mandyjw

Partly. And yes, just not quite as well as I do now. And I only contemplated it because it was part of the human condition. I didn't not intentionally contemplate it for the purpose of spiritual growth. There's dark stuff everywhere in the form of the lowest levels of entertainment. People love their suffering, and they love other people's suffering. We don't need more suffering, we need to focus on what's real. Love. Connection. Oneness. But you all find it too boring, when really it's the most endlessly fascinating thing.

Do you realize how analytical this is in its essence though? Women generally don't analyze much at all when they connect people, it's all intuitive, it's all be feeling. And with spirituality it has to be because it's the thinking that disconnects us.

Oh no, love is it. Love is me. The pit was created by my own disconnecting myself from love. The last part of that sentence in unnecessary. Love is connection. Love is knowing beyond knowing that you are one with all things. When you know yourself as love you emanate love and when you emanate love everything is beautiful and when you see things that are not beautiful you know that you are disconnected from who you are. There's no need to dream up all kinds of imaginary horrors and contemplate them to discover the truth. There's no dark side of the truth. If something comes along that you cannot love you stop giving your focus to it, or you find things about them that you can love. This could be called choosing or creating a duality. But instead you never step away from the greater connection of who you are. Then that connection gets stronger and stronger until less comes across your path everyday that you cannot love. Then you experience the previously dark things as strikingly beautiful and the highlight of your week was when you sat in a cemetery and mediated and felt nothing but love. You sit and soak up the warmth of the sun and enjoy being the only consciousness witnessing the last physical memories of hundreds of other beautiful beings and you revel in the gift of life and the pure unfaltering love of the universe.

Look for the beauty in it. Look for the beauty in impermanent people doing things that are meaningless. When you look at a wall or a building, see the beauty in it. When you sit in a room with a crowd of people shut off the mind and feel/tap into their energy, even if just for a moment. It's an incredibly cool thing. It's that connection with life and beauty that you're trying to grow. That love/connection will ground you. You're feeling like you're going insane because you don't feel grounded. You feel this way because you don't feel like you're a part of it, you don't feel the connection. Look for that.

I view it as one of end of a paradoxical truth. The other end is something like the feeling when you look up into the stars and contemplate how very insignificant you are.

@Serotoninluv I did not read their interaction that way at all. He is heavily under the influence of a very pained ego. She made a wonderful effort to go to him and look at him face to face. Her words are full of compassion, but she is unwilling to meet him on the level of his under the influence of pain ego. That type of conversation is never helpful, not for him, not for her, not for anyone in the room.

Good. Good.

@tsuki Yes.

@tsuki I'm only saying that you (and by you, I have no idea if YOU tsuki are guilty of this or not but plenty of people here are) don't allow yourself to enjoy life as fully as you could.

@tsuki You don't want to watch the movie with me? Come, eat the apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It tastes good. Come join me in paradise. You won't be kicked out again. That only happened the first time because you didn't realize that God and the serpent were one and the same.

Can't argue with that.

@thesmileyone I completely agree but where do you draw the line? @tsuki HAS TO, HAS TO, HAS TO!!! It's a good movie, just sit back and enjoy it. Where do you draw the line? What is ego and what is not? What is an appropriate amount of separation and what is inappropriate?

It's hilarious but yes, there's IS a point where the ego has to remain intact in order for your physical being to exist.

If I buy you some popcorn, will you shut up and let me watch the movie? You're right, the physical body does not die upon enlightenment. Enlightenment can only occur in the present and it is a state of being that is beyond concepts or death. But in practical life you experience this state then you go to bed, wake up and remember that you have to use the bathroom, and there's a YOU and a BATHROOM and you have an ego again. That conceptual, permanent concept of FUTURE enlightenment and ego death is one and the same as physical death.

Thank you.

Oh no, I'm finding out a lot about what I think that I did not know I thought. How is that the golden nugget?

Are you shaming me for going back to implications and mind stuff? Because communication requires the mind. Freedom is life. I enjoy my life, I enjoy my ego, I enjoy my freedom. It's all an illusion, but it is a breathtakingly beautiful one. You're like someone who won't stop talking in the movie theater. SHUT UP AND LET ME WATCH THE DAMN MOVIE. I paid to see this goddamn movie, and I'm not leaving before it's over. I know it's not real. Stop whispering in my ear that it's not real.

One implies freedom and the other the lack of freedom?

This is why focus is necessary. And separation is necessary. Bear with me here, because I know what I'm saying is blasphemous and taboo and oh so very PEDESTRIAN and low level. Ego death and actual physical death are the same thing. Thinking they aren't is creating yet another a duality. You exist as a limited form for a reason. That is the very thing that means you have the power to choose and make decisions and create things as an expression of life. That duality of life and death is exactly why you are alive. Getting rid of that duality means there is nothing. You have to choose, life or death. Light or dark. Pick one and love, appreciate and thank the other for it's existence because it is what allows you to be. Enlightenment is just a bounce back into going about your stupid life again, knowing that transcendence was ONLY an internal transformation and not an external one. Disappointing? Only to the ego. Still alive. Still an ego with likes and dislikes. Just a self realized one.

I think that's the magic. Nothing is dark in its essence but we make it so in our minds. That can only be true in experience though. There is no value in telling people that Hitler was not evil. It is not something that intellectually needs to be understood. Trying to do so can be a dangerous distraction. The truth that there is no good nor bad but thinking makes it truth is a SECONDARY realization. Let people discover it for themselves and not think they have to dig up the most disgusting videos they can find on the web as some sort of spiritual practice and watch them without feeling or judgement to get enlightened.

There's truth to what you're saying but when you apply it in practicality to life you cannot choose dark. Read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning and tell me he was deluded. That's what I'd like, a little more focus on Viktor Frankl, a little less Hitler. We already know all about Hitler. They taught us all about Hitler in school. Few of us were taught about Victor Frankl.

@SQAAD Having no free will is just another half truth because it's part of a paradox. The other part of the paradox that is true is that this world is here all for you, just for you and you have the power to make it be anything you want.

@Serotoninluv You touched on two points I'm currently trying to figure out about life in general. I think that to better understand feelings you can make a sort of hierarchy, form (material beings and objects), spoken or written language thoughts feelings being/ body awareness deeper being, oneness with all life/ enlightenment, love, God, the thing, language and thoughts cannot point to. So feelings are the thing that really bridges our mind with that deeper being. That's why they are so important and cannot be overlooked. You have to move through feeling to integrate everything. If you separate feeling from being the connection that it is, it seems useless so it makes sense to say it can be thrown away. Feelings are something that one can be easily caught up with, overtaken with and they can be really difficult to regulate and control. It's a particular challenge for men, whether that's because of nature or nurture or both, I really don't know. The answer is not don't have feelings. The temptation to skip right from thoughts and intellect to being or deeper being is a fantasy. It can be done successfully, but 24/7 practical life comes in and ruins everything, usually in the form of what we call "ego backlash". Ego backlash is a sign that you neglected your feelings. The other thing I'm trying to figure out is the balance of darkness and light and you asked if I see them as something that should be equal or if I think darkness is a stepping stone. So far, I have always seen them as something that should be equal, because giving them equal attention was equivalent to the truth in my eyes. Now I've dropped that belief. To me enlightenment is equal to love. It is the love that connects us. Focus on the darkness is what causes us to judge other people and disconnect from them. Focusing on darkness in others strengthens our own egos. The darkness and the evil separates. It's value is that it is a part of us and it has to exist for love to exist. It has to be acknowledged. Beyond that it is something that should not be meditated on or focused on.

Well that's just it. It was always just you. So if you see something that you want to change about someone else you can, you just have to change it about yourself. Myself. Whatever.

Thank you. That's a really important point and I can't imagine being in Leo's position. At the same time I believe that the teacher and student are one so I see it as an amazing opportunity. We are pioneers in a way because spiritual teachings and this information for the first time is available to anyone who comes across it. Usually before you would study under a teacher and the teacher would adapt the teachings intuitively depending on where you were. That or it would take you years of seeking and research to get very far. It's incredibly tricky to make videos for a very wide audience and also delve deeply into advanced subjects.