mandyjw

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?

@Zigzag Idiot Thank you, I really appreciate your perspective. I'm definitely not going anywhere. This time of year I'm outside a lot and not online much anyway. When I see locked threads and the comments about why they are locked it hurts, I hurt for the poster. I feel like the poster is being told that they are not important, that they are not worth people's time, not necessarily the topic. I don't like authority being exercised unless it's obviously necessary. This forum is full of smart people. We can and do take stupid topics and turn them into interesting ones. Every single topic and conversation is a unique piece of art, it explores topics in new ways. I love spin off conversations. I love jokes and free structure in communication. I hate the rigid, talk only about "intelligent" topics, be here to learn and stay on topic, "expectation" that I feel is being asked from us. @tsuki Silence also hides many evils. More Easter eggs for Mandy. https://www.ppquimby.com/index.html Yesterday I went to a presentation on Dr. Pomroy for some people from away that are here studying plants. I had missed this part of his history, digging up who the mesmerists were that Tom went to. After that I took my son to a birthday party. The kid's dad is a single dad, and he is dying from cancer and he has gotten to the scary skinny and hooked up to tubes phase. He is only 36, and he could barely sit outside for half the party. Keith had to use the bathroom and so I had to walk past him alone on his couch. When I came out I patted his dog and talked to him about her. I was happy to have a normal conversation with him again. A few years ago I met him back when our sons were toddlers at play group. I didn't like how he stared at me, but I figured he probably was trying to figure out who I was. I even ended up having to go into the men's bathroom with him when our kids ran in there. Later I found out that he is a sex offender and as scary as the charge is written up to make him look like a pedophile, he used his cell phone to contact an underage girl asking for sex in his early 20's. The court picture of him is this scared baby-faced guy. I would have had nothing to do with him after that but his parents are my neighbors and his mom worked at my school and did me a big favor when I was a kid. So I ended up having his kid over to the house, and going to all the parties we were invited to. I saw that he wasn't creepy at all, just a great dad. The party yesterday was fun and relaxed, incredibly so despite the situation that could have been focused on. After that I went for a run on the river late, the sun was setting for the last half. Fields of buttercups, the calm water, tree frogs, birds singing, the smells of the woods and the flowers all in bloom, all part of paradise.

@Shin have you tried a neti pot? They cut the symptoms pretty well, but don't make them go away. It took me a long time to realize that I had developed a dust mite allergy to my down comforter and winter coat.

I'm having trouble putting things into words that don't diminish or trivialize what I mean. The changes with the forum and the stage I'm in make me feel like posting less and less. I don't want the zen master to smack me. I was the little girl in school who was gutted when the teacher had to speak to me. I see my ego in my stories and my comparisons and my likes and dislikes. What is there to write about? I see my ego in needing to share my life with others. Is that connection or ego? I see my ego in thinking I sound smarter if I don't say anything at all. I shall be silent and pretend to be a zen master. I could totally fake it, behind a screen on the internet. Ok, maybe some would see through it.

Ooooo... I LIKE this thought. I think so too.

Kids know the difference. I never believed in Santa, my parents told me he was just a story from the very start. Christmas was still magic in itself. That's the thing about magic. It just is.

@DrewNows Are there impurities? Are the impurities outside of the belief that there are impurities and separate selves who have or do not have them?

Leo's fear and hesitancy, putting himself in this difficult position of power, it's just all just for the experience of greater love and connection. It isn't fulfilling to follow in the footsteps of others, when you know there is only One. Until he knows that his love is pure, he won't show it. There's nothing more offensive to God than trying to fake love. Better to be a child yelled at by a parent who loves you than hugged by a parent who secretly hates you.

I keep tricking myself into thinking it's "my" ego. This sounds really simple and silly in comparison to what you wrote here. I sat to mediate with the windows open and my neighbors were carrying on outside. So the meditation became a unique kind of practice. And somehow I got the insight that it's not my ego. Focus on the ego being "my" "problem" is my problem.

Sometimes what looks like a meaningless joke to someone is a profound insight for some else. Are we here to learn or are we here to unlearn? Or both? I appreciate so much the work that goes into running this place, I'm sure we can all strike a balance together if we ground ourselves in love for this community and one another.

Fascinating question. I've been noticing as I try to bring in more body awareness and stomach breathing that it's almost like... disclaimer, this is going to sound really stupid... It's like I can pinpoint my ego and it's just this sort of unsettled nauseous feeling. It has the potential to go away and give way to peace or grows to make me literally nauseous. It's what I believed to be fear, resistance, annoyance and my ego itself and all it is is this feeling in my stomach that my brain was interpreting to be ALL sorts of awful things. When I go into conscious breaths or belly breathing, that's all that's left. So how to make it go away? I should trick it into being my friend and then push it off a cliff while we're out walking together someday? Ideas?

@tsuki You're making me all nostalgic.