mandyjw

Just reflecting you here, but I also absolutely love this metaphor/ illustration.

OMG, that article is funny. Lots of little tidbits thrown out all around to feed the inner shame and judgement monsters. "The message board is already abuzz, with a discussion string on “sexual energy in the process of awakening” drawing particularly enthusiastic attention." Also couldn't help but notice how women were mentioned in the article. Kim is painted as "slim and attractive", suggesting that she therefore must be some sort of trophy for Eckhart, but Oprah is painted as some sort of demonic monster. Most Christians use a structure of understanding and beliefs to base their faith in, they, just like atheists give all power to the mind. Belief in Jesus is the hope of salvation and the key to transcending the fear of death to them. If you press them on the exact thing that makes someone "saved" or "not saved", you mostly find that it's some sort of mental gymnastics that saves someone. It's just a whole lot of mental effort to avoid feeling. Same as we all are doing, but Christianity is essentially just a strong framework and fear motivation to keep that framework in place. It can be used as an obvious example to help point out to ourselves how we still do the same.

When feeling confirms the validity of a thought so strongly you just can't miss it. Cause truth is love. True Knowing is awareness itself, that's also what unconditional Love is, and what you really are. Insight is a manifestation or an expression of this, leading right to the ultimate knowing of Consciousness itself. Ask and it is given.

You isn't.

Who pissed in your organic cornflakes?

You can obsess about not being obsessive. We can't control out minds but we can let go of the attachment to thoughts. Is it possible that you equate the OCD thoughts with suffering, when it's only a false belief that the two are connected? The resistance can be an attachment holding it in place. Are you into meditation, mindfulness and spirituality at all? I had a big breakthrough with OCD a couple years ago and saw that it was not what it seemed to be and was actually very connected with intuition. Mine was minor except for a year or two when I was a kid when it got intensely painful and affected my life a lot. I knew I was crazy and tried to hide it the best I could. My parents weren't the type to take me to talk to anyone. One day my best friend told me about this book she had read called "Kissing Doorknobs" and that it was about a girl who had OCD and she described what it was. I instantly knew that's what it was. From that moment I felt like since now I had this label, I could actually distance myself from this thing that was suddenly known. As a teenage I was able to train myself to ignore them, stop taking them seriously and it worked really well, the impulses only actually came up sometimes when I was running or in a meditative state. They didn't bother me again until right before the breakthrough at age 30. I'm cautious to talk about it because there are many different manifestations of OCD and to many people familiar with traditional treatment methods the way through can seem like running in the opposite direction. If you're interested in discussing in more detail feel free to PM me.

I don't think this is a childish thing to be upset about at all. You dad has his priorities all mixed up and isn't allowing himself any joy in his life right now, so his reaction was a reflection of his own misunderstanding. You tried to give him joy, but in his current state of not being able to receive any joy, he rejected it. Sometimes we add on the feeling that "he rejected me", so it helps to understand that that's not it. We can only be responsible for allowing our own joy in life, not other people's. We can try to give them joy, but they have to let it in. It's perfectly fine to be sad about this until you're ready to move directly in the direction of feeling the joy and love out of which was your original intention and motivation with the gift.

Your past videos made me conscious of how important open-mindedness is. Since I've realized that the reason open-mindedness is so key is that open-mindedness is none other than unconditional Love which is none other than the nature of Awareness itself. You could call it Empty or you could call it Unconditional Love. I don't have an individual, separate mind. In my direct experience I am aware of thoughts but mind, or minds are abstract concepts that I'm aware of... as thoughts. Rupert Spira talks about how consciousness is like a camera lens zooming out, so in dream or psychedelic states you may directly experience the subconscious which is much more shared, one and collective than a normal state of consciousness. You can experience archetypes, (including aliens, angels, gods, saints, etc) entities, collective thoughts, collective consciousness, a feeling of oneness, all sorts of phenomena. But these are still experiences, with an experiencer. You adjust the camera lens that was focused in on something small and specific slightly and it completely changes your world and opens your eyes and heart as to what is possible and what you might be. But to move beyond self or ego, you can only become aware of what's false. In Awareness there are no distinctions such as levels. How can there be? "I'm big and you're small, you must be subject to me." Arrogance and inadequacy feel awful to anyone who buys into the story of them. Must we drag this worldview into spirituality, into the idea of transcendence itself? . Transcendence both is and is not a higher level. It's not a particular perspective, it's the loss of a person behind the perspective. Hierarchy of states of consciousness is not Love, this is separation and identification. Sure it seems like there are levels to light, but what is light really? Is it a wave or a particle? Depends on who's looking at it. You're stuck with the problem of the observer. You're awareness itself.

I've considered the similarities a lot too. I think the difference is that in true meditation nothing is avoided, but the nature of thought is to separate and the nature of separation is to avoid. So while we can seemingly avoid thinking about things, we often DO think about them in a negative light but avoid dealing with them in a productive manner, or seeing them clearly. As you meditate and put how you feel above your mental judgement of the situation, some subjects are "avoided" until you get to a place of inclusion and understanding that it can be understood in an entirely new light. For an everyday example, If I try to help my kid with his homework when I'm completely exhausted, I'm no help and end up yelling at him. If I avoid the homework and meditate for 15 minutes, then I will be in much better position to be of an help to him. You can apply the same principal to serious problems such as traumatic events in your life. It's not wise to tackle problems when you aren't in the position of being able to see clearly and you can tell by how you feel. It sometimes concerns me that joy, love and inspiration are glossed over here, maybe to make enlightenment seem bad ass, difficult and therefore worthwhile?, when joy, love and inspiration are the way. Danger is not danger when you're in Love. You can imagine anything you want about your situation. If you're aligning with joy, love and inspiration, you're never stuck. Alignment with feeling comes first. The rest follows.

Good for you! I'm big on using natural, unscented laundry detergents. If someone loans me a sweater that is washed in a fragranced detergent, I notice it constantly. Fragranced detergents and fabric softeners cause us to lose sensitivity to smell and can cause head aches and brain fog that we don't even know are there. Natural deodorants are a good change to make but it takes time to find the right one. You don't need an antiperspirant. Usually body odor is caused by poor diet and stress.

Why worry about a whole year, as if you could know what would happen over the entire course of a year? Likely parts of it would be amazing and part would be difficult. “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today. - Jesus Trust in life, and follow your joy. Maybe it gives you joy to make a lot of money for a few years doing something you really like, buy a house and pay it off. Who knows? Don't limit the form expression of life can take.

Those "rational" stories are the sneaky ones.

Truth = Love.

Is radical open-mindedness something you can actually do, or is what Consciousness already is?

Who says? You already pointed out that this is the only way we get to communicate, and now you're just giving your own crappy feeling thoughts and beliefs more power over mine. These thoughts and beliefs feel better than yours, and since feeling good is love and truth=love, I'm right and you're wrong, and I love you very much. I mean, it's Christmas! You got a bunch of other stuff you do like, so stop focusing on the one orange you got that you didn't want.

If you remove time from your equation you're left with nothin', not even facts. You got nothin' for Christmas. What is time in your direct experience? A thought. You've made thought your King, and named him Fact and he's a ruthless dictator. Overthrow that asshole. There's no substance there. When you seek his source and go to kill him, you'll find Nothing there.

But if we're siblings and our mom gives us oranges for Christmas and I love oranges and you hate them, we have two different emotions from the same fact of having been given an orange. So your interpretation of the fact is all there is to the fact in your experience. Your interpretation of the fact is not a fact. All you have is interpretation. In your saying that fact is prior to emotion, you actually have given thought the power over emotion, when you just told me that you think emotion is leading. So you have given thought power by mistaking it for fact, when in your direct experience, fact is nothing but your interpretation, fact is nothing but thought.

Also agree with starting with Eckhart Tolle I Am That, Nisargadatta Maharaj is incredible but you must learn some religious vocabulary to understand parts of it. Anything Rupert Spira. Most importantly anything that you really resonate with or are excited about reading. Some of the strangest books and even novels that aren't necessarily directly written about enlightenment can change your life and cause shifts, cause the teacher appears when the student is ready.

Why though, which follows which, the thought or the emotion?

Hear me out. When you think "I'm worthless" when you're in a deep depression it hurts, you believe it. It echoes the feeling and the feeling echoes the thought. If you remember to think the thought "I'm worthless" when you're in a fantastic mood and doing what you love, you'll be very unlikely to believe the thought at all. It's like thinking about a pink elephant. You understand the meaning of the thought "pink" and "elephant", but the belief, and therefore the feeling that goes along with it, isn't there.

I had not heard of phenomenology but after looking up it up just now I'd say the both explore the same thing. There are no real borders between the categories or spirituality, science, medicine, art, literature, etc. Rupert Spira's book "The Nature of Consciousness" explores subjectivity, objectivity and how it relates to science really well. "The Transparency of Things" is another really good one too.

Thoughts are meaningless in themselves, it's only the belief behind them that gives them any power.

It's popular to tell people the world is ending in religious groups. My dad went to a Christian highschool and was told the rapture was coming any day, so instead of doing his schoolwork he put on a suit and went door to door trying to save people in time. He bought it and honestly didn't think to plan out his life outside of religion. I think it's more like Adyanshanti's book title "The End of Your World" and is a personal revelation. The world you are projecting is the only one that exists and the only one you should be concerned with.

I wouldn't trust anything thought says about what thought is. It'll probably be horribly self-biased.

There's no separation between mind and body, so you don't necessarily have to hack your body or ingest a substance to get the same effect. Breathwork is good. I'd focus on eating a good diet, getting outside more and generally falling in love with life. Just follow your heart above anything else, it'll take you for a trip.