mandyjw

You can have all kinds of intense spiritual experience while running. I haven't had that one but I've had different kinds. There are people who are addicted to distance running because they have no knowledge or framework of spirituality, but they are addicted to the meditative states and the highs you get from them and need the experience of running to get it. Running has the potential to both stop your thoughts so you feel like you have disappeared and also to put you into a flow state where you can channel insights. It's like an underrated chameleon of spiritual practices.

@Truth Addict Because he wanted to feel alive.

@Truth Addict "No one lights a lamp and puts it in a cellar or under a basket. Instead, he sets it on a lampstand, so those who enter can see the light." Luke 11:33

If all you have is a fire hydrant, be happy with the fire hydrant. If you're at Disney, make the most of what it has to offer. Dogs don't build theme parks, nor do they build fire hydrants, they don't build houses so they don't care if they burn down. We have opposable thumbs, we are meant to use tools, we are made to build things.

Trying to determine how advanced someone is spiritually is like trying to catch slippery eels. The impermanent ever changing nature of someone's wokeness is as apparent online as it is in person. One moment they are a Buddha and the next the change back into a unconscious devil. Just like myself. With that said, yes this group is amazing. I not long ago shunned the mental framework that Leo provided, thinking experience was everything. I created a false duality between conceptual understanding and experience. I demonized people for using psychedelics because I knew they weren't part of my current path. But I needed the lessons from them, I needed the lessons from other people using them. We are all one, the forum is all one but yet, this forum and everyone in it is scattered across the world, one with the world.

There are so many years of beliefs that things around me are mundane, that things that happen aren't meant for "me" but someone else, or randomly or by accident, that other people somehow water down the magic of everything. Something I heard in an Abraham Hicks recording changed my belief which shortly became reality. She told a story about a little girl who was watching the big finale parade at Disney Magic Kingdom, and she just stood there with her arms crossed and a big frown on her face. Her mother tried to make her enjoy it, "This is all for you you know, all of it." she said. "No, it's not! It's for all these people." The little girl replied. And Abraham Hicks said that was our problem, we don't believe in magic, we don't believe that all of this is happening for us. We think that other people dilute our joy and our experience instead of enhancing it. Then when you open yourself up to magic, you fall in love with it, you believe it and amazing coincidences happen, and the world turns into a fairytale, a scavenger hunt of knowledge, clues and symbols. Everything suddenly is happening FOR you, every teaching you come across has a message just for you. But then, there's everyday life too. And there are those same people playing out the same patterns, but they are YOU too! It's maddening. That's what meditation is for. God is too kind to bestow this kind of crazy on someone who doesn't know where the off switch to his mind is. I sometimes feel like God misjudged me and made a mistake with me though. My off switch is a bit faulty.

People keep saying, a year, months to integrate. Is that a common pattern or are awakenings as unique as the person? I don't even know what integration is anymore, now that I'm the universe. How am I supposed to integrate all THAT?

Love really pisses some people off. They make fun of your art, that's where the courage part comes in. Thanks for having the courage to build something great @Leo Gura

It's utterly abundant and there are are no mistakes, yet it takes a lot of courage to make a work of art out it. Because courage and love are exactly the same thing.

I think way too many people think that they are supposed to create nothing, or to desire nothing. Everything is built out of nothingness so if you don't want to get creative with nothingness, you're like a kid in art class who just sits there and stares at a blank paper without having any fun.

Is it possible to get tax exempt status for a property or organization that teaches nonduality, God awareness without any affiliation with an organized religion? Or would you have to claim to be Buddhist, maybe mystic Christian or one of the organized religions? My sister is an advanced yoga teacher, and she is running into problems with only being able to help people on a certain superficial level. It's like the yoga opens people up to emotions and then she isn't qualified or able to help them deal with those. I have found by doing this work that being able to talk out problems, talk out your past and interact with people is huge to being able to go to the next level. I want to eventually partner with her and do retreats when I feel qualified. But I hate the idea of being stuck to any limiting religious structure or copying from a model of existing spiritual centers or retreat centers. Just by accident, I found the perfect piece of property for a retreat center. It's a really strange piece of property because it has so much waterfront that the taxes are more than the loan payment for the property, partly because the owner is so desperate to sell it because the taxes are unfairly high. Someone manipulated the property lines ages ago so that this piece ended up with the burden of having unusable waterfront property that it has to pay taxes on. It still has great usable property on the lake and the energy of the place is amazing, it's like time just stops there. The other plus side of the way the lines are cut is that it's private with no possibility of having neighbors. I want to buy it but I know I can't handle the taxes every single year. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

Your highest human potential is your passion. Sometimes that means you move from passion to passion in life, sometimes it means you lose it to find it again somewhere else, or lose it to discover the same one again in a deeper way.

@tsuki This book, sitting on his bookshelf in that video really got my attention and sent me on an Easter egg hunt. It's on a subject I've been really trying to figure out lately. https://www.amazon.com/God-Red-Native-Religion-Anniversary/dp/1555914985/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=God+is+red&qid=1558177477&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Thank you. I already have a business that I don't have any interest in ending right now so profit would not be a motivating factor for me.

I have the same feelings about my mom, actually. I feel like she thinks I'm a bad mother to my own kids because I'm more focused on myself than she was, but at the same time I feel like I'm at battle with myself, I'm not happy in my self sacrificing and I'm feeling guilty when I'm not. I found this video to be really helpful to me right now.

My friend recently got into watching Teal Swan videos and said one of her videos that had a huge impact on her had a challenge to ask yourself for every decision you have to make, "what would someone who loves themselves do?" So for the past few hours I've asked myself that question, just for little things. I'm more likely to take care of myself, to forgive myself, to take the time to clean up after myself and be present instead of letting it pile up for later. It reminds me of the flylady system, the mentors I'd follow on youtube would keep saying that leaving messes for later and not following your routines was not loving yourself. They always used the cliche advice how on an airplane if there was an emergency you are always instructed to put on your own air mask first, then help your children and others to do so. Jesus said to take the log out of own own eyes first. I believe that that is what self love is. Ultimately we cannot help ourselves without helping others and vice versa. When I get too focused on helping others, i help no one. When i get too focused on myself, I help no one. It's with love and interconnection with being that any fulfillment is felt.

Art, yoga, walking, time in nature, talking to friends and spending time with family, exploring your neighborhood and learning about local history, meeting your neighbors, doing community events, reading.

That's what being a mom does to you. Out of love and responsibility for a helpless life, you put your own needs and desires last. How is that not deserving of respect?

@DrewNows Why exactly caused you to not respect your Mom?

When I was a little kid I got in really big trouble for climbing up the steps to the head of the church where the Pastor was when he was preaching.

Yeah, he's really speaking to me. "All is one, now go fuck yourself." I went into shadow work not believing in shadow work and not knowing what I was doing or what I was getting into. It was my inner child that came out in full force. "All inner children love the F-word. It's the language of passion. And if we don't express passion and excitement it gets repressed and it becomes fury and anger."

I think so. I think back to my most embarrassing moment and no one said a single word to me or reacted much at all about it except one friend and what she said was mild compared with how blunt she usually was.

@DrewNows That's because being shamed hurts so bad that we quickly learn to shame ourselves so we won't have to be shamed by other people. Because somehow we think that it hurts less that way.

@ajasatya Good advice. We definitely need to blur and eventually get rid of the lines between organizations, corporations, hospitals, alternative medicine, religion and spirituality. So many of the problems in the world are because we have built such massive walls to separate these things, and to protect from liability, when really they should flow together freely. I'm an idealist though. I recognize that and it's hard to trust myself enough to take any action at all.

@Zigzag Idiot I'm listening to that Matt Kahn video now. I think shadow work or working with other people needs to be carefully balanced with working on your alone. There's really no difference between the two. We don't think we can accept who we are because we feel like others can't accept who we are. The more beautiful pictures we put on Facebook and the better that we curate them, the more we feel awful about the unflattering pictures that get taken of us. The more spiritual work we do the worse we feel when we really lose it of fall into an old pattern. When you have a toddler age kid it's like their tantrums are there to test your love. The kid really wants to see if they lose their shit and ruin Thanksgiving dinner in front of your in-laws, will you still love them through it? Or will you lose your own temper and hit them? Shadow work, done with another person is testing Love's bounds. It's saying here, I am this is the raw unpolished me. Can you love it anyway? If someone can love us who has seen our deepest darkest side then truly, we can love ourselves. If we love ourselves then truly, there is nothing about anyone else that our love can be overpowered by. If you can get there without someone else's help, that's amazing. But some of us are strong willed toddlers who want to test the limits of God's love.