mandyjw

Progress is not fluid, but it's ok. It's ok to miss meditation. It's ok to forget spirituality for awhile. The problem is not that you aren't living up to some ideal, it's that you have an ideal and you are beating yourself for not living up to it. There's no ideal you, there's just this current you. Your present state of consciousness is all that matters. Can you be present when you are beating yourself up for not being hardnosed enough? Self love and self care is key. Make some time for yourself to do things that you enjoy. Have some chocolate, bubble bath, stupid cat videos on youtube, whatever it is. Carve out the time for it, make it intentional. The rest of your life and spirituality will flow a lot smoother.

I really believe that you can. But you also have to combine it with some hard-nosed approaches and truly feeling sorrow and depression without distracting yourself. It's about fully embracing all aspects of life and dismissing none.

Prayer that is meditation with a little law of attraction and intention mixed in is incredibly powerful.

@EvilAngel Yep trying. You seem to be convinced so you're trying to change OTHER people's minds. So either you don't believe in free will or you don't believe that you are also other people and their opinions simultaneously.

You're still trying to pin it down. You do have free will but you don't. Did you choose your parents? Did you choose to be born? You have free will thanks to your limitations.

I really liked Leo's explanation of ultimate freedom in his latest video. You can't have ultimate freedom without giving someone the freedom to create limitations. Freedom and limitations are concepts that you just can't pin down.

@Shin I know, right?

@Shin Life in plastic, it's fantastic.

Kanye quotes... “Keep your nose out the sky, keep your heart to god, and keep your face to the raising sun.” “The prettiest people do the ugliest things.” “I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.” Sounds like he's pretty woke.

@DrewNows Yep. It's nothing and it's also ALL OF THE THINGS and daily I get wrapped up in what it is or is not. I got up this morning knowing that I'm supposed to go pick up trash on the side of the road and love everyone who threw it out while I do it. It sounds like a wonderful opportunity to build a massive spiritual ego. Then I saw on Facebook that there is a scheduled trash pick up event today. So I just have to show up at the library and join in... that was weird.

@whoareyou I'm trying not to get too settled on any practice or no practice.

So I'm a bit shy to post this, but I was just working through Leo's most recent video and I he mentioned this very topic so i thought that maybe the time was right to talk about it. I had an awakening a few weeks ago. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep was guided through it by someone on the forum here. When I was a kid I knew that I was insane. Later I talked to my friend who had read a book about a kid with OCD and I knew then that that was what was wrong with me. The impulses were sometimes to go do things or say things that I had no logical reason for doing. The impulses latched on to my strong religious beliefs and told me to accept the devil into my soul and I was incredibly tormented by those most of all. The told me to confess things to people. I made myself very ill confessing to my mother something about getting naked with other kids a child. I realize now that I could have given into it, and awakened as a kid and saved myself a lot of pain. But I probably would have landed in the mental institution. I didn't have the support then that I needed of the background of understand that Leo's videos have provided as well as many others. The impulses I had, they weren't intrusive thoughts but rather they were intuition on how I could awaken and see the world as it was. When I started this work I really loved the idea of having a clear mind or peace of mind. I didn't realize that my resistance to turmoil and painful thoughts was my ego. I had a spiritual opening with the death of my Grandmother. I realized that she was unconditional love. Holding her hand when she died and then touching her dead hand in the funeral home later changed something in me, although at the time I felt nothing. I thought I would be stricken by how different she felt dead than alive. I wasn't. Now I find myself in a place of not being able to meditate or still my mind. This isn't what I thought it was. I got here the exact ass backwards way that I expected to. I can't do the "work" anymore. It's all play to me. Nature speaks to me in ways that it always has but now I'm free to hear it. Still, I feel a lot of guilt and "shoulds" over abandoning the practices. The nature of my job is a highly focused meditative/creative one. I don't know if I should just go straight into that, or really focus on spiritual "work". There's no difference anymore! It's all a state of mind/no mind I guess.

Hmmm... It seems to me that this is an unfigureoutable problem. Or not a problem. One of those things.

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The first awakening. Eve beat Adam to the punch.

That is the very moment that I was always told that "free choice" was born. But the Devil also embodies free choice because he/she got sick of God and wanted to go it on his own. So God plants the tree in the garden, and tells them it's forbidden and the Devil comes to Eve and says it's a good idea to eat the fruit off of it. Then Adam gets to pretend that he was just a victim of that whole situation. But really, he created duality to BEGIN with because he complained to God that he was lonely and so God created Eve for him. SO ADAM out of his desire split himself into two and duality, male and female. Haha. I got your number Adam.

@Beeman So you are entertained by the reactions, you don't act that way in order to provoke reactions for your entertainment? Is there a difference? I don't know.

@cetus56 So when God told them not to eat from the tree in the first place, wouldn't that have been the moment they were truly kicked out of Eden?

It's expressed differently, most of the time anyway. Men sometimes perceive women as having less ego because they aren't as familiar with how it is expressing itself, and they are less threatened by it.

This subject fascinates me. How does one maintain a serious practice without getting a spiritual ego of "doing" about it?

@Serotoninluv

As you admit in the title, you like doing it, it amuses you. Why is that?

This is really interesting. We start out life unconscious but are blissful in it. Some people stay that way. Something throws us out of the Garden of Eden, maybe it's a realization, awakening, life changing event, realizing the emptiness of success or just maturity. It steals out innocence. Then we suffer until we learn to go back to the garden of eden by choice. After that we have access to both worlds, the world of thought and intelligence and the world of peace. We started out with no choice, then we were given choice but lost our happiness and in the end we learn to keep them both.

@Swagala Yes, that's why acceptance of the present moment is so important to this work, because everything is always changing and therefore what we are asked to accept is always changing too.

@crog_wallz All his videos are his instructions. If you had discovered him a few years ago you were along for the ride. It's been a fun one.

Wanting to be content and not be seeking is a desire. Wanting to not have desires is a desire. It's ok to want to awaken as long as you know it's ok to want.