mandyjw

@Zweistein Hi, I'm Mandy. Apparently you are mythical unicorn.

Awesome, thank you!

I didn't even know that video existed until tonight when he mentioned it. I laughed so hard.

Everything you know is a lie. Everything, even conflicting statements, are true, paradoxically. So both you and I having this conversation, this "disagreement" are two halves of a whole. We're both right, and we're both lying story tellers. Your reality, my reality, our reality, reality. There's just one reality, yet you and I both live different lives on some level, otherwise we couldn't be having this conversation.

Osho was enlightened but he got stuck in a phase. There's more after "enlightenment" and people disagree about what they want to call enlightenment depending on what they've read, seen or experienced. That's why these conversations can be so polarizing. Read Ramaji's book 1000: The Levels of Consciousness and a Map of the Stages of Awakening for Spiritual Seekers and Teachers. If I'm full of shit in my assessment of Osho, so is Ramaji I guess.

Whoa.

Joseph!!! We do need to integrate him, but past a certain point he just loses his appeal. You still invite him to the party, but after a while his jokes just aren't as funny because you've heard them all before, because you realize that you made them up, and you're the punchline. And that's exactly why you know you need to do shadow work right now.

@Karla There's nothing wrong with stopping and pondering! I got the list just last night and am blown away by the first book I chose to start from it. I felt overwhelmed just like you did but just pick the one that appeals to you the most to start with and enjoy it. If you're fascinated enough with a book you won't be able to put it down. There's no "there" to get to, the list isn't going anywhere.

We're all just story tellers. @jbram2002 was just at the right time and place to see the lochness monster for himself.

Bahahaha Osho should talk. He got stuck in the zone of zen devilry.

@now is forever Hypocrisy from who in particular? @Zigzag Idiot I've observed the same thing in myself.

Oh, you're killing Buddha. I get it now.

Right before Leo's episode came out when he first started talking about how we will experience everything, I heard a Pema Chodron teaching on this poem. It was such a realization and taught in such a gentle way that I was primed to hear Leo's message before it was delivered. I felt that Leo's delivery was still incredibly harsh but if I hadn't heard this taught beforehand I don't know if I ever would have accepted it. To me it's a certain wholeness and compassion rather than a literal idea that we will literally experience everything. It's like having the essence or acknowledging your capability of an experience within rather than any prediction of an actual experience. I can try to find that Pema Chodron recording if you'd like?

What Jesus meant is that you must not identify with your gender, you cannot identify as male or female and be enlightened. Galatians 3:28 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I think the only thing that could make this work more lonely would be being hated and complained to one moment and then worshiped the next. Fame is like the ultimate connecting yet disconnecting phenomenon. Obscurity is quite an unappreciated luxury. I guess both fame and obscurity are luxuries and curses simultaneously. Thanks Leo.

"Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. "I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion." Thich Nhat Hanh

"Do you want an apple?" "NO!! Eventually, it will be a core!"

That's just it, you do own the concept of it because you are God. But you can't aim to awaken because it's something that happens to you. Telling someone to awaken is like telling them to sneeze. Right now. Sneeze.

Can you make love? Can you make space?

Uhmm.... what????? I'm going to pretend that you didn't use that analogy.

Pretty sure it's this one.

Wanting to agree with people, or wanting to be understood by them isn't a bad thing, we all have that desire, which is just a deeper desire for connection. Just watch yourself as you do it, try to bring in more awareness. It's ok to want approval, again it's part of a deeper desire for connection. Is there a more fulfilling way,or ways that you can get the connection that you seek without relying on these pattern behaviors?

In the response to your last video I'm not sure if I'm upset by your "asshole qualities" (most of the time). We all have patterns like that I suppose, and I've learned to appreciate them in people. They can limit how much someone can connect with others, so it's great to be aware of them. What are my patterns? I've always though that you were pretty committed to encouraging people, that's how our conversation started in that thread you gave me a compliment/thing to ponder in one comment. Around 11:00 you said that it's always not good to put others above yourself, that who thing seemed incredibly masculine to me. I think back to being pregnant and how the first part of pregnancy it's like having the flu for 8 weeks. There's very little that can top the misery of those 8 weeks and you don't have any choice, your body has been co-opted by a new life. After that experience it seems very second nature or at least no big deal at all to put others especially your kids above yourself. You're very concerned with how you appear to others in the video. I appreciate how outright you are about that, where I try to hide or ignore it. Your voice is very kind.

What Leo said about how the techniques you must use to survive vary depending on your environment got me thinking. I was extremely sheltered as a child. I never realized how rural the area I grew up in was, I assumed all 50 states had similar populations, and that all interstates had just two lanes. In my early 20's we went to New York City. My reality was shattered. On the subway, I sat and looked around at all the people. Someone got up and started talking, it was a black guy and he was wearing winter boots that were untied on an extremely hot day. He locked eyes with me and didn't look away, he was explaining his predicament and asking for money. I realized that no one else on the subway even acknowledged his existence and I realized my mistake. I thought it was funny how the more people there were in a place, the less they connected with each other. I loved the energy of the city but found the lack of connection horrific. I thought all the women I saw were stunning! I realized how little work, money or thought I put into my appearance in comparison. I realized that if I stayed very long that my compassion for other people and my lack of self awareness about my appearance would go away quickly. It was not nearly strong enough to survive that environment. My life flashed before my eyes after a recent awakening and I sort of reverted back into something like what I was as a child. That included an increased interest and passion for the religion I was raised in, Christianity. My dad was a passionate Christian, now he says he is an atheist. I tried to talk to him about it and he got angry with me. "We sheltered you, you don't know how bad things were, how women were treated in the church!!! etc" I never had to go to church, or summer camp, I just studied the parts of the Bible that resonated with me and formed my own idea of Jesus. I even pictured him as an animal, not a human. I was sheltered BY Christianity from a lot of bad decisions my secular peers got involved in, and I was also sheltered FROM the worst of Christianity. Because we were so secluded, I didn't have a lot of opportunities to hang out with kids my age, so I spent a lot of the time alone in the woods. I would also visit my Grandmother or spend time with people much older than me and I gathered a lot of wisdom that way. My first introduction into Buddhism was one of my mentors, she seemed like she was part Buddhist/ part witch and she was brilliant and creative. She deepened my understanding of the magic of nature and gave me the courage to go into art because of her. My best friend was the only other girl in my gradeschool. Her parents we classic stage green and they moved her to escape the materialsm of the very wealthy neighborhoods they grew up in. She expanded my stage blue worldview from a young age. I realize now that I accidentally was born into the perfect environment to awaken. It's almost as if it were designed for me to awaken. I always thought that I wasn't living up to my potential by staying in such an economically depressed rural area, but I got something way more valuable out of it. I believe that each and every one of us is born into the perfect environment for us to awaken. But I still draw the conclusion that cities and rat races and that collective feeling of stress and pressure to achieve and "make it" that you feel in a city is the need to survive on steroids. I wonder if I'm woke enough to survive a city now, but I still don't think so.

@ColdFacts That's awesome, sorry you have so many restrictions so deal with! @CreamCat For sure, but you'd probably need more tools and dedication to get there, either that or have a huge break when you lose it all or something like that. Most people survive in high stress environments because they have a drive to chase something, and that thing is not a sense of Peace.