mandyjw

ThomasT just posted this too, it's excellent!

The definition of enlightenment to me is the ability to love purely, or the clear knowledge of what love is as oneself. This is Truth, the purpose of the universe and being. That's what I want to embody in my life more than anything. It's easy to get a spiritual ego and see oneself as someone who acts lovingly toward other people. But love is knowing when to say no or being able to say something difficult to someone. It's as if the person with a spiritual ego decides that they must always act with a loving response, even when it's inappropriate. Other people are made so uncomfortable by love, that they never show it to others. I have always seen in myself and others the tendency to react to someone who sees their self as a loving person, but has unconsciously made it part of their ego. I feel like their love is inauthentic so it unconsciously provokes a cynical, mean or withdrawn response from me. I have also been the person showing fake love before and provoked the response from others. Unconscious patterns always seem to have a back and forth quality to them. We play devil's advocate, we react against things we see. We are happy with some circumstances, upset by others. I guess that love is the ability to hold space for someone, or even something, to be the space. Interacting with others while still holding that space gets really challenging because it's so easy to get pulled in one direction or another. How do you know when to say no to someone, or when a response comes from love? Rupert Spira said that when you say the right thing is resonates in a deep way, it feels like when you sing a note on key. Thoughts? How do we love more authentically?

Lead and cadmium occur naturally and they don't know exactly why or how chocolate gets contaminated with it. Certain veggies like brussel sprouts can have high lead levels too. https://www.health.com/food/there-may-be-lead-in-your-chocolate-heres-why-you-shouldnt-freak-out I think that every food is likely contaminated with something or other.

@Zigzag Idiot I thought it was magnesium? Maybe I'm wrong. The lead and cadmium levels in chocolate concern me, everything in moderation.

@tsuki Why do you think I'm a saint? You're just as much of one.

I'm not a hero, I'm a HOUSEWIFE.

@tsuki You had your fun, you deal with him yourself. Ok, I give up, you all win, love is bullshit.

I caught what the kid's got and had or have a fever, last night I had some pretty strange dreams/visions. There was this light by the hawthorn tree that I recently discovered by Pomroy's that I tried so hard to merge with completely. I was SO close. I went there again at night during the last full moon. It wasn't as scary as the first time. There this streetlight flickering coming off and on by the place. The hawthorn tree was in bloom for the full moon, white blossoms in the moonlight.

@Aakash You're testing my love right now enough and I don't even have to leave my house, thank you for that.

@Aakash He made me totally batshit crazy/awakened too, but you'll look back on this and wish you held back a little more. There will be backlash. I know it's hard to do when you feel like you're weightless but try to ground yourself as much as you can.

I am starting to have some concerns. I understand why this knowledge has been kept secret so long. I'm back in the place I was when I first came to this forum, very concerned about all the mostly young men who want enlightenment more than anything else. I joined a spirituality facebook group and someone was asking about how to open the third eye. Someone left a comment saying to make sure that you have a strong moral foundation or things can get really bad. I struggle not to feel guilty about the state of mind when I went through my awakening. There's a need to understand that can't be satiated and no mind is the only answer. The comments on my thread about love concern me. The fact that we have psychedelics instead of trusting God's timing makes me really nervous. I suppose psychedelics and also god and his timing too. Ironically, the only thing I can do to get through, is chose love. Love through the fear, love through the disgust, love through the guilt. Love wins.

*Sigh*... tsuki, look what you did.

It's very possible to have a samadhi experience with someone through a video. The live video you posted a year ago had a profound effect on me.

When I look back at the path that lead me here it's all out of love or the negative motivation of escaping suffering. I used to be overly sensitive to immoral behavior, and so easily offended that I would rather not be around people. I created a job for myself where I didn't have to interact with people or leave my house. I hated people, and blamed them as the cause for my pain. I spent years mostly secluded as a workaholic and then slowly I realized that that wasn't the kind of person I wanted to be, and that I was the cause of my own pain, not other people. I needed to learn to love people, and I finally needed to learn to love my neighbor as myself. Nothing else would work. Fortunately for me, my neighbors were loud, druggy rednecks. I used the law of attraction unknowingly. I saw things to appreciate about them, I noticed things that were really quite amazing about them. It's like the world started changing and I saw it differently, through eyes of love. Selective love is not love, I understand this. Everyone is made up of the same stuff, the same consciousness. You don't have to get distracted by the egoic immorality that people display you can just see them for their true being. You can't see everyone as a reflection of you and let them be the teacher they were meant to be, if you can't love them first. There's no need for morality if you fully know yourself as love. I don't pretend that my love is perfect, like I don't pretend that my enlightenment is perfect either. Just because there are clouds in front of the sun doesn't mean that we don't still enjoy its light. Love is the glue that helps us piece together all the pieces of duality we created falsely.

@Serotoninluv That's so funny you give those specific examples, my son has the stomach flu, and I just got back from a walk and got lots of mosquito bites and I'm coming down with a cold. It was still a lovely walk though.

It's the difference between a botanist studying a flower and a child looking at a flower. The child is a lot more likely to truly see the flower for what it is.

What do you think? Is there any problem flipping the words around, as long as you assume that we are evolved enough not to mistake the word love for its more shallow meanings and associations? Aren't they essentially the same thing? We thought we wanted different things at the start of our journey, but we end up in the same place. Maybe love is the more feminine description of enlightenment, and enlightenment is the more masculine one, but beyond the words as pointers, beyond thought, they are one and the same.

@Nahm I think so. When I'm not thinking about it.

That reeeally made me laugh. What an absolutely glorious little shit that guy was. It's a great example of the mind co-opting love, and deciding what it might look like without regard to the consequences, resulting in irony. I think so often in this work, we recognize this fact and we decide that it's better not to try.

Now I have the beginnings of a sore throat and congestion in sympathy with you. CREATE A BETTER REALITY SHIN.

Ah... I like your edit. This has been a riddle from Nahm that I've been trying to answer for days, why no back and forth? That's what I so desperately want. My awakening both distracted me from that desire and made it more obvious than ever. It's funny that antique clocks have been coming up more and more lately in my mind, the pendulum metaphor really helps me understand this.

That back and forth is what for the past few days I've so desperately wanted to conquer. Yesterday though, that desire also seemed like a resistance to life.

@tsuki Aren't we all authors spinning stories? Contemplation of a blank piece of paper for a time is makes the story great.

So should you attempt to "ground" yourself in happy or bliss states the same way we do with depressed or reactive states?