mandyjw

If I'm reading a Harry Potter book and completely riveted and engrossed in the story, you could say that I really care what happens, but also because I know full well that Harry isn't real, I also don't care what happens. Somewhere in between these facts my love and enjoyment of the story lies. Fulfillment means an end to something separate, but there is no end and never was anything separate. That's why the journey is the fun, the becoming. There's no end. If you come from the knowing/feeling that you are already whole and you GET to make choices and you can't get them wrong you open to an intuition and knowing beyond the separate perspective of believing that there's a chooser who can make the right choice or the wrong choice. The fear of getting it wrong actually blocks the knowing.

❤ Creation, Creativity, the Mother, Earth, Nourishment, Emotions, Feeling, life as art is the side of spirituality that gives birth and celebrates life. When you're focused on that ego death and physical death don't get confused. Life IS already your creative license, you're freedom itself. Many people try to kill their egos from a point of feeling fundamentally flawed and unworthy of life echoed in a dissatisfaction with life. It'll never work. You'll never get there. You're loved so much, as Love itself, there's no end to you. Interesting that the male suicide rate is far higher than that of females. If there's space made for emotions, space for healing, emotional intelligence and understanding of emotions as a guidance system, I suspect that this tragic and painful mix up and misunderstanding will occur far less. ?

That would be amazing. One of the most life changing things I've learned while participating on this forum is how to go inward and express emotions BEFORE it starts turning into more than just a sad feeling or an annoyance. Not knowing how to do that is like giving someone anesthesia only after the surgery has begun. It needs to be taught, modeled, and encouraged and then you just don't end up in crisis or in a prolonged depression. That's when it's the most difficult to reach anyone, they just can't hear you or hear any reasonable advice when it gets that bad. Also maybe we can generally start to appreciate people more instead of calling them devils, fools, and doing damage control 24/7. That type of atmosphere breeds more issues in my opinion.

I sent you a PM on April 30 offering to moderate, noting the imbalance of male mods around here and received no response. Soonhei's situation had nothing to do with you and a sharp person would not have spotted an issue because of the nature of his posts. After seeing how the one mod who goes above and beyond day in day out helping with issues on this forum who was actively helping in this case was thrown under the bus I can't imagine applying to take on this level of responsibility after that. How about we start to value emotions and helping people as a whole in this community? Otherwise you're just going to end up with burnt out, unappreciated people.

There are so many different ways to talk about karma, you could say that it is your beliefs and mind patterns. It is a filter through which you see the world and which colors your experience. You may find that you can let go and stop blaming and shaming yourself for the pattern (which prevents it from stopping or being cleared), if you can see how it arose as a response in your childhood. Sometimes that is helpful but not always necessary. Whatever we cut ourselves off from and push against creates resistance because we are not separate, not two, non dual so we can't actually do this. The only mechanism through which we can identify is separation and exclusion, and it's a false effort, it's never actual. This means that karma acts like a boomerang, what we reject comes back around waiting to be loved and accepted. The boomerang goes around and doing damage until we realize what's going on. Becoming conscious of the law of attraction is an extremely effective tool to start to see these patterns. It's just a clearing up of misunderstandings. It's not like your doing penance for your sin out of fear of suffering, it's just a beautiful reunion. Personally my biggest karma releases seemed to be "caused" by religious beliefs, (I was a devout Christian as a kid). I recognized that the love I had for the religion was never false and always the deepest truth, but the fear and judgement I had taken on with it was hidden love. Felt beyond amazing to release and recognize that. Beyond that I'm constantly curious about how and why I attract what I do in my life. If I do this out of avoidance, or fear in trying to prevent something bad, it doesn't work, that IS the mind pattern itself I'm looking to release. If I'm curious and willing to laugh about how a thought pattern played out into my experience, there's a lot more release and insight.

When there's just no thought or feeling that something isn't right I guess. Maybe consider checking out Abraham Hicks, she has incredible deep teachings on emotional intelligence that seem to magically bring things up and out on their own without aiming at it or trying to at all.

@Forestluv ❤

You know if you're suffering, engaging in thoughts patterns that perpetuate the suffering. Unfelt, avoided, stored emotions have to be released by being felt, not by thinking about them. (The distinction falls apart, but don't try to DO it or make it happen.) Invite, open to it, follow your own intuition and what feels good to you. The "newbie" vs "fully enlightened" narrative feeds into the repression of emotions. If we think that certain feelings and revisiting certain subjects are backwards or childish and otherwise off limits, we hold on to them rather than releasing them and they continue to drive us.

Really, I'm allowed to want this? Really, it's ok? Really? Really, I'm not "bad" for wanting this, some sort of devil? "Friendships always fall apart. Real connections fall into devilry. Cheating maybe. Charisma is a bitch. Charisma is the devil. Don't have it, don't see it. Worse, they disappoint. That, THAT is the worst. That's why we don't risk them. You could disappoint. You will disappoint. You can't be what they project on you for them. You can't be someone's Source for them. Best not to temp them by giving them a glimpse of it." "Stay away. Hold back. Don't act. They'll misinterpret. The world sees through their clouded lens and all you can do to survive is cloud yours too. You're too open. Too innocent. Too naïve. Too vulnerable. Secure yourself. Make your NAME." "You need to stop caring so much. You're attached, a loser. Just fucking stop. Men don't have these problems. Cool people don't have these problems. Successful people don't have these problems. They don't fixate on other people. They go for what they want, they are selfish. You need to be more selfish." Mother fucker, I'm making it through and I'm gonna LIVE. I'm not gonna leave. I'm not gonna end it. I'm here to live. I'm not letting go of anything. What if this IS my selfish. It is! It is my Selfish. I just need to align with it. My worrying about misinterpretations CREATES them. Damn. "You literally progress by rejection -- a veritable rocket." -Nisargadatta Maharaj

Why should I have to explain why I want what I want? It needs no reason. Even if it's a higher reason. No reason is a higher reason. If I try too hard to have a reason, I won't go into the real root, which is nothing. My friends are my teachers and my students, we learn together, you can't teach without learning and you can't learn without teaching, because all love is all knowledge, and knowing someone, really knowing them beyond thought, is loving them and love is teaching you who you really are. And so real friendship is where the separate self goes to die. Friendship and love for humanity is a higher goal. At first Adam and Eve had all these desires too, but they didn't have to separate romance from friendship or love from their family as love for humanity. Then Cain and Abel. Then they all fucked up and restarted all again with Noah's ark, and the world became inbred family again. Shit. What if all the other desires pathologized are just a symptom of this one doubted desire. If I can't have real love and connection, having the perfect spouse, children, or several "hot" partners will be ok. If I can't have real love and connection I'll get respect from acquiring fame, knowledge, money, beauty. If I can't have real love and connection I'll just watch Friends and TV and watch shows where people do. WANTING FRIENDS IS STUPID. "You should want money. You should want fame. You should want something of substance, something that helps you survive." Self talk, all my life. I've DOUBTED THIS DESIRE. I want REAL conversations. Conversations where crazy connection happens, insight arises, stuff comes out. I want everyone to stop fucking around and be honest. I want to have connections with people and stop having it ruined because they think it's about sex, or I worry they think it's about sex. I'm sick and so fucking TIRED of being mistaken for an object. I'm sick and tired of everyone having some GOAL for everything. I DUNNO. I think I'm on to something here. As far as the world is concerned, I have friends and all the love I want. But there's a doubt and a lack of settling there. I want to bring the illusory world together in a way it has never come together before. And it's not going to be hard work, it's gonna be effortless, because non separation is already the case. I shame myself for wanting this so much, I can't stand it if someone else shames me for it. Of all the things to want, how silly, pointless and trivial.

Why We Really Want What We Want Fame- If everyone thinks I'm great and valuable, I won't have to think that I'm not anymore. Sex- Desire to feel, merge separation and create Freedom- Desire for life circumstances to reflect and align with the inherent boundless freedom of Awareness Security- Desire to know on a feeling level that one cannot die, that no matter what all is well, all is well, all is well. Money- Money is unique because it represents the pre-manifestation and the feeling of having both security and freedom. Power- Desire to create to merge with the non-separate creative power, to realize the potential of one's own consciousness, the reality of no self and other. Beauty- The desire to recognize oneself in other, to merge with the other, God said let there be light "and it was good" This is why beauty and sex is often conflated. The same desire is being fulfilled and the same creative desire to create what is beautiful, what is good. Love/Friendship- (I can't actually answer this one as well as I'd like, because it's secretly my deepest, darkest (most doubted) desire.) Knowledge- The desire for a "key", an "in", to see, to understand the depths of one's being. Entertainment/Fun- The desire to see that the depths are not exclusive, and not deep, but totally right here on the surface, neither at surface level nor deep. The desire to know that appreciation IS creation. "And it was Good".

I guess that I see or envision this place as a more open community than @Leo Gura intends for it to be. Perhaps that's my own fantasy. I believe there is immense need for spiritual communities such as this right now, where people can talk and interact with a huge variety of teachings and be introduced to understanding things from different viewpoints. The High Consciousness Resources section of this forum is a beautiful example of this. I'm incredibly grateful for this community and for Leo's videos which I discovered back in 2014 which had a huge impact on my life. I see a lot of wisdom in his work but I do see a lot of misunderstandings especially ones that are reinforced here on the forum in general, as a sort of belief framework. I do not believe that this community or Leo is in any way responsible for Soonhei's death. I think that there is a lot of fear and need to control being acted out here in response that is unnecessary. However, I do see a lot of suffering and beliefs that hold this suffering in place being perpetuated here on the forum, in the form of the misunderstandings I mentioned.

ingest, in jest

It can relieve pain for some people, it really depends on you and what you have going on. It relieved pain slightly? maybe? in my hips and low back but increased the pain in my neck. I went to a massage therapist who does myofascial release and that worked 100 times better for me. I was shocked at how effective it was especially for the neck issues, without the violent snaps.

Yes. "Words dont teach." Do we fault Jesus for all of Christianity? ?

If you love the truth but don't know what it is or why, is it the truth or just love?

There's a spirituality focused Facebook group with an announcement of his death on May 5 when the cause was unknown, the photos match up.

Wow. I loved his posts. @Muhammad Jawad Hugs, so sorry for your loss. I don't think it's really good to surmise much about this. However, realizing your inherent freedom and your inherent infinite nature and taking it as a rule or a belief can sometimes lead us to steer and explore in some pretty funny directions, rather than realizing that this is all about, really, really LIVING. This is a license to live! There's nothing but. The notion that the cycle of birth and death is a curse to be liberated from is just a spiritually filtered variation on the "I am separate and flawed" belief that is the separate self.

Ahem, I'm technically a woman and other women replied in this thread too. Not exactly what you meant or envisioned I realize, but the point is if you keep thinking what you want is out of reach then, rotten bananas. You just made me realize for the first time how deeply profound of a saying it actually is. ? So thank YOU!

@Blackhawk Also want to be very clear that while I AM making light of this, I'm also not if you know what I mean. ?❤ Hope you feel better soon.

Ahh.... ahhhh... yes. Been there. Have you ever been in a bad position and went into a bit of a panic, and completely forgot that there was some simple solution you weren't seeing? Reminds me of when I was a kid and got trapped under a huge blanket and my mom was vacuuming and couldn't hear me. "She's vacuuming, I can't breathe, I'm gonna die!" I thought. I got so panicky that I couldn't do the first thing that came to me (call for Mommy) so I stopped looking for a way out on my own. You're at the "baby bird gets pushed out of it's nest" stage here. It only seems as if there is no solution, only rotten bananas. You cannot access your creativity and resourcefulness unless you relax a tiny bit and admit what you want. "I want OUT! I want out of this smothering blanket! I can't remember why I thought it would be fun to climb under here, but I did, and now I want out." You want to feel better. Just leave the rotten bananas alone for a while, chill out, throw them in the compost and next time, don't buy so many bananas. Maybe you prefer apples? What DO you want? What DO you love? What even just looks or smells good to you right now? What can you find the slightest bit of curiosity about? What web comic or blog or book did you used to love but haven't thought about in ages? What song do you love but haven't listened to in forever?

We're all A holes. ??

Here's another take. Imagine that there is a giant sea sponge sea cucumber thing. We label this giant sea cucumber, Awareness. Every single pore or hole out of the giant sea cucumber is awareness, but each hole is a lens, it's focused awareness. Those holes only see everything around them, as a hole, they cannot see the hole themselves. The holes take themselves to be a THING, they take themselves to be their most immediate surroundings, not a hole, part of not separate Awareness itself, but an actual thing. When you look deep into someone's eyes you look into their pupils, a hole where light enters. Considering this is a little bit creepy, but it's always been the case, it has always been so. Basically the insight is that you've taken yourself to be a thought, a body all this time, but you are actually pure Awareness, and the implications of this are wonderful. When you interact with people you are always taking a snap shot in time of them, making judgements based on what you think you are and how you compare, etc. You are actually interacting with a dead thought of someone, not the real aliveness of Awareness. The more you start to realize (real eyes) this the better, and better things get, the more fully Love is experienced.

If I offer you a choice between a rotten banana and a brand new Ipad, you'll choose the Ipad and say it was "no choice". You'll put no effort whatsoever into making this choice, it's clear. So think of your thoughts as choices. No thoughts are imposed on you, but like a choice, they seem to come to you. Choosing a thought that feels good is no choice, choosing to throw away the rotten banana and not offering it again is no choice. No one is making you eat rotten bananas. It does take a little while to sort through all the stuff you've never sorted through though, there's a cleaning house period in time when you end up dealing with a lot of rotten bananas. During this time it's very important to focus on what you want to KEEP, not the work that must be done, or the things you're discarding.