mandyjw

My diet and exercise are all motivated not out of fear but because of how they make me feel. I choose healthy foods because of the way they make me feel. Sometimes it takes a little more awareness to notice how diet and exercise effects you in the short term. They key is to switch from being motivated out of fear of negative consequences. Either have positive motivation or just be aware. It takes practice. If you have a fearful thought switch the focus to what you DO want or how you do want to feel. In my experience hypochondria is very tied to a lack of self care, or a misunderstanding of what self care is. Basically, it comes from a lack of joy in your life. We often think that joy is just something we are entitled to and that arises completely on its own, and while that's true, most of us weren't taught that the paradox is that we have to make a conscious effort to foster joy in our life. When negative fearful thoughts are bothering us, it's a signal to find the opposite of that and focus on joy and inspiration. Joy and health is effortless only when we're not making the extra effort of worrying. Make a list of things that make you happy or sound fun to do, start with small things you can fit into your day and make a point to do two or three a day. Try a new food, call a friend, look up your favorite music video from seventh grade, read your favorite web comic, etc. Then when you're in a good mood start writing out bigger desires, for example, a career change, a big trip somewhere, getting a pet, learning to play an instrument, etc. When you're excited and fulfilled by life, even if it's just the little things in life, you won't be worrying about these things. In my case I got hypochondria the worst when I let my social life die almost completely. I fixed that and it went away. It's usually some aspect of self care and doing things for our own happiness that we have overlooked or thought we could just do without.

There's also the issue that when someone has a sudden breakthrough, no matter how the means, they often require the guidance of an experienced open-minded teacher to ride it through safely. And right now, at this point in time an honest guru isn't always easy to find, so people can get very lost in our current psychiatry and medical systems that misunderstand spiritual awakening and instead they are diagnosed with a mental illness. It's easy to make youtube videos with great advice and guidance in general, it's harder to work one on one with someone. It requires a kind of mastery, love and dedication beyond public speaking. So to be safe and responsible, if you are a guru who has tons of followers that does not have the time to work one on one with students, it's more responsible to generally discourage people from techniques that could cause them to have a startling breakthrough, or a traumatic episode that they can't properly contextualize. Naturally as society changes, this will change too.

It's not. No one imposes stigma on you for anything. You yourself choose to feel stigma and feel triggered by the opinions of others or to be free from it.

Because meditation is really enjoyable?

No. Sometimes it can be freeing, like when you really want a beach day to remember and you swim in the frigid cold ocean, and it's incredibly cold and uncomfortable but also invigorating and enlivening. But in that case, you just did something that you really wanted to do, and chose to do anyway. There's no reason to make yourself eat food that you hate as some sort of practice, maybe to open your mind to foods you might enjoy but never opened your mind to. If you try to make yourself like someone, that won't work. But you can find something to appreciate or learn from in anyone if you know where and just how to look. Abraham Hicks talks about this a lot with her buffet analogy.

There are forms of energies that you can resonate with, ie fall in love with, that will be happy to help guide you, since love is the only real guidance there is anyway, it's all quite natural. Loving the same things and having the same intentions as someone naturally lines you up. Even if they died 100 years ago, what's real about you and what's still real about them are the very same.

Women are good at appreciating qualities other than the ones that society equates with success. That's why many women choose jobs that they care about other than jobs that bring them high incomes. So in your girlfriend's example, she herself is good at bringing in income but she obviously sees and highly values qualities in you that are more important to her. Society still glosses over these things and values GDP over happiness, and we all pay for it. People feel a need to make other people feel as if they should conform to the rules everyone else is making themselves miserable with. It's not about you, it's about them. You are completely free to prioritize your own happiness and so is your girlfriend. That's true leadership. It's going to make everyone else uncomfortable sometimes.

His experience has little to nothing to do with racism. If you go to NYC, or any other tourist spot like that, lots of people will try to rip you off if you look like a tourist. Cab drivers will take you the long route around the city because they can get away with it, etc. It's the same premise, and has nothing to do with skin color.

How have you ever directly experienced the future?

@Nahm ???

A good metaphor for it is, you won the lottery, but forgot the joy of it, because winning the lottery causes lots of complications to your life. So in the moment you're too busy pissed off at the jealous person who keyed your Ferrari, to realize and feel that in the grand scheme of things, life is fucking awesome.

I love this thread. Most of the most transformational ones were read as a child. The Harry Potter series, didn't even understand how profoundly until recent years. The Chronicles of Narnia, was Christian at the time and it resonated so much and really expanded my view of my own religion. Read as an adult, Moby Dick, it's an incredible book pertaining to enlightenment, hard to read, but read a little at a time and make sure you read it on your phone with the dictionary on your phone downloaded so you can just click on words you don't know. Also really enjoyed Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, also about enlightenment

I remember going up to a boy I barely knew in highschool to ask to borrow his math book because I forgot mine. The look of terror in his eyes as I walked up to him was completely unexpected. I thought I was shy and insecure. We're too often thinking only of ourselves, which is exactly what insecurity is. @aurum Better to reframe to something more like the Star Wars kind of Force.

Imagine if schools put an emphasis on teaching communication and social skills. On the fundamentals of living a happy life, not a measurable "successful" life. But as society is concerned, that's not important, only numbers. So the same men who were told that good grades and measurable success was everything rate women by numbers and count how many they sleep with. Then we blame them for doing what they were taught to do.

Pick Up is a response to a specific human need in society that overall doesn't know how to relate to one another. Can you see the whole misunderstanding holistically or are you just interested in hacking you way through to make do and get yours? Eventually the whole problem will become unavoidable. It's like shoring up the unlevel third floor of house with more material and ignoring the fact that the problem is that the foundation is sand. No one is a bad person for doing pick up. But the reason it seems so necessary is the symptom of a larger, less personal problem.

The problem probably lies in differences in the definition and the measurement of "better with women."

Go straight to understanding the law of attraction and you'll understand sexual attraction and a whole lot more. The need to be understood and the need to understand is an interesting conundrum. Understand, Know, Know as in the Biblical sense. It all follows.

What does the anxiety feel like in your direct experience outside of thoughts about it? Is it still anxiety? Does it feel good to have the concept of an enlightened person who doesn't have anxiety? Does that feel absolutely inspiring and incredible? If yes, that's fine. But if it feels like you're a failure in comparison, then throw that idea out. Anxiety and self-judgement go hand in hand, so it's possible that your idea of enlightenment and feeling as if you're falling short is actually creating the anxiety. Or vice versa. How does anxiety feel compared to how excitement feels? What's the difference in attitude and perspective of the thoughts about excitement verses to the thoughts about anxiety? When you do something completely new and unknown isn't there a mix of both? Wouldn't it be natural to feel a little of both as you explore this new realm of yourself?

@machinegun Scratch your own itch, find what you are interested in, create what you would want to buy the most.

Feel into it. Also with a minor situation like that, try to see the humor in it and in your reaction. Then if you react and say something out of a place of annoyance/humor it expressed the feeling but also laughs it off at the same time.

Planting trees with fruit on them for yourself, and then telling yourself don't touch THIS one over HERE, is the essence of a trap I'd say. But only if you're playing a part in this play.

Super private. Even I don't know I'm spiritual.

Your idea of love isn't love, it's a thought. Don't mistake the thought of something and your judgments about it, (more thoughts) for the actual experience, which you know by how it feels. Love feels amazing.