mandyjw

@Nahm And ANOTHER opportunity to tell me how brilliant I am, completely missed. Shame.

@Nahm ok thanks, I get where you're going. But to be honest, the first interpretation was not good at all, like you pointed out, so to get where you're going, I still had to do some boomerang catching.

Exploring here by what you meant "to rest". You could say thought is our karma, we aren't the ones who stop it, but we sort of absorb it, fully see it as already one with us. If a thought isn't understood or you don't know what it wants or what you want from it, it will keep on coming around back to you, sort of like the karma boomerangs, what you reject comes back again and again looking for a chance to be owned and loved and seen as not separate. Is this what Jesus meant in this parable? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Wicked_Husbandmen It seem counterintuitive to think about a thought from a different perspective than "I don't want to think this, I want to push this thought away", but think about it from a perspective more like, "what do I want from this thought, what does this thought want from me?" I keep continuously interpreting these teachings as "thought is bad, I must stop having them". I can of course discard the thought, and sometimes that's called for I guess, but is the direct way to listen to the messenger instead of killing him?

It's not rare but most people are uneducated about spiritual awakening and so it's not often recognized and can even be passed off as an episode of insanity, a middle life crisis, a breakdown, etc. It will be interpreted the way you filter it. You could be a normal person and have a spiritual awakening that some other a seeker sought for years of his life and never got and you could interpret it as a mental illness and wish you were a normal person. You could say that you are biologically programmed for it. What happens to people who have near death experiences can be triggered by simply letting go of beliefs, resistance and deeply surrendering to emotions and feeling.

What happens when you fall totally, completely in love... with no thing in particular?

@Forestluv I totally get what you're saying but I'm not convinced why we should keep arguing for our limitations as humans. You don't need an airplane or a skateboard when what you're exploring doesn't have a location, when it's already right here, intimately what you Are. You don't need to compare the pros and cons of skateboards and airplanes which doing gives rise to FOMO. All of those limitations that a human body on earth has do. not. matter. No matter. You're already infinite potential. Already, anything is possible.

My guess is that you've developed a food intolerance, wheat, eggs and dairy are common culprits. Talk to your parents about it, I'm sure they want you to be well, and the other strange thing about food intolerances is that it's common that they run in families. So by bringing this up, you might be improving their health too.

What's your diet like? Have you seen a doctor? Sounds like a food intolerance. Try a low Fodmaps diet to help figure it out if you don't have any suspect foods.

This is something that people do all time time. Becky and Alice get together for a reunion 20 years after highschool. Becky traveled the world. Alice settled down and had kids. Becky makes Alice question whether she missed out. Alice makes Becky question whether she missed out. At the same time, they wouldn't really change anything, but they also aren't really fulfilled or secure somehow. They could be really good friends, and really expand each other's heart and world view in a powerful way, but getting together brings up so many comparative and "what if?" fears of missing out that they don't really enjoy seeing each other, because of their own thoughts about themselves. This is the common scenario with spiritual seekers. You can't EVER give full attention to all the amazing powerful methods out there, and you can't try abstaining from them at the same time. You have ONLY your inner resonance and guidance system, which knows which path is right for you at any given time. If you're feeling any fear of missing out at all it means you just aren't listening for it. It is Enough. You said "to me, it is incredibly enticing to approach a gate", but why do you equate "the gate" with psychedelics? Don't you think people cross thresholds and gates of all different kinds on a spiritual path because their heart lead them there? We all came to embody and explore unique manifestations. If the DARE teachers really knew their shit and were woke they would have taught us, "really follow your heart, don't do drugs out of fear of missing out. Don't do ANYTHING out of fear of missing out. Do it because you love it, do it because you're called to it and really learn to listen closely for what you're called to. Then when it calls you will not hear anything else but it." The entire separate sense of self is just a fancy complicated appearing fear of missing out. When you are 100% sure and aligned and in love you have no fear of missing out. It's not at all about choosing the right thing, the right circumstances, or even knowing what you really want, but just listening openly. PHEW! What a relief!!! That's always the case, all the time. It's always now, any thought of past is a thought happening now. See, innocence is never lost.

I don't remember ever starting a spiritual path, I was born into spirituality (religion) and just kept sifting and sorting, exploring and discarding what I was taught with what truly resonated with me. I haven't taken any psychedelics to date. I had an extended over days, weeks, state change experience that sort of culminated into a non-climax of realization that merged and resolved my religious beliefs/fears and the realization of no self. It completely turned my life upside down, and at the same time, changing nothing and opened up my heart/world and guess what? I'm still doing some sifting and sorting. Now though, I see through a huge past framework I tried to live by carefully, and now I see a lot of stuff that I'm willing to throw away and let go of. I don't give narrative control to it. From the narrative lens, I can always take a psychedelic if the opportunity and desire to do so presents itself, but I cannot go back and experience a reality in which I never did that. From the perspective Bashar offered I attracted different teachers in my life. I had transformational, mind opening experiences during pregnancy, labor, and other unique experiences in my life. I'm not going to make the statement that "you must have the experience of giving birth to enter this realm of special consciousness", because that would be incredibly limiting and just... not true. One of the main misunderstandings of the mind is that objects and circumstances can make it happy. Because it cannot remember the pure feeling of happiness without object, (because that is not a thought and can only be now), the mind remembers the objects around at the time and equates the happiness with them. This is a hugely common mistake in spiritual teachings. Rather than teaching people to go towards the feeling, and connecting with their own feeling and intuition, the practices and circumstances that were there at the time of a teacher's realization are attributed with being key. You discovered psychedelics as a very important, game changing teacher. I do not seek to demean their power or importance to you, but to highlight the power and importance of You. The narrative of spiritual giftedness doesn't serve anyone. In order to even have the concept of spiritual giftedness, we have to select spirituality as our "subject of expertise". Just like an IQ test is an unfair measure of the huge scope of human intelligence, as it measures a limited capacity of the human mind to perform, spirituality is the one "subject" that is NOT a subject, just the knowing of what you really are. It encompasses and dissolves all subjects. It is the Gift of Life beyond life and death Itself. As soon as we turn it into a subject that we can measure success in, and measure success in other people in, we color over the pure magic of it. It allows all subjects to be. It is the Love of subject... beyond subject/object relationships, beyond ideas of relationship. If you do not ask the questions, you won't notice the answers when they come to you. You did 20 years of asking questions, then the psychedelic's seemed to allow the answers, but YOU allowed the answers, the psychedelics were just what was there at the time, the excuse, the Mama, the baby bird imprinted on when its eyes opened. The reason I can tell you this with confidence is because I have not used psychedelics but had the realizations and I have imprinted on stuff and attributed the realizations to stuff, and in my case, OH BOY was it the most ridiculous stuff. In your case, plenty other people are here helping you uphold this belief. No one at a party doing psychs just for fun with no expectations gets major realizations UNLESS they asked the questions, unless they asked for them somehow in someway, no matter how vague or uneducatedly. It's not the expectations, it's that you truly, truly WANT to know, but the question and the answer are one, and so you must tap into the feeling of the solution before the answer can be realized. So of course, you got 20 years worth of meditation in that one trip, you built that 20 years of wanting and asking, and you allowed it. That must have felt AMAZING. Allowing IS timeless, and it feels amazing. It's what you really are.

Ok, so what we think we are exploring when we take psychedelics is... what? Awareness? Our own psyche? If we explore a THING, it makes sense that we need a thing to explore a THING with. So if we take psychedelics to know ourselves, ("know thyself") we cannot bring in the belief that we are a separate mind, brain, body, who needs a thing to explore itself with. Are we made of matter? Do I matter? Awareness knows itself. If we miss that psychedelics are a teacher, an aid to connect us with our own Source that we already are, like Bashar is saying, we're going to have marry the teacher, handcuff ourselves to them and go out Romeo and Juliet style when they die, unless we see the teacher as a WINDOW into what we already Are. So my real question is, why on earth would you want to continue to believe that psychedelic allow access to "something" or "some state" that cannot be reached without them? You are so utterly powerful that you are can create that belief and that belief will show the evidence of itself to you. You create your own matrix, so why build that wall in the first place? Do you think we can get Mexico to pay for it? I mean even if it IS free, I still don't think it's a great idea.

Well if there's a purpose of a joke, it's for getting.

Notice how you can't "get" or ENJOY a joke if you... A. Think it's about you (or therefore, anything you take personally). B. Aren't relaxed and are trying too hard to get it so you won't look dumb for not getting it. C. Can't flip perspectives and see double meanings/no meanings, unexpected logical jumps. Notice how getting a joke isn't about KNOWING the answer, (if you've heard it before it's not funny) it's about a loose, lack of ONE held perspective and then, that openness when the punchline hits just allows the feeling of hilarity. Which is what we call "getting" the joke.

Well, in our exploration "psychological death" is sort of the objective, not the avoided possible outcome of the exploration. Or rather, it's the thing we already suspect but wish to verify. Like Rupert Spira's analogy of the asshole tyrant who lives upstairs that you're a servant to. You've never seen him and you spend years serving a master who doesn't even exist, but you're too terrified of him and too busy doing his bidding to question his demands or to go up there and even confirm his very existence. The exploration, the going up the stairs to confront the asshole seems terrifying, but there's absolutely no risk whatsoever, because he doesn't exist. Connection is a reflection of non-separation. However (again, stealing Rupert's analogies ), the screen has no relationship or connection with the character, as well as being intimately one with it and allowing it to be. Your TV screen doesn't fall in love with the character Noah from The Notebook and keep Ryan Gosling's face on display in the corner for the next month or two while you're trying to watch the weather report. Although, a TV like that might be kinda fun...

I never liked that though, "do the best you can". After a cross country race I'd ask myself, "did I do the best I could?" and no I didn't ever do the best I could, even if I puked my guts up after the race. I could always convince myself that I could have run harder, I could have run so hard I couldn't even walk back on the bus to go home or compete in next weeks race. I don't regret from those days of competitive running not doing the best I could. If I regret anything it's not enjoying the whole experience more than I allowed myself to. Consciousness is not a judgment looking back at itself. A thing looking back at itself in judgement will always find itself falling short because it has to split the already wholeness of itself in order to do just that. In its intuitive remembering that it is actually Whole, it finds itself lacking. It's a hilarious strange loop. The problem is itself the solution. It's the "difference" between self consciousness and Self consciousness.

Another angle you could take is that you could also learn to speak from the heart and only truly listen to yourself when you are and those who do the same. Sometimes it's easier if we don't actively try to avoid something but instead get very intentional about how we use it. Go with the path of least resistance. Sometimes the path of least resistance is going cold turkey or exploring what happens when we do, other times it's realizing that what you thought was an addiction or a personal flaw was an unnecessarily imposed self-judgement.

How could you recognize incredible, brilliant or beautiful if you didn't have it in you to see it?

If you believe you're a human body, and that states are dependent on that body, THAT belief is your governor, not the body.

Love Bashar, great compilation. No one state is desirable 100% of the time. I think sometimes we overlook this, that we don't actually want one state, but we want the fluidity of them. State means your standing, and comes from the word root or idea, stand. Like the word exist, meaning "stand out". Like the Queen song, "Who Wants to Live Forever" What is the background of which it's possible to experience states or the background of which it's possible for things to exist or stand out. If you go direct to that, all states are accessible or no longer states anymore. I think sometimes some beliefs of ladders and striving get carried over from the personal development realm to color over the wonder that what we're now wanting to explore is pure Accessibility, Itself.

It helps to realize that they don't really HAVE true colors, the same way that WE aren't always our best selves. Sometimes when we see people in the best possible light, it feels amazing, but if there's any sort of insecurity of needing them to keep being that way, we get sort of stuck in that. We believe that our positive image of them defines them, until something happens that shows us that what they are is much more fluid than we thought. Any thought and judgement about people is always a snap shot in time. A snap shot often seems like a good representation, but it's never the person. The reality is fluid, always changing. This can make us feel insecure and so we double down on trying to get a snap shot, surrounding us with people we believe that we can trust, and that only makes us feel even more vulnerable and insecure. As you get more unconditional you start to get in touch with your own power. It's like mother nature, sure, she is gentle, nurturing, and it's easy to see that on a nice sunny day. But you don't expect her to be that all the time. When you are more unconditional you can appreciate the sound of the pouring rain and the thunder, instead of being caught in it unaware, surprised and feeling betrayed because you know that's just one of her many forms. Then if you're there after it clears, appreciating Her at the right place and the right time, you might see her true colors, the whole spectrum of them in a rainbow.

You are the Master Baiter.

Ok, so it was deeply ingrained in my head that I needed a man for salvation/enlightenment to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Little girl steals the Sesame street people from her sister several times and gets told she needs Jesus or she's going to hell. Then I found Leo, let go of Jesus, found Eckhart Tolle, realized what Jesus was actually, gravitated towards a couple men on the forum, had an awakening, and looked around with eyes of wonder and beginners eyes like a baby bird, and what did I see? Men. Every Tom, Dick and Harry, minus the Dick and Harry, Tom x2, one alive, one dead, cause Thomas means twin, so obviously your need two of them. Such a spiritual whore you are, Mary Magdalene. "I will make her male." JESUS! Universe, why you set me up like this? If you believe you're a woman, you'll believe you need a man. I just didn't realize that this was still happening! Yeah... it's not. I swear to God, I'd forgive you for this if it made a good story, but it doesn't, I mean it's just sad and confusing. You're the story teller. Tell a different story. This song keeps going through my head. Alright so what? This isn't exclusive to me or to women. We mix up need with love. We think being told we're needed is sweet sometimes and gag worthy other times. We try to avoid being needy. No one needs each other, everyone needs each other. We're back to the previous subject of boobs, and cookie monster, and my love of nature. Love the thing, don't miss it when it's gone. Cause it's not gone. Woah. I just remembered the name of a kid I was friends with in grade school and he was an athirst but his name meant Christ Needy. I just spelled atheist as athirst. Oh God. I've just been creating this, creating the need and creating the solution. I can stop doing that. What do I want to create?