mandyjw

Huh? What did I even say? May 26th was a lifetime ago, I am definitely not responsible for anything I said that long ago.

I can't even remember exactly why I started believing in it, it was only a few months ago a few mildly LOA examples came into my life and then I accidentally discovered Abraham Hicks as a direct result. A year or so before I hated the idea of it. I even found an old post I had written to someone on an Eckhart Tolle discussion page where I was harping about the evils of it. It's kind of bizarre how my mind even got opened to it in the first place. Life is happening for you. @Mikael89 You're smart, valuable and worthy of God's love. You'll open up to her someday, I know it.

Fear has become an obsession of mine. From the very start of trying to listen to my intuition I've found that fear is the thing that appears to block me from Knowing. But, it also can be an indicator that I'm on to something really good. Due to a strange family dynamic, my parents started their life together in fear for their lives and I have always had a lot of anxiety that was reinforced by my parents. On top of that I had obsessive compulsive disorder which for me resulted in random out of the blue impulses to do and say things that inconvenienced me, embarrassed me or terrified me. Mindfulness and maturity simmered them down but before a recent awakening they came back. They often pick my most vulnerable fear and play it over and over in my head until I realize that following through with action and facing the fear is nothing compared with resisting it. Trusting in them is difficult. Today they lead me to a hiking trail I that never knew existed. I ended up at this secluded cove, and had an impulse to strip off and swim in the freezing cold ocean. My heart started pounding. "For real? Do I really have to actually do this?" I thought about what would happen if I drowned somehow, or what if someone showed up and saw me, and I realized that the possibility of shame was WAY more powerful manifestation of fear than death or discomfort. So I did it, and I never even felt how cold the water was or how sharp the rocks were under my feet. The whole actual experience was nothing. Examining my fear I realize that I think I have these really big fears but they are imaginary. Everything is fear, annoyance is a form of fear and maybe it all can go in the "resistance" category. In fact my biggest fears are a projection of a future that is just mildly torturing. The thought of time always needs to be included with fear, I'm not afraid of losing a limb because it would hurt really bad, but mostly because life without it would be really hard for a really long time after. Mosquitoes and biting flies are annoying, but they can in the right situations get so thick that they can actually kill you. It's all fear. I realize that everything good is on the other side of fear. Courage is love that overpowers fear. Is fear a form of love? If so how does it appear to block us from love? Every practice we do to realize oneness involves working through fear. Psychedelics are terrifying, my OCD impulses are terrifying, meditation is terrifying when you think about it, you're locking your mind, your self in a dark cave of nothingness. Shadow work is working with our shame and it's terrifying. Everytime you give in you realize that there was nothing there all along. What is the purpose of shame? We have to live by rules as a society so those that act outside those rules and agreements are subject to feeling shame. In fact shame keeps people from doing things that society would have to punish in the first place. Shame is protective in a way then, right? Just like fear of death, it keeps you from walking up to a bear in the woods and patting it. When my sister was a little kid, a black bear cub came in our yard and she went up and patted it thinking it was a dog. It's one of the reason that kids are absolutely exhausting to parent, because you have to keep them safe from themselves all the time. Yet to be enlightened you must become like a child again. Is it possible, or even desirable to dissolve all fear?

He must really want us to keep discussing then. Lobster used to be fed to prisoners, used as fertilizer and everyone hated it. Now it's a delicacy. Ancient Egyptians used to throw brains away useless when they mummified people because they thought they were unimportant. What creates a thing? What makes a thing useful or useless, desirable or unwanted? Do psychedelics have any meaning outside of whatever meaning you create for them to have? It seems like other people created the meaning and purpose for things, it doesn't seem like we created it.

@Mikael89 You don't believe in nonduality? You believe that there is truth and untruth? Are you still fighting for peace?

Don't be afraid or concerned, Leo is already doing this, all of his students are already creating their own image with or without the use of physical psychedelics.

@electroBeam This sounds really silly, but it's through love, you love them and they love you back. That goes for both gurus and trees. All trees are one, all trees are sacred. Sometimes you find one that's willing to be a symbol to you, to teach you the nature of the greater world. The tree that was the most symbolic to me was a tree that had grown into two and was breaking apart. I heard it splitting apart in the woods and I went to it and it showed me the nature of duality, how we are separate but together at the same time. I have since found by reading Nahm's posts here, that there's an actual word for that, holon. To make that particular tree even more interesting, one side is breaking and appears to be torn apart and the other side appears completely whole and undamaged.

WAY back, it was the one about how we are all chimps from a long while back, what's the name of that one? That one just got stuck in my head, I didn't have to work to contemplate it, it was like once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. Also "How To Stop Being A Workaholic" because that was a HUGE struggle in my life. This one was amazing, I was able to tap into Leo's experience just by watching it.

It's more paradoxical and nuanced than that. You desire something, but you let go of it, and when you do it has a chance to come to you. The universe wants to surprise us. We think we know what we want but we only ever have glimpses, if we could design the perfect partner we would be horribly bored by them. So you can't ever get what you want anyway, you have to let go of your demands and the specifics so you can know what you want and when you KNOW it you also get it.

I caught a fish once but it was too big to reel in on my own and I was terrified of it. I was so afraid that I threw the fishing line and someone else grabbed it, reeled the fish in and took it off the hook. Then I still wanted to take credit for catching the fish but I realized that I couldn't.

@Shin Trying so hard to not be profound that you are actually quite profound.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. Teachers come in all kinds of forms, the forms of unconscious people and deeply enlightened beings, like trees. You'll miss them if you have the idea of a perfect guru in your head.

WHERE HAS DAVID GONE? I think I understand him now.

Both living over and over and death are illusions your mind made up. Still though, you are going to get older and time is a limitation that we have created for our own freedom to achieve things. Knowing that you will "die" soon is helpful so do everything that is important to you. That thought can be paralyzing and depressing though. So a balanced person embraces the paradox that everything already is, and nothing ever was so what you do doesn't matter. Then you get in the position of having time to play and do whatever great or small things you want, no pressure. And in that environment, masterpieces are often created. Or not. Be careful with "not knowing." Sometimes not knowing is more like, "I don't want to contemplate that, I'll ignore it." You can get to deeply know both sides of a paradox and the center. Then you will know know through not knowing.

Even after you are enlightened or have a major awakening, old mind patterns continue to function. Those patterns can result in all kinds of behaviors persisting after enlightenment. You are always going to be rewiring the brain and continuing to fine tune it or you'll be stagnant and stuck in those patterns. That's why I believe the best thing is to resolve that you'll be self actualizing always, there's no finish line.

I'm doing good this morning, and anyway, disagreeing with you always cheers me up.

I miss David Hammond.

@Nahm

I am the Body of Christ. See, you have to pressure yourself into being perfect, I'm allowed to be a sinner because I already forgave myself for all that past and future stuff.

@Nahm Is that what you meant by your note that you wrote for yourself? "There's no reincarnation"

That's a half truth.

18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” 19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Well then, sounds like a nice convenient way to skip over your shadow work. Jon and I were lab partners before we started dating and we had to draw some crystals. We were each supposed to do our own page, I made some pretty drawings and he took mine and handed them in with his analysis so I had to wait until they came back to hand in mind, very late. I was really disappointed that he would do that to me. Somehow this is reminding me of that experience.

Humility is the Devil's trick, but the mistake is in thinking that the Devil has a last trick.