mandyjw

Now? The fullness of life? There's the concept and then there's the experience. The present moment is the thing that has to be experienced for itself.

God is love, love is connection. God is connection. The absence of love is disconnection. Blaming someone else for one's own disconnection is hate. God is not everything. In order for God to exist there has to be an absence of God. Just like in order for light to exist there has to be darkness.

@Scholar I agree. @Leo Gura You are God. You created this community and attracted all the people in it. Their pain and misunderstandings are your own pain. The curse you brought upon yourself as a guru and teacher is that you will need to address the problems of this community as your own before you can evolve further. You need to go back and correct the imbalances. You cannot become free of ego and separate yourself from their basic misunderstandings and self-created pain and problems. Stop focusing on your own high level goals and instead focus on the basic problems of the community and your highest goals will become realized at no effort of your own.

Yes. It's ironic and paradoxical and too hopelessly tangled to sort out by using language.

I'm starting to apply this question to anything I do for spiritual reasons. Am I doing this out of hope for future happiness or salvation? More and more I believe the only useful approach to doing anything is because it makes me feel fulfilled now. I was raised by fundamentalist Christians who dropped the fundamentalist part when I was still quite young. I was still really devout as a Christian until I became a young adult but I had liberal views and studied on my own. My entire life, I was told that you had to do the right things because other people decided they were the things that would make you more spiritual. My entire life I believed the idea that happiness is a complete non-concern in the present moment because our faith means we will get ultimate happiness in the future. I keep falling into this same trap with non-duality and doing things try to obtain a permanent state of enlightenment. There's no such thing. Just now. I feel like letting go of the idea that I should meditate or listen or read any teachings. I fell into a state of depression and nihilism a few months ago and letting myself want things and do things for fun without judging how they might affect my spiritual progress not only made me happy again, but also made me a lot more present too. The things I want to do end up leading me into having some pretty amazing spiritual experiences. They are not scheduled and I don't sit and close my eyes to have them. They are spontaneous so i don't have to feel bad if I don't have them. Why do I need to cultivate something that's already my essence anyway? I think that this is all there is. I think I'm OK with that. I just don't feel like there is anything that I can get out of doing this "work" anymore. I'm happy. Anyone just lived their life and said screw it to what they thought they should do? There's a part of me that thinks this approach is really foolish or even dangerous. But is that part the ego?

David has a different definition of enlightenment than our collective definition that we have on this forum. It's a definition that I'm starting to embrace more and more, because the other definition is a fiction. HOWEVER, he who says "I am enlightened, I am free of the devil" has become the devil. Enlightenment is only bringing the light of awareness to your dark side, denying the fact that you have a dark side is how you end up becoming a zen devil.

You reject and throw away an incredible gift and your potential to enjoy and create and be part of a beautiful world.

Get rid of the idea that you should be meditating, that you shouldn't binge eat carbs and that you're lost and tell me how you feel about that experience.

But haven't those of us doing certain practices to get enlightened just replaced the afterlife with enlightenment? It's the same algebraic equation, we just replaced the values. My mind can't plan or think about the future and be present. I can but I realize that I need my ego to do the planning

@Alex That was fascinating, thank you. I'll look into him more.

I found what Arhattobe said about the middle path to be true. I let myself have desires but they are nothing more than nice thoughts I like to think about the future. If I find myself feeling like I need the future to fulfill me I know I'm not being present and I can always go back to being fulfilled in the present moment and being grateful for what I already have. Once you can ground yourself pretty well that way ans generally feel fulfilled, you can enjoy having visions of things you might like to do in the future and play around with trying to make them come about.

The LOA is actually incredibly hard to do. Years of practice will still have you accidentally attracting things you don't want. You should never ever start to try the LOA on things you care a lot about. They have too much momentum in the wrong direction. First try it on little insignificant things.

Yes. "Gravity isn't real!", says the person standing on the ground.

With meat it's really important to focus on choosing clean meats. My own rules are, Cow- Only grassfed, no factory farmed raised beef Pig- Only organic, (pigs concentrate toxins) so basically I almost always avoid it unless it's Christmas or something Chicken- Organic or only breast meat if conventionally raised, again toxins concentrate in the animal fat Fish- Only wild caught, low mercury fish, basically that means I only eat sardines and Alaskan salmon, but there are others that fit into those criteria as well.

Me too, thanks!

And there's where you went wrong. The whole time you were listening she knew that you thought what she cared about was bullshit. Which is why you're not ready for an actual relationship. You're too self absorbed and care only about getting your own needs met. That's why girls you know in real life don't pay any attention to you. The problem that could be addressed first is the wounded, insecure, frustrated part. You can fix those things with personal development and mindfulness, read Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, some RSD coaches even recommend his book strangely enough. Also do you guys realize what happens magically as you get into your late 20's and beyond? All of a sudden there are a lot less girls your age looking for just sex and a lot more that want a committed relationship. Those women will care a lot about your job, your work ethic and very, very little about your sexual history, in fact the less women you've been with the better, even if that's no women. You're the only one turning your lack of sexual experience into a huge problem. But I get it, you want what you want now and pick up gives a way or at least a hope of getting it. Also our culture is uncaring and materialistic in a lot of ways, and women treat men horribly and have no compassion for them and men only care about women for how they look and whether or not they put out and the problem perpetuates itself.

@Mikael89 Katy Perry's song "I Kissed a Girl" is not a good example of all women. Most women are not bisexual. Women know that if they make out with other women, men will want them more. It's a good trick, and it works. We aren't as disgusted by other women like some heterosexual men are disgusted by other men, but that's all. You are fantasizing and inflating the idea of women in your mind. If you think women are unicorns it makes sense that you'll never find one because you don't think they really exist. Would you rather have an actual woman or this fantastical idea of women?

Don't do it. It's easy to fall into the trap that you need to be able to do something to get enlightened. It's easy to blame the kids for why you don't have time to meditate and do all this spiritual work. Believe me, I know. We tend to think our kids are what's keeping us from being enlightened. It's the opposite, it's a great opportunity to put others ahead of ourselves and die to self in that way. You can only enter the present moment now, you can only be aware now, you can only be enlightened now.

You are taking how you perceived things in the past and projecting them and expecting them into your future. You don't need to do that. Be conscious of the present moment and all problems resolve. Past and future are always just thoughts and concepts. The Power of Now is the perfect book for you. If you like Leo's stuff you'll be ready for it, it tells you how to finally get out of concepts and past and future is a very clear way.

@Shin You're definitely on to something here.

@Shin This is the same hair transformation as Walt in Breaking Bad.

The consensus? Eckhart Tolle had a snap enlightenment after experiencing suicidal depression, he spent years just sitting around, then longer learning how to put words to his experiences and drawing from spiritual traditions to make logical sense of what happened to him.

It's even pirated on youtube.

Well this makes me feel like a huge failure as a woman. LOL Mikael, you're going to find a woman someday and she'll be great but you're gonna be extremely disappointed. Please, please, please, please take David's suggestion and read The Power of Now.