mandyjw

@DocWatts I'd say that the deeper explicit and implicit action going on here, is the flip and flop between shame and pride in one's own thoughts and feelings. Some people because they are not aware of and can't deal with shame in an implicit manner, act it out and shame (judge) others for the most bizarre reasons they can come up with. They can judge someone for the color of their skin, (pre-judge) or they can't pre judge them for their political party, their location, their upbringing or any other reason. The shame/judgement movement of the felt separation of self and other and using thought and beliefs to try to resolve, explain and justify, is the very root of the entire thing. Our culture has made it terrifying to even speak about these issues. There are so many people more than willing to judge you as racist and jump on people for making a simple error when you're speaking or accidently say something you didn't mean. We've gotten to the point where we can't even honestly discuss the problem without being accused of being racist or avoidant. Do you think someone raised in a poor racist family in rural West Virginia is going to say some ignorant things in a conversation about race issues with you? YUP. Are we going to make any influence on them by refusing to converse with them, shaming them and making them feel like a complete waste of space? Nope. Racism was born out of fear, and now we've added another layer of fear on top of that to prevent us from even discussing the first fear. Then we wonder why some people are so still so unevolved and stuck in their ways. Because that's us. We already THINK we know how things are, how people are and how they should be. It's US, US, WE ARE THE PROBLEM! And there's absolutely no shame whatsoever in this. Just pure potential for healing. As long as you point your finger at someone else, and call them the cause of the problem, there's no empowerment or potential to change it. This was supposed to be the entire value of Spiral Dynamics. To forgive people, to understand, to realize the value in conversing with them instead of demonizing them.

? Wouldn't it be more fun if everyone knew something you didn't and had something they could help you to discover or learn, if only you are open to it? Wouldn't that be a more interesting and fun world to live in? You just have to get more appreciative and curious about other people over believing that you already know about them. You cannot think yourself. There are not two of you, on that can judge the other as superior than or inferior to. Your experience of reality, will be colored to reflect your beliefs and expectations though.

If we're going to constantly dwell on these things, we might as ALL just live in constant misery and guilt for what we did to the Native Americans in order to form this country in the first place. But some of the Native Americans brutally killed white people because of the color of their skin too, so they also must live in horrible shame and guilt. No one is the hero, complete equality, so everyone is a loser. So which perspective should we choose, the one that feels terrible or the one that feels good? Which perspective is truly healing? I say we choose the one that feels good. Does avoidance feel good? No. Does appreciation feel good? Yes. is there a difference between avoidance and appreciation? You only know by how it feels. We can't judge someone else's actions for them, they know the difference by how they feel. If you want to empower and heal, then you want people to feel empowered and healed. You don't get to empowerment and healing from keeping entertaining a perspective that feels horrible. Healing racism doesn't come from someone looking back at his actions and words and judging them as PC and woke enough or judging them as the opposite, as shameful. It comes from the complete absence of the thought of racism, it comes from cultivating appreciation and sensitivity to feeling. We get to healing by paying attention to feeling, and choosing to focus on perspectives that feel good. If you're shaming entire sections and pockets of the country in one fell swoop, you're making the same separation that is the very root of the racism itself. The unhealed shame is the very driver of the racism. You don't fight fire with fire.

I don't think they actually oppose themselves. Transcendence is so completely radical and yet so incredibly subtle and mundanely noneventful at the same time. You are a creative component of the Universe but when we aren't in tune with this, we suffer when we feel that separation in a destructive negative light.

Nisargadatta talked a lot about physical Gurus and also used the term to refer to Source. He talked about the inner and outer Guru. It makes sense when you read him in context with the conversation, but sometimes if you just take quotes or read a section it can get mixed up what he's referring to by Guru.

I think it comes from identification, which you could also say is lack of understanding. If we identify with being smart, when we inevitably say something stupid then we'll feel shame. Judgement is just the attempt to shame others, either privately in our thoughts or outwardly. If we shame ourselves in our thoughts, we also must shame others in our thoughts to maintain this standard and belief in identity. In the thought, there's no difference between self and other, no difference between judgement or shame, but the sense of separation perpetuates the sense that there is a difference between judgement and self shame, and self and other.

People in rural America while at first glance may seem simple, are incredibly complicated and diverse. They have some of the most amazing qualities and yet can be incredibly blind about certain things. They aren't unlike any of us in that way. There's an incredible ingenuity, resilience, and connection with intuition, (and sometimes stupid pride) that comes with the hard physical labor, and the forced independence of rural living. If you really care about politics in the US, go spend a couple weeks out on a farm, etc, working with them if you want to understand it. No articles or YouTube videos are going to give you this kind of education. Until what they have to offer is seen and appreciated, we're going to have to deal with this stuff again and again. Trump saw this need for recognition and appreciation and played it to his advantage.

Especially if you're in the younger age group, I honestly don't think it matters that much either way. Our attitude about things is huge, if we expect something to be beneficial, we're almost always right. Drop the pressure of the decision and needing to make the right one, and just let your intuition guide you. Notice all the fear that comes up either way, and the fear that makes the decision seem so important. That very fear that says this decision is ultra important is what cuts you off your your body's natural immune system and its natural guidance to give you an honest gut feeling about something. It's ironic that when we stop caring and pressuring ourselves so much to decide the right way that we can tap into a higher intelligence.

If you knew everything about narcissism, you'd be Self Realized. Trouble comes in when you think you know a lot about it.

@Roy Maybe fear and insecurity makes men hornier and makes women turn off their natural sex drive? Maybe there's an epidemic of fear and insecurity?

@zeroISinfinity Here's another insight for you then, all women are hot and all women are witches, some just aren't conscious of it yet, and so that makes it harder for you to be conscious of it too. That's the real witchery going on.

You could call me the great Carpenter, but he came to an ironic ending, so better not.

@Nahm Whoever I don't like in this particular moment will do for a scapegoat. Funny how the goat is a symbol of the Devil.

Why should it come from anywhere? We use the word God on this forum, and we use language that tries to gain the knowledge of ourselves as good, and it get confused for the Knowledge of Self as Good. Then you have to be believe in a devil, no matter what the name, because you'll need a conceptual source of darkness, source of ignorance, or a source of assertion, to cover over the belief in assertion, to maintain suffering.

The mind-opening conversations that need to happen to open people's minds take time and patience and cannot happen if you can't open your mind to them in the first place. Openmindedness starts with an open mind. I know, sounds crazy, right? People don't change because they are shamed into changing. If that worked you wouldn't have sexually abusive Catholic Priests and so many married Baptist Ministers who screw their secretaries. Shame causes more of the behavior that you seek to avoid.

Why does it matter to you? Focus on what you want from a relationship, and you'll find someone to match. It doesn't matter what the norm is. First of all, it helps to appreciate that while for the purposes of conversation, we have to pretend that there is, there's actually no such thing as "women". You can't sleep with the average or typical woman. She doesn't actually exist. There are individual women, whose bodies and desires change all the time depending on her health, psychology, the relationship she is in, her attitude, etc. Your horniness mostly depends on the thoughts you've been thinking. Also, women are cyclical. So sometimes during her cycle she will be more horny than the average guy and other times less so. It all averages out.

If you already know you're attached, you're not. You might be attached to thinking you're attached.

I've always not really cared about it all that much. When I was kid some of my favorite musicians were gay and it didn't bother me. It was mostly just something that came along with the general sexual repression of the mostly religious community I grew up in. In my late teens the influences I had around me changed, I found a community of really artistic, very liberal people. A lot of my views changed then. However, many of these people, while they had a positive influence on me, were also in their own way very harsh and judgmental, especially to people who hadn't had the same access to education and mind-opening experiences that they did. They couldn't put themselves in the shoes of someone who grew up in an incredibly rural, poor, unevolved, not racially diverse, and very religious background. I felt like to fit in and be accepted, I had to adapt myself to their views, and that felt exactly the same as it did to me in the conservative religious environment of my high school for instance. So the whole experience gave me a very big picture view of judgement in action.

The awareness of a problem and the desire and intention to be healed is good. I cannot cure myself of some neurosis that causes me suffering if I continually focus on that neurosis. It's like when I was taking Driver's ed, I had to learn that when I meet a car, I need to NOT look at the car I don't want to hit, and instead focus even more on my side of the road because I will unconsciously move my steering wheel where my focus is. Instead, I need to focus on where I want to be going. Attitude is everything. Focus on what you don't want gets more of what you don't want. There is a point when you're ready to get specific about a desire to be healed, happy, or whatever, healing doesn't come from a thought of lack. When you feel terrible, just focus on the very general goal of feeling better. When you feel amazing real specific solutions come unbidden.

What are the things you love and are drawn to for no reason?

That's the weird thing about life, it sometimes seems like it's always YOU who has to do the work. Whether it's coming up with a new idea and figuring out how the hell to make it work out in reality, initiating a conversation, asking for something you're scared to ask for, boldly admitting to someone that you have feelings for them beyond friendship, or reaching out to reconcile with someone you had a major falling out with. But that's exactly how you want things to be. Life is the best when you're living on the edge of comfort and what you think is possible. Cause both those things are complete illusions. If it feels better, focus on some other area in life that's extremely challenging, mastering an art or skill. Often when you challenge yourself and follow your own desires, there's a "kill two birds with one stone" kinda thing that goes on. In other words, you might unexpectedly meet a girl doing something you love to do. She might even chase you, who knows.

Your entire story and framework here is all mixed up. You don't have demons, paradoxically the releasing of them is the very realization of how absolutely Pure you really are. A big fucked up shadow is a concept about a "you" that is not. You've got to drop the framework of you lacking in some way. Are there two of you, one that can judge the other one? Instead go in the direction of what inspires and makes you feel good. Life is like a scavenger hunt, but we are not scavengers and nothing is lost. The true clues are not the things we think we need to survive or need to win the game, but the things we find that we really love and are drawn to for no reason.

@nistake It's just like with Leo, some people think he's magnificent and other people think he's a dick. Leo even means lion.

For creation. If you want to make a collage you first have to cut out shapes and then glue them together to create something new. The true purpose of separation is for creation with an inherent, never lost sense of wholeness. Forget the intention and the lose the creative spark and you're just making a mess of things.

I've found a lot of strange insights about some of the times I felt shame and considered past embarrassing or even traumatic moments through journaling. You can't be too direct with your intention to heal shame, you have to be open and explore it. Here's an example. Junior year in highschool we read The Crucible. I was, at the time, very Christian, somewhat open minded for a Christian, but still judged homosexuals, etc. The school itself was quite conservative, but a handful of the teachers were not at all. Our teacher decided to have us read out loud the most sexual scene in the whole play. She picked one of the most popular girls in the whole class to be the female character and no one would volunteer to read the male character part. Well, on this day, I was not paying attention in class, nor was I interested in the play. I have a hard time learning when there's someone in person presenting, and I used to completely zone out quite often. All of sudden I just notice that the teacher is asking someone to volunteer to read and since I'm bored AF, I volunteer. The whole class is like.... "uhhh..." Teacher kindly declines my offer. I absolutely wanted to die for hours after. So last year, remembering this, I decide to look up The Crucible. What's the stupid play about anyway? So I look up the major themes of the play and laugh and laugh and laugh. Obviously I COMPLETELY missed the message at the time. I swear to god, those embarrassing moments are the strongest pointers, because we chose to feel a way about them that our Source and greater consciousness DOES NOT feel. The reason those feelings of shame feel bad is because we're thinking thoughts about ourselves and holding perspectives that aren't true. They aren't aligned with Love or Truth. If you really investigate back you can often find some crazy discoveries like I did with this example. You can literally rewrite the story of them.