mandyjw

@How to be wise As long as it takes to relax about it? It doesn't sound like it's a decision that requires an immediate answer like a job offer or something like that. There's no way any of us are know what's right for this person, especially going off three paragraphs of information and likely not having firsthand experience living in either of these countries. It sounds like the more immediate problem is how stressed the OP is about the option. Think about it, having options is a good thing. But we often don't have that attitude about it. Stressing yourself out about it doesn't make sense. It's like if all you get to have for lunch everyday is peanut butter and jelly and then someone gives you the option of choosing something different and instead of being happy about having choices now, you react like "Oh no, how will I EVER decide now!" It's not until you chill out that you can even determine what it is that you really want, what really lights you up, inspires you and makes you feel expansive. Choice is a privilege and it's simply the possibility of expansion, it's not an obligation to "get it right or else."

@Gesundheit Well, you're still just rejecting Yourself then. It's all just fun and games until someone loses an I. Or shit and games, as @tsuki so eloquently expressed.

The Universe IS full of things it seemingly digests and then rejects about itself and endless arrangements of ways that it can have fun with Itself. Isn't it wonderful?

Before I somewhat ruthlessly flip the perspective of this, please know that I really like and appreciate you and your posts. I also really appreciate this conversation. If I decide that I have PTSD of male authority figures, I am taking a memory (albeit, perhaps VERY true, legitimate and very traumatic) and projecting it into the future as fear and expectation. Now I am fearful and suspicious of all male authority figures, so much so I can't even attend class in person. How is this, (except for the fact that women are seen as weak and vulnerable, and therefore garner your sympathy and trigger your hero response more readily) different from a police officer who had an incredibly close call with a past incident early on in his career with a black man, becoming very suspicious and fearful of black men in the future? The real difference is that instead of putting others in society at harm and perpetuating racism because of the newly formed bias and fear, she is the only one suffering. The suffering is internalized for the most part because of her situation. As a society, we are fine with letting people suffer with their own traumas and fears and prejudice and projections as long as they don't endanger or offend anyone else. The sad thing is, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The real cause is the suffering and false identification with the mind creating the notion of itself as the common link between past events and future events. "I" creates time, creates past and future, creates desire and fear, creates good and bad, creates biases and prejudices. All this victim/ offender stuff completely covers over the real cause, and THEREFORE the real potential for healing. I.

Instead of having a focus on needing to have the right answer, I'd instead make my focus to relax instead. Take the pressure off yourself. When we really relax but are aware sometimes the strangest signs and guidance come to us. You've asked the question, now you just need to allow the answer.

I don't think you're an asshole, I think we're all very self absorbed. But it's interesting that you just responded arguing for your current self concept of yourself. Isn't it funny how these concepts change all the time in reaction to different people and situations and what we believe their views are of us? I just meant to point out that openness and positive expectation is more fun than assuming that we already know. You don't have to watch "yourself", just watch. You are pure awareness. You are not a thought of yourself.

Part of self actualization and enlightenment is learning to use the tool of the mind (the tool of separating and connecting again) in a constructive manner. We do have contradictory elements, we do have flaws. When we use the mind constructively, we see things that we desire to change, like a painter who is looking at their painting and sees a tree in the horizon that looks off. The constructive mind goes right to coming up with a solution to changing it. The destructive mind says "this painting is trash", walks away, leaves it the same and doesn't paint again. Taping into the constructive mind means tapping into endless creativity, and endless power to change things, it also means fully appreciating the process. This is self love. The counterintuitive way to change anything about yourself is to have complete self love, which means the disappearance of the borders of "you" and the sense of failing at something. There is no failure, no rules, but in the process of creating, we see a lot that we'd like to change. For example, If I yell at my kids a lot and I'm guilting myself for losing my temper and in turn guilting them, it is the same vicious cycle of destructive separation, wrong use of the mind, ie, suffering. If I instead use my mind creatively to focus on things that I would like to do with my kids, and focus on my own self care, and choose to take care of myself and my own mood first, I naturally create an environment where the change I desired to make is automatically the result. The key to all of this is to not have a self concept, and in the flow of creativity or appreciation, you naturally don't. We cannot think ourselves, we cannot judge ourselves. When we judge ourselves and find ourselves lacking, it feels bad because that's not how Source or the greater creation, and creating power we really are, sees us. Wrong use of mind. I suspect that you're using beliefs in animal instincts and childhood conditioning, in order to keep in place a habit of self-judgment. I do and have done, the same thing. It becomes especially painful to live with when you grew up in a repressed judgmental culture. We internalize the judegment and turn it into self judgement. No one told us we didn't have to do that. No one told us that the reason shame and self-judgement feels awful is because that's not what we're here to create. No one told us that there's no real "us" outside of the concept of judgement and its assumed subject that could actually ever be held responsible. When you pay attention to the guidance of feeling, you're for the first time, finally free to create, which is the only real force of change that there is. You aren't the poster child that you think you are, you're the childlike wonder-filled artist creating the poster. It's a work in progress, and it's already a masterpiece.

It does when I find the whole situation funny, like I do now. It was a circular joke, get it?

Men are more comfortable when women just shut up and look pretty, so they'll come up with any answer to justify this bias. Don't trust or listen to anything they have to say on the subject.

Some of us here talk about them all the time. Check out this https://www.actualityofbeing.com/tools

That's an incredible insight, I've a been thinking about that a lot recently how we avoid feeling envy because we judge ourselves as bad when we feel it, and thus suppress emotion, feeling and avoid admitting to ourselves, and discovering what it is that we really want. That way of thinking is disempowering. Everyone has the power to pick a better feeling perspective no matter what their situation. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning is an extreme, yet extremely powerful example. As a woman, overcoming the feeling of anger and disempowerment and realizing that I always have within me the power to find a thought that feels better than what I'm currently focusing on has been incredibly key in all situations when I have forgotten who I really am, for example if I'm focusing on some disempowering, misogynist comment for example. I'm responding to the basic notion of several of the comments on this first page, which in my opinion, are very shaming and perpetuate a sense that "these people are not worth our time to get to know or understand". Sorry if I lumped you in with that general consensus here that I was sensing. Because TRUE power is already yours, it's inherent in your very being and essence and it's nothing that you need to wait around for anyone to give you. Anything anyone gives you will mean nothing to you unless you can find and line up with your own feeling of worthiness. I'm not saying that things shouldn't change to empower women or minorities in MANY ways, but I'm saying that everyone, no matter what, deserves to feel worthy of love. When we line up with that, the other changes we wish to seek will fall in line, they have to. We've had a black President. We've had a President who talked about having the right to grab pussies just cause you're famous and got elected anyway. No women yet though. Should I focus on this shitty, awful feeling, yet objectively very TRUE perspective? Or should I find one that feels better and focus on all the amazing powerful women who inspire me? What would you suggest to me?

@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.