to hide the journal since because it was ridiculously personal. I say this because maybe the same thing can work for others. Maybe what happened was a unique situation, and it would be dangerous or useless to try to recreate it, I'm not sure. Psychotherapy and psychedelics are great but practically they are only available to very few. Psychotherapists don't lead you into nondual understanding with pointers. Psychedelics aren't a structured way to do shadow work. Both have their own drawbacks, and there are a lot of people on this forum who can't access either. Is there a third option?

The reason that feminism has created a shadow is that it is based on giving women the same opportunities to be successful in a culture that already has masculine values. Leo is right, it's not feminism that is the problem, it's a necessary response. But feminism itself has already surrendered to the masculine paradigm and just isn't conscious of it yet. What we need is feminism 2.0, but that will require a higher consciousness society. Until then both men and women will suffer because of imbalance. Would you laugh at someone who washes out and puts a band aid on a scrape and say that it just has to heal on it's own? No, because even though it's true that it has to heal on it's own, doing the thing to ensure that it does heal is necessary and responsible.

@seeking_brilliance Sorry I can't be much help here, I never had a formal self inquiry practice. My self inquiry process was weird and intuitive, and I'm not a great teacher for it. I need to further research it and understand it better. Follow your intuition, I know there are many masters of self inquiry here on the forum, I'm not one of them though. I do know that Ramaji has some great videos on self inquiry though.

@Surfingthewave No, but I don't know what went on with his own family. The beautiful opportunity is a love awakening. It's literally a can't eat, can't sleep fallen in love with life itself feeling of oneness. The object/guru/God acts as a focus point through which the power of love is concentrated, then the love grows to contain all that is. It opens yourself up to a power that causes you to act uncharacteristically, you aren't yourself anymore. It's the same thing that happens when you fall in love, the very same mechanism, only with an intention for enlightenment and nondual understanding it expands to include everything. Blind devotion is an unwillingness to consider or explore other paths. Can you see the subtle difference between focusing on something with all your power and choosing something in exclusion of other options?

The night before last I went to historical society presentation on Dr. Pomroy. As I walked in my old music teacher from gradeschool who didn't recognize me, asked if I was going to the presentation. I said yes and he said "Dr. Pomroy lives again." An older man remembered the aftermath of the fire well, and stories from it. He said that no matter what they did, they couldn't get water up there and ended up pumping it from below. Funny that he had a Rebekah at the Well statue and fountain. He owned another farm called "Red Gate Farm", maybe where he grew up. There's a beautiful photo of it, him and his wife are on the lawn and standing in the gate are Eva Eye and Thomas Eye, his niece and nephew who he took in. Last night I did my third walk at night under a full moon and went all the way to visit Pomroy's grave. It wasn't as scary to be in the cemetery at night as I had imagined but it was still an adrenaline rush. I laid down in front of his monument and looked up at the stars. In my vision was the monument reaching to the sky and the branches of the trees across hanging down with the star flecked sky in between. There's nothing left really, no spirits to haunt, but a beautiful place full of nature and energy, created in the moment in consciousness of it. I began to tap into those feelings, that haven't come from my own experiences. I was pulled out from them by the insight, "It's your life." I left him an acorn that had fallen from the oldest tree on his property and forgotten about in my pocket. I felt the warmth of the granite stone that covers his grave, carved to point upwards like a pyramid. As my hands were on the stone something thrashed loudly underneath the stone. A snake? I went back down the steps with my heart still pounding and a sense of peace. This experience was nothing, like all the rest have been.

OK, I'll watch it. I understand stage blue and spiral dynamics pretty well but I'm sure there's always a greater depth to it. When my husband and I were still engaged, my inlaws built their own beautiful church building because they are wealthy and didn't like any of the other churches around. They found this new Pastor who was very charismatic, but turned out to evil itself. I tried to pretend that I was not a she devil, and even attended almost every Sunday and pretended while everything was screaming inside me "NO!" but this pastor saw through me. As soon as he was given the position he started getting involved in the lives of church members, and tried to force my fiance to apologize for dating me and for going to a nearby college for engineering rather than a Bible college. My husband refused to apologize so his entire family shunned him for an entire year and left him with less than two weeks to figure out financing for his last year of college. They did it all out of blind obedience to their pastor. The Pastor continued to rip his way through every single family in the church. After a year passed my inlaws woke up and kicked him out of the church but not before he had done a lot more damage to other families. They called the past churches the Pastor had been in charge of and he had done the same thing there. I can tell you endless stories like this, my parents have their own version of this story that's worse. My point is, I've seen and lived through that monomaniacal devotion more than you know. It only served to clarify what real devotion was and felt like and lead me further down that path. Understanding spiral dynamics (thanks to your videos) has given me a lot of peace and understanding to move beyond anger about the past. I'm trying to make a distinction between devotion to a God or a mystical place, etc, which inevitably leads someone to their own intuition, guidance and inner being. That is entirely different from loyalty and love for one's own group or leader (collective ego). In my inlaw's church they loved to sing this song that went something like "Obedience is your very best friend, it shows that you believe." Stage blue devotion looks like obedience out of fear or love that is actually an egoic inclusive pride. Mystical devotion is pure Love. Every stage on the spiral embodies an understanding that is integrated, understood and experienced with a much greater depth, not thrown away. I'm afraid that if people here in this community conflate stage blue devotion to one's own community or religion based on their "idea" of God... with stage turquoise or transition to turquoise devotion to a deity, that they will overlook a breathtakingly beautiful opportunity. Leo, you are a master of understanding. There's no end to understanding, it's infinite. It's key to breakthroughs and insights, yes. Psychedelics are a path of devotion, surrender to an "other", surrender to a substance, but they'll always wear off. They are the prostitute of enlightenment. You can't expect her to stick around the next morning to pick your undies up off the floor for you and make breakfast. "Mind fuck" is not an accidental term. Find your Goddess. She doesn't actually exist outside of you of course, but she'll show you the way. Or God rather, if you'd prefer.

Sigh... "Was I talking in my sleep?" "Snoring."

@Leo Gura Why do you think Catholic churches have their members make confessions?

@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.