mandyjw

Art starts with a blank canvas.

@SilentTears Thank you so much! Sometimes I doubt the spontaneity in them but I know it speaks better than I do. Ever since I was a kid I've had the potential to get really, really high off a specific song. It wears off after a little while, and then every now and then a song will hit me again. Due to small schools and whatever circumstances my knowledge about music is very lacking, but the appreciation makes up for it and more. I have no f-ing clue what I'm hearing, there's zero thoughts about it. I don't even pay attention to lyrics, I serially ignore them. I love the word serial now. I think I deleted the entry I had of going into that and dissolving connotations. Serial as in a book series. We are Serial Plagiarists. It's all write. This whole no separate minds thing is incredibly delightful once you get over the initial shock of it. When I was a kid, I always wished that I could somehow text my friends instead of going all summer without talking to them, and then a few years later that was actually possible. But it wasn't quite all I wanted from it. Now I "know" that distance, isolation, and not even death is never a barrier to communication. The only barrier is me, and my own disconnection with me. Yesterday I had an impulse to look back at a sign when we were playing mini golf that said "Beware" and realized beware is just be and aware shoved together. I knew that, but the connotations there, "I'm a separate self that should expect something threatening and negative" rather than, you are being, you are aware, be aware was quite beautiful, be you to the full.

This whole no separate minds thing is incredibly fun once you get over the initial shock of it.

Practice pure appreciation. Appreciate people without needing anything from them. Or flowers, or the sky, or graffiti on the street, whatever. It's amazing how fast and how far this will take you. Suddenly everyone is like a god unto themselves. Suddenly there are no unimpressive people, so how on earth could you possibly be one of them?

Attachment is suffering, not in the future, as if you could let go of a thing and be secure in that you'd be free of suffering in the future, but as an indicator right now that there's some attachment to a belief that isn't aligned, or a misunderstanding. You cannot be attached to things, there are no things. The idea that you can be attached is an attachment. There's string theory, but there are no actual strings.

Sexuality is inseparable from a whole lot of other really great stuff, it's very linked with creative energy. Maybe drop the already charged topic of sex and explore your creative side, look into some creative outlets and it could be that the insight/healing you seek about the particular subject will come about when you least expect it.

I've felt like through a lot of my life there's been this war between following my own Source and trying to be someone else's idea of good. Yesterday I had an insight. If I devote myself to one who Knows, if I give someone my own authority, how do I know that they Know? How do I know that I'm not deluded? Because I think I know that they know. I trust another as an excuse to secretly, unconsciously trust myself under the guise of insecurity. I can play doctor. I can play patient. I can be whatever I want to be. I could fix my character, like I fixed the gap between my teeth that my parents always said added character. I could completely remove my character. I have the patients. Patience. To change. For who? For who? Another character? That's funny. I sat down to journal about something in particular. Now so many different people and issues come to mind that I have so many different insecurities or beefs with seems to all merge and dissolve. If you created the problem, you cannot solve it, you can only dis-solve it. My God was a fraud. It even rhymes. Of course. Of COURSE. God I need you, to cover over the fact that I'm a fraud. I processed you. Huh? That was supposed to read possessed. Boy I've gone all the places I wasn't supposed to go in this mind haven't I. BlaspheME. Eat from the tree. Sorry, this kind of energy just got me lately. Who are you apologizing to? Me. Who let this loose into the world? Uhmmm... What would hold it back? "There's a blaze of light in every word."

Mechanics is not separate from mind or psychology. LOA states that like attracts like, so when you are feeling good, good things come into your experience, because you real- ize them. Realize, become aware of, real-ize, manifest into reality. There is no reality outside of consciousness, outside of your awareness of it. Again you are more likely to be aware of them, because love is ultimately nothing but the pure Light of Awareness, is allows everything to be and is not separate from it. Feeling good is a indicator of your awareness, of how in alignment you are.

@Anahata So happy you came to the forum.

The uni verse has no borders. Neither does the field of vision reading this line of words.

I do. One. I see black that is one and white around one that is not one. If I take one away one is gone. One. g-one

@ivankiss One implies borders. So one is one separate thing, so two is two ones, three is three ones and away we go.

I wrote this as a response to someone caught in thought loops, trying not to think and it ended up fitting the video I just made really well too. There is no keeper of happiness and no one happiness is kept from as we are non dual (not two) Self and Happiness are not separate, and not things. We start to make thinking into a problem, when thinking is the maker of problems. We are a thought. We are the maker of problems. Spinning, spinning. This is all fine. In fact it's freaking BEAUTIFUL. It's a BRILLIANT MASTERPIECE. Well played, well played. You're not the character in the story addicted to alcohol/drugs/food (thought) you are the author of the story who thought that would be a good story line to teach some transcendent truth or entertain or because Love or whatever. Whatever you focus on you get more of. There is a narrative of "I am bad, I am addicted to thought, I can't stop thinking." And since you are actually not the thought "I" or the thought "addicted" or the thought "bad", or even the thinker of these thoughts but the creator IT IS SO. It seems so. M*** F**! That's how powerful you really are. So just focus on what you want to focus on. No biggy. Create what you want to create. I find journaling even more key than the practice of meditation. When I'm writing, I'm very aware of my thoughts, my eyes can even see them in front of me, they have to all line up in order to get out. It's seen that even though the thoughts are being completely indulged, completely released, I am not them but the awareness of them. And then I tap into a kind of flow that becomes one with the words. Feels amazing. Thought or not. Who gives a damn! I don't. I love you anyway. By the way, you're taking up too much dialog space in my book, so cut it out. Just kidding. You don't take up any space, not matter what you do. There is no waste, no editing, no cutting, no beginning, no ending, just...

What's wrong with sorrow and flatness? There's plenty of sorrow and flatness is the best most transcendent, inspirational novels ever written. From Moby Dick to Harry Potter. You aren't a character in this story, you're the author. Nothing more flat than that. No greater love than that.

The nature of thought seems to be dual. Our actual direct experience, already, now is nondual. The nature of thought is comparison, difference, separation/combination, and opposites. Cold weather outside feels cold because it's a difference from the warmth inside. Touch your desk or some other surface and really feel what you feel. Is your hand actually a separate sensation from the desk? Do you remember your birth? When did you begin? If you have no knowledge of your beginning, what makes you think you'll ever end? Even the question, which position do we take dual or nondual? is going on the paradigm that we have to pick one over the other. Duality. Even the assumption "there is no good or bad" implies this statement is correct and the statement "good is good and bad is bad" is incorrect. As you might be feeling right now, nonduality is strangely unsatisfying to the mind, and yet oh my God, you'll never find anything more satisfying than the realization that you can just drop the war of thought games at any time.

No more screen time for you until your room is cleaned young man.

If a character in a story realizes that he is not the character but actually the author, does it matter to the character? Does it matter to the author? Does it make any difference to the maker/creator of differences? The bottom line is that with this realization you are free to let go of perspectives that hold you apart from anyone else, free to let go of any fears of judgement, and can life for joy and love fully for the first time. You don't have to. But you probably want to. Everything else that doesn't feel like the thrill of being or the peace of being, or the love of being not separate from anyone or all else is just a perspective that you can let go of.

If you're sort of thinking of love as this particular sorta thing, like love for or from a person, think more broadly. Like pumpkin spice coffee in September, sunsets, and the way puppy feet smell. Just notice when those sort of things come up in life, (whatever they are for you) and notice when you effortlessly feel love without trying.

These are patterns I've seen manifest in a lot of older women. None are exclusive to women. Over-identification with caretaking roles, a sort of mild codependency. Obsessing over a sick relative. With that said there is very little support for caregivers in our culture. Getting good childcare or eldercare in this country can be really difficult. If you take responsibility for someone it can be hard to step back from the role both in identification with it, and difficult in more practical manner of just getting assistance. This can also take the form of hypochondria and obsessing over one's own health. Unfortunately our medical system is equally obsessed over the possibility of getting sued or blamed, and so happy to order tests that this behavior is not properly pointed out to patients for the most part and is instead indulged. Another common pattern, creating dramatic and unnecessary negative situations with contractors, hired help or neighbors, etc. Basically all boils down to over-focusing on negatives and what's wrong in life and feeling victim to it. Being a victim is lonely, and it strangely it requires a lot of work to stay that way.

I got kinda consumed by the fire of devotion and while driving and had the thought, "I would throw myself under the bus..." and sort of questioned the I Am in that. Then a few seconds later a bunny rabbit stepped out in front of my car, I swerved, and it went along the side of road ok and I realized, I AM the bus.

I've always mostly felt like I've had a very full, blessed life and have lots of great memories but also wouldn't want to actually go back and relive ANY of it. Nostalgia is always a longing for the past in the future or an appreciation of what's present. Mind mixes up images, places, people, circumstances with happiness and believe happiness is a state that can be caused by them. Happiness is actually uncaused, so a memory could seem to cause it in the same way an enjoying ice cream cone in the present might seem to cause it. Both are false causes.

I could make up any spiritual, philosophical, diet or thought system I wanted and it would show itself to me as true. I could teach others the same thing with conviction and if they were true believers inclined toward it, it would show itself to them too. Or I could follow any other system and it would show itself to be true for me. This is what nearly everyone does to one degree or another, materialism seems to run the show around here. Yet you have lots of camps of religious and spiritual people who believe a wide variety of systems. This is why the only true thing you can say is to point to the creation of experience, the I Am. It is the truth that you create your truth, the truth that ultimately, there is no you. Like you have created your view of the world around you, you are the world around you. The secret to being truly grounded is to not grasp for any ground at all. A person believes that he uses thought, he thinks thought. What he doesn't see is the brilliant twist that he IS a thought. And so, he is used by thought. It is not until you see that you are a thought, that you finally cease to be used by thought. This is true possession. The person who believes they posses thought is actually possessed by thought, they create an entity, a self who can posses, and so they ARE possessed. You could say that you are the receiver of thought. In the realization that you have no control over thought, you paradoxically tap into the creative power of it. You do not fight every thought, you, like someone walking through a crowd, simply navigate around the people you meet rather than fighting every single one. Occasionally you meet someone and have an interaction with them that's enlightening, enjoyable, that gives direction.

@Someone here What you resist persists. You don't know what dark is if you don't know what light is. A Republican defines a Democrat and vice versa. All knowing and identification is based on comparing and contrasting.

They are opposites, but in reality they aren't two separate things, creating one implies the other. If I have a blank sheet of paper and I draw a circle on it, I didn't just create a circle and the space within the circle, I created a circle and the area around the circle, the negative space of the circle. People act arrogant outwardly to cover over their own insecurities. Someone who sees weakness as being unacceptable will put on a strong façade. Someone who sees arrogance as unacceptable will put on a meek façade. They may truly believe themselves to be the façade. True Knowing and true Love are beyond these false walls, masks, outward action and appearance. This is true freedom.