h inandout

@Edvard I haven't really followed you, but I can speak from my perspective. I haven't found my life purpose yet either. But, you are definitely seeking external validation for your fascination with the military. You are stuck on it. Here is some validation: I worked with a military man on developing low-income housing for a Montana reservation in our Engineering for Developing Communities class. He was very organized, and thoughtful. He had been to Afganistan to do whatever support tasks he was doing there, but I never really asked about it. I've also met military people who are VERY CLEARLY going through unaddressed PTSD symptoms. Who know what they saw or what they did, but it is often clear that they do not know how to feel about it and are in denial about their need for counseling. Watch documentaries to understand it more fully every day. Try to not get stuck in one opinion or the other. That way, you can choose for yourself both globally and momentarily whether or not you are making the right decision. You can guide yourself. You individually might actually need to go see a war or join the military in order to decide what kind of role you can and are willing to play. Read some Thich Nhat Hanh. He speaks a lot about how monks meditated their way out of the war in Vietnam. It is really impressive. In the US, buddhists used to be just as reviled as the terrorists are now. Here is a letter that he wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about the self-immolating monks. http://www.aavw.org/special_features/letters_thich_abstract02.html

@Echoes Okay, I can see that's what he was getting at. There is no such thing as a monk. I thought he was insinuating that the opposite is everything evil, or something like that, which I suppose is also a culturally generated concept. I ask because it just reminds me how worried I was last year that all the buddhists are sucking all the peace and joy from the world by generating more opposition. It scared me into thinking that my own inner quest was futile, which it is, but I'm still doing it because it has tangible, albeit relative, results. I think I came to terms with this paradox, when I realized a human being can choose love over fear at any instant. And when they choose fear over love, well the resulting suffering will only expand their awareness so that they can go ahead and choose love the next time around. @pedro23 Do you know about the Four Immeasurables prayer? It might be good to ask them for them for yourself and for other people in your life. Try to time each line with your breath so that it sinks in to your body. I learned about this in an online Joy of Living class, which was probably a little deeper than how I'm presenting in now, but look it up anyways!

Have you been or are you currently exposed to heavy metals? What makes you think you have overexposure to these things? I know there are some essential oils that may be helpful with heavy metal detox. My intuition also leads me to believe that being in nature and eating natural foods and detoxifying the mind by meditating regularly also have many benefits for many symptoms that may or may not be related to metals.

@Joseph Maynor I suspect you have a very stabilizing disposition (maybe I'm wrong...). If you do, you probably won't get caught up in the drama of someone else's mess. And when someone figures out that life can be both simple and beautiful, you can be there for them.

@Edvard You're still waiting for external validation from an 'argument' you had six months ago. Who is telling you to join the army? Who is telling you that you are so small that you need someone else to make it okay for you to join the army?

Can I ask what version you bought?

@Echoes Okay, he never answered his own question. What is the opposite of a Zen monk!?

@Nahm Well, consciousness is sure doin somethin! A lot of definitions have the commonality of awareness, but I think it's so much more than that. Something quite poetic. I'm curious what your response would look like? Yes, I see some irony in everything I do. Or perhaps you might call it paradox. I feel it is my dignified duty to go out there and say some outrageous things that might make people hate me or love me, but at least gets them thinking more broadly. The whole 100% responsibility concept always brings up some fun backlash. I suppose no thought is also an interesting trick to pull off. Why do this? Probably because I associate consciousness work with some form of survival mechanism. But who cares!? It's fun! Am I going to hurt people? I don't know. At least I'll be enjoying myself because I've already taken responsibility for my own happiness!

So, all of us millenials are isolating ourselves, and struggling to find support networks. That's why I wanna teach fun community classes about any subject like say: curiosity, budgeting the fun way, how the body actually works, how the mind actually works. I have a mind that can penetrate deeply into a variety of subjects, usually socially oriented ones. I am also pretty decent at seeing through people's limitations. Maybe it's like being a life coach, but also more like a social facilitator. Does this sound like a service people would pay for? How much per class would you charge at first?

Have you tried sending playful responses to depressed people on the forum? You gotta just keep doing it in order to develop your craft. I have been really depressed multiple times in my life, and the only thing that really helped was me figuring out how to take charge of my own life. I cured me. You aren't gonna cure anybody, but you are so welcome to share your joy and insights, while maintaining healthy boundaries around people who need to do their own work. Be curious about what cause you to feel depressed. That's probably gonna be your greatest source of insight.

Something I wanna add, is the the most powerful way to flush out old limiting beliefs is to do something to directly counteract it. Pick someone random in your life and do something real gosh darn sweet for them, just for the sake of seeing them smile.

You see this little baby? That's what you used to look like! Tell me, when did God decide that these beautiful little baby being should grow up into detestable adults? Look at the way you are telling stories in your head. Seriously. Like step outside yourself, and review the past period of time that this unloveable feeling has been growing. Not calling you a liar, but it's okay to let loose the chains of paranoia for a minute to see that maybe some of those events where people didn't show you love, were pretty explainable. Like my big brother, when we were kids, always thought I was annoying because I would ask the same questions that he had asked three years ago. Pretty understandable. Does that make me unloveable. No. Did it make me believe I was unloveable. Yeah, it really did. Until I started studying all this stuff. Do you really wanna manifest something incredible? This is my challenge to you: next time you are gonna be out amongst people, wear a t-shirt that says lovable. The whole day. Without shame. Just be normal old you!

I'm also going to keep writing. I could print pamphlets of guided meditations as a way to promote my events. I'm really proud of this article: https://eyeoftheneedledotblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/the-difference-between-self-inquiry-and-self-doubt/

@kieranperez Yeah, if you're aspiring to be even more in the public eye, and even more a part of a team, your public honesty will invite and undue amount of pressure. I personally, am also not a fan of apologizing. It just gives people an excuse to get madder at you. I think you've done half the process right there, by having identified the problem. I think I'm kinda stuck in the same boat as you in a way because I've said some things in the past and rather than being acknowledged for what I was trying to get at, I got serious emotional backlash. Which is understandable! I am not mad at people being mad at me because I'm mad at them. What I'm really mad about is not getting my needs met! Last time I had one of these moments, I recognized the pattern and picked up an Eckhart Tolle book, which helped me step out of my Rube-Goldberg-like survivalistic responses. If you don't know what a Rube-Goldberg machine is, look it up on google images. That is how the ego works. Like a machine. So I think what needs to happen, is I need to get really present to the bigger picture of things. We are an incredible species evolution with epic life stories and on a planet that is moving quickly around the sun. Things are changing all the time! You are literally becoming unstuck from your past as we speak. All you have to do to let go of the pattern is to sit down and watch yourself have it. Be curious about what's on the other side of all those self-defeating and other-hating thoughts! Maybe if you sit through them long enough, you will have a realization!? Maybe that's what I need to do, at least...

I should probably mention for the sake of completion that I got caught up with a boyfriend who was a pathological liar, a control freak, and who had Crohn's disease. I don't at all want this to become my woe is me story!!! I cut him off completely, but undeniably the three years I spent with him put me into a huge amount of psychological pain and financial debt. I recognize completely now how he snaked his way into my psyche and made me pity him enough to throw away my life trying to help him. I am not falling for a black hole like that ever again. I would like to live a life that uses my experiences from that very dark time to contribute to the world. Rather that just giving up and doing the only crappy jobs I can find. I've also had to take a significant step back from my life and from society in general to understand how hell is created. I have a basic picture in my head of how I was programed as a child in such a way that made me make choices that brought me to a deep dark abyss. One of my problems is that I'm really just that compassionate. I see deeply enough into people that I can trace most people's suffering back several generations! So if I'm one of the only people who cares about people who are hurting on the deepest levels, then how can I find nourishment myself!? Nobody want to give money to someone who just wants to freelance helping people! So, I will have to accept that there has to be some sort of structure to my pursuits. I think that structure should be built on a foundation of my piercing intuition and my willingness to investigate deeply.

@Joseph Maynor You are absolutely right. I am working on getting some credentials under my belt, but they are expensive and I have exhausted my financial resources as far as I'm aware. I'm already in debt from a failed engineering degree and a science teaching post-bacc. The life situations that caused me to fail so miserably are no longer a part of my life, but the resulting in-debtedness is cripling in so many ways. The suffering itself caused me to look deeply into how one goes about fixing their life and living it happily, so I feel like I have a LOT to offer. I did take the life purpose course about 9 months ago. After having failed two careers, this time I picked something I actually felt passionate about: singing and healing. It turns out though, that I have way too many health problems to sing. So I spent the last bit of money I had available on a Clinical Ayurveda class, which, as it turns out, doesn't qualify you for anything unless you pair it with a massage or yoga teacher training. I think my new purpose would definitely line up with studying and teaching Ayurveda, buuuut, manifesting that dream is gonna be a real trick for me. I am soooo tired of crappy jobs that don't pay enough for me to even meet my basic needs, but the reality is that most companies don't want me. My answer right now is to just go home and expose all my indebtedness to my family, and I guess that means they get to have a say in what steps I take next, which I kinda hate, because they are icky closed minded suburban people, and we've had terrible fights in the past. But I could be wrong about how closed minded they are, so I guess I will have to take that chance. Having done all this consciousness work, I should be able to not get triggered this time, right? I think you're right, that I will find a way to make it work. There are gonna be so many hurdles, so I will have to be ridiculously creative and persistent and confident. This is really all I have. My being literally doesn't work in mainstream society. @aurum Good call on trying to support existing self-help seminars. I am worried that it will be too competitive trying to get in (story of my life!). I'm also ridiculously dry on resources, which can be hard to hide when pursuing a higher calling. There are a lot of catch 22's I'm starting to notice in my life, which could be good because it means I've started to learn enough to leave that karmic cycle. So who knows, maybe someone else will care to hire me. I think an interesting phenomena that this is bringing up for me is that I have all the spiritual education, but can't compete with expectations set for me, especially in the very egoically competative realm of self-help. Meanwhile I'm so sweet that I tend to attract a lot of lost souls, and I can see so deeply into them, that I can help them uproot some deep deep nastiness. It's like I'm a street therapist of sorts. Maybe if I get a therapist myself (should be free with state insurance?) I can work around my fears of applying for jobs. I've applied for so many that failure has become my story, so maybe a therapist will help me suspend my limiting beliefs and be able to manifest external validation. I know that was a lot of stuff unrelated to what you said, but I have a lot to process. I have one of those super convoluted lives, which is just gods way of fashioning me into a finer instrument, I know. I made a page about the consciousness instructor idea in the Actualization Journals Forum, if you'd like to follow.

A few other things I wanna mention about water: Water is love. Love can be overwhelming when you finally get what you've needed for so long. Same with water. It takes a while for the cells to readjust to being bathed in goodness. This is a really big deal for me because I also deal with chronic environmental dehydration (grew up in a big house with forced air heating in Colorado). And I also deal with ancestral dehydration (aka epigenetics and culture). My Grandpa grew up during the dust bowl. Can you imagine growing up thinking that life is supposed to be painful and hard? All because of the lack of water. Then, also, my mom is addicted to coffee and my biological dad was an alcoholic. I really don't think it matters to much what you eat, just as long as you chew it fully, drink a cup of water half and hour before eating, and then again 2.5 hours after eating (you don't want to dilute digestive fire while eating). And then feel your body as it responds to things.

@WelcometoReality Eggs are not the enemy! Sorry, if this was already replied to - this is a long forum! Okay, so according to Your Body's Many Cries for Water, and The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Cleanse, there is extensive logic and evidence that we are totally on the wrong track as far as cholesterol and low-sodium diets go. You need cholesterol for a variety of processes (not in excess though, obviously). It is necessary for vitamin D production, for example. In the case of heart disease, cholesterol is absolutely necessary for the protection and healing of damage to arterial walls. How did the arterial wall become damaged in the first place. Toxicity. AND DEHYDRATION. Almost all diseases can be traced back to some form of chronic dehydration. Where is the dehydration coming from, and how come we don't notice it? Well, one of the first signals is dry lips. Ignoring these initial signals will lead your body to produce pain-reducing hormones (like histamine) to cover up a chronic problem. Your cells will begin to seal their walls with cholesterol to keep water in (thus the high histamine and cholesterol levels in chronic diseases). Then if you don't have enough water to flush out excess wastes, you start to get damage to the tissues, which releases more pain hormones. Then you run out of pain hormones, you need to support yourself psychologically, so you get addicted to coffee pr alcohol (which are diuretic and DEHYDRATES you), and when the coffee doesn't work, you go on stress or depression meds, which just cover up the whole mess of things, and prevent you from hearing your body say that it's just been thirsty this whole time. I'm not even gonna talk about the insulin system, because there's a whole other chain of events that happen there. How to hydrate: at least 2L of water. Salt in food (and maybe even a little in your water). And lots of moderate excersize. (An hour of walking in the morning and and hour in the evening). If you are a person who pees clear but still feels dehydrated, part of your problem is you need a source of salt. Whether it's celery juice or Atlantic Grey salt. You might also need more excersize and Essential Fatty Acids. You may also have aches and pains that could easily be solved by water intake, and stretching that area both backwards and forwards to allow water to vacuum into the cells. What does this have to do with eggs? Well, eggs are not the enemy. I eat one or two occasionally with the yolks runny. This maximizes the essential fatty acids and lecithin, both of which help the cells maintain suppleness, and helps support the nervous system. And, I feel great afterwards. I personally also aspire somewhat to raw veganism, but it's like soooooo not realistic, and very painful because I live in world that doesn't support that lifestyle at all.

Hatha just means yoga of the body. There is also Gnani (yoga of wisdom). And Bhakti (yoga of higher devotion). And Raja (yoga of the mind). Yoga helps you find spaciousness and joy and love and multidimensionality within your body. It doesn't ask you to overcome all odds. Yes, you can use it to challenge yourself, but that's not the point. I run myself, and I can tell you that my conciousness becomes very inspired, but also very rigid in a forward pushing motion when I run, just like my very rigidly inflexible hips When I do yoga, there are a variety of other mental states that arise. When I'm on the floor, I can acknowledge and accept each rising emotion and thought, perhaps even sit with it for a moment, and then move on to the next assana, which will probably bring about a different sensation. I prefer ecstatic dance yoga, personally, because it facilitates my embodiment of alternative states of mind much faster. I suspect you literally ARE too hard on yourself. Keep going! The only way you are gonna reach that next level is by doing the work you know you need to do. And also maybe try some gentler meditation techniques to invite and receive some fresh perspective for the meantime. Be your own mommy! You are now old enough to embody both the sacred feminine and masculine. Hold yourself sweetly, as you let go of your attachment to old patterns. I know this sounds crazy, but I was raised with and older brother, so I learned to be more masculine in my attitude towards myself, which I actually think is the source of many of my self-limiting beliefs. It took a lot of suffering before I realized that underneath it all, this whole time, I've been telling myself that nobody loves me, which just isn't true, I've just been programed by a brother who was always rightfully annoyed with me. I don't know your story, but there's mine.

How to ask for love and acceptance and encouragement. How to admit to your needs. How to stop wasting time and effort trying to get it all done by yourself.

Maybe this is limiting beliefs...

Substitute. Maybe you're telling yourself the story that substituting is below you, whereas, making the choice to sub while you FEEL IN TO the working world might actually be the mature thing to do. University and the real world are completely separate entities, and lack of fluid integration and support through the transition is THE reason teachers have a higher rate of quitting early in their careers. Take it easy for a year and take small steps towards finding yourself outside of these two very rigid frameworks. There is so much going on outside of "being a student" and "being a teacher".

Omg seriously, it's so hard to find people who read the same kinds of books. I wanna be my own coach by becoming a teacher of self-development/facilitator of community activities. The best way to really get something is to teach it right?

Okay, listen to yourself: "I am finishing a MASTER'S IN EDUCATION and now I can't afford 250 for a this purpose course" Who is putting so much pressure on you to get it so right that you've picked wrong? Your parents? Society? Or you perception of what they want from you? Have you internalized some assumptions and now put this pressure on yourself? Baby, it's totally okay if you feel uneasy about moving into the career you are about to dive into. You don't have to do it forever. You can quit after a week, guilt free if you choose. And you definitely don't lose any of your humanity or right to be if you fail. But really ask, what has humanity done all this time without THE LIFE PURPOSE COURSE! Well, you know, we've done okay on going to the library, making choices one day at a time, and talking to our friends and bartenders. So, go out try your best, and when you have time energy and money available to dive deeper into purpose work, feel free. No pressure to do it any sooner.

Saw a snake in my dream last night and because of the startling nature of the image, first I realized I shouldn't be eating bread anymore (I wasn't recognizing the signs conciously). And that the reason that I have failed to land a career is because the little child in me still hasn't accepted the responsibility and priviledge of actually earning an adequate income. Mostly because my mom chastised me for having low self esteem because that was a quality that she left in me and doesn't like in herself and is thusly projecting her self hate onto me. Now I can begin the important work of encouraging and loving and embracing that inner child, because anything less than loving her would be dishonest. Tell me that writing down your dreams isn't a valuable tool. Lol.