Forestluv

@Raptorsin7 Relaxing the mind and body is great to allow space. If my mind is filled with worrisome thoughts about the past or future - or trying to figure things out - it doesn't allow the mind to slow down. Once the mind slows down a bit, I don't think it's helpful to try and stop thoughts. Ime, that just sets up inner tension. As you mentioned, you can label thoughts as thoughts and return to here and now - like the breath. One thing I find helpful is to observe my relationship with thoughts. In the beginning, I would count breaths. Then I would suddenly realize I was "lost in thoughts". Not like thoughts passing by, yet *lost* in thoughts. I'd be like "whoa, I'm supposed to be counting breaths - how long did I get lost in thinking?". I became very curious about the relationship to thoughts. One meditation I do is "thoughts are logs". I imagine myself on a river bank watching logs (thoughts) flow down the river. I don't chase or grasp any logs (thoughts). This can break the attachment/identification to thoughts. After a while, thoughts may arise, yet they are just background noise - like bird chirps. I'd also be aware of creating a "Big Bang" event for realization such that and awakening experience must be a mindblowing mindfuck and the body is flopping around the floor like a fish. That type of thing can happen, yet one will miss a lot of realizations. Many are subtle and simple.

+1 on shamanic breathing. It can allow entry to lucid realms. Ime, the more I let go and allow imagination, the better. Tribal drumming in the background helps.

@hamedsf That’s a good way to explain it. I hadn’t thought of it like that. What’s coming up for me now is that there is “present moment” imagination and actual presence. Sometimes I want to set up a meditative environment that allows “presence”. As if I am walking from a room of “non-prescence” into a room of “presence”. I even start a timer that that marks the beginning of presence. In a way it’s quite silly, yet in another way it’s helpful to relax the mind and allow space for awareness of presence. Yet other times, it seems like I am imagining presence and trying to express it and lose it. For me this relates to what I am sensitive in Now. Sometimes my mind is off in thought stories and not sensitive to what is happening Now. I may mindlessly spill my coffee. Other times, it’s like I’m super sensitive to what’s happening Now. I may be walking in nature without any thoughts. Then something may appear that I sense, perhaps a type of energy or aura. Yet as soon asI think about it like “What was that? Was that real or my imagination” - I lose touch with it.

I think charisma / looks can be a factor to various degrees depending on context. Not just physical appearance, yet also how the person carries themself. At my work, we are conducting a job search for a science teacher and each candidate has to give a seminar. On appearance, one candidate was unattractive, introverted and dull. She was very knowledgeable and gave a good talk on content and tried to connect with others - yet just didn’t resonate well with people. Another candidate was a marathon runner in super physical shape. Attractive with vitality. She was outgoing , engaging and positive. It was contagious. People just wanted to be around her. He also gave a good seminar. It was difficult to compare the two just on content and filter out the attractiveness. Two people can give the same seminar on content, yet have very different impact on an audience depending on attractiveness. Here attractiveness includes, yet is not limited, to physical looks. It also includes charisma.

I’ve done these types of reality checks and Ime they can be useful to bring me back into the moment. For example, I set my wrist watch timer to beep once every hour. Not an alarm, just a quicks double beep. It usually went off while I was engaged in thought stories and helped me “come back”. I found that it was more effective when I did daily morning meditation. As the day went on, I would lose presence and the beep helped me to regain presence. Yet after a while, my mind began to build resistance to the beep and filtered it out or dismissed it. A beep every 20 min would have been way too frequent for me. . . . Another thing I tried was wearing a rubber band around my wrist and periodically snapping it during the day.

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Psychedelics are one spiritual tool. How effective they are depends on many variables of the person. Some people don’t resonate well with psychedelics for a variety of reasons. Others resonate well and it can be a powerful spiritual or PD tool. If you want to experiment with a psychedelic, it’s safest to discontinue antidepressants like SSRIs, use a low dose and create a safe, familiar setting. As well there are many many other practices for spiritual / PD development.

@Lento You are fine as you are. The humor wasn’t directed or related to you.

@WisdomSeeker Not confirmation bias. Conditioning and distraction of playing a character in a movie. “I am a scientist. I need to get the workers in my lab to generate data, publish results and grant money to keep my lab going”. This is just one dynamic of a character story. . . . It’s not me or other people. It’s all of the characters in the movie. One day the scientist or beauty queen may have a moment of awakening and realize “wait a second. I’m just playing a character. Oh my god. . . “

I think it’s more about conditioning and distraction. A scientist that spends all his time trying to get grant money and prove his theory will likely remain contracted in their reality.

@Lento It’s just playful humor. A few months ago, there was a thread on personal shadows. One person jokingly confessed “I’m not an old lady”. It provided some comic relief.

@Chives99 It’s amazing how well the mind and body does when it is free to just be, without cowbell thought stories of shoulds and shouldn’ts.

It sounds like a great opportunity that may resonate with you. I’ve been through parts of southern Mexico, around Cancun. Also to Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. In terms of spirituality, it seemed most people were into religion, yet there were some aspects of traditional magic/spirits and a bit of new age type spirituality. I think you can find a lot of people open to discussing religion and spirituality, mostly in traditional contexts. I think some people, yet far fewer, would be open to psychedelics. From my impressions, some people would have respect for mushrooms since they were used by ancient spiritualists like the Mayans. A few would have personal interests exploring for themselves. I mushroom retreat center sounds awesome. I think it would take a lot of skill to be a leader of a mushroom retreat center. One would need manager skills, social skills to work with a variety of people, would need to work with local government, safety issues, psychological and therapy issues, working with tourists etc. I did an Aya retreat in Peru that was top notch. There was one main shaman leader, yet several other leaders very high up. The main leader wasn’t at most of the Aya ceremonies, the other leaders were very qualified. My impression is that it is helpful to have qualified partners in the mix. These are just my impressions from my travels. There could be other vibes in southern mexico I am unaware of.

It would be more integrated, systemic, relativistic, meta and holistic. We can already see this in AOC and it would be super cool if she transitions full yellow. I’d estimate she is about 15% yellow now. For example, they way she views the Green New Deal has a lot of yellow. She doesn’t have a new age hippy view of saving the threatened animals and environment. She is starting to view climate change from a meta view as an existential threat to humanity. She is integrating multiple components and seeing it systemically. The science, geography, social structures. How climate change impacts biodiversity, yet also food supplies and refugee crises. To go further meta, she explains how GND not only addresses climate change, it also addresses income inequality, toxic capitalism, corruption in politics, racism, etc. This is a yellow level view and solution. It might not be the best solution, yet there are no other proposals out there because nearly all politicians are blue/Orange in the u.s. It would be great to have 5 yellow level proposals, yet we aren’t there yet. Not even close.

Yes. It’s very hard to see the limits of rationality while contracted within rationality. Yet once you go post-rational, you never go back.

I may have misunderstood you. I didn’t realize you were playing devils advocate. Yes, from the perspective of Orange, green may appear as is lazy, unproductive and clueless. I would add in irrational. My biggest resistance to green was that it seemed very irrational and woo woo. I was very rational, analytical and scientific. I was really turned off by what I perceived as the irrationality of green.

Where did you get that idea from? There is no correlation between laziness and lovingness. My goodness, there a many many people that are highly active and loving. Loving isn’t just about hanging out in a forest smoking weed, singing and dancing. Orange resists what productive Green people are trying to produce. Just look at the Orange resistance and ridicule to AOC. What is it that she is trying to produce that Orange doesn’t like?. . . . Look at corporate dems resistance to Bernie Sanders. What is it are the values and policies of Bernie that establishment corporate dems don’t like? Consider the green values that underlie the personality. There was resistance to MLK similar to resistance to AOC.

This caricature is not representative of all green. For example, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is as green as it gets and a good example of highly organized and productive green. Green has many expressions, including highly organized, motivated and productive. It’s like asking “what is it about Orange that makes them self-indulgent booze hounds that just want to get laid and rip people off in the stock market?”

Of course. That’s part of the evolution. The efficiency depends on the resistance of the Orange and the skill of the yellow. Yet there are very few yellow-level teachers.

@Homer You might be interested in Leo’s SD series. He addresses your question.

You could start the process right here and now. Tell us what you want to attract. As well, you might start a dream board to charge up your LOA.

@Identity Another way to look at is is inquiring “what is the physical body?”. . . You seem to be specifically referring to a physical body, yet what is a physical body? The molecules and cells? If so, “your” body has died many times. Over the the last decade, all of the molecules / cells have turned-over and died. The physical body from 10 years ago is completely dead. Yet it sure doesn’t seem like it.

Yes, my “friend” has. ?

@Vaishnavi I noticed one thing Trump does that was not covered in the video. In regards to Trump’s Muslim ban, Kimmel first asks, “But isn’t it un-American and wrong to discriminate based on someone’s religion”? The question of what is”American and Un-American” gets to the heart of Trumpism. As Trump is about to define “the problem”, the audience applauds in support of Kimmel - that it is un-American and wrong to discriminate based on religion. Trump picks up on this and intuitively knows he needs to throw out some cover and respond “I mean. . . Look, I’m for it”. He often uses the phrase “Look. . “ To suggest there is something we cannot see. In this case “Look, I’m for it” alters that narrative that Trump is discriminatory. In other words: “Look, I’m for non-discrimination in religion, but the problem is. . . “. Then Trump goes on repeating the word “problem” and the problem is death and injury. Yet notice how he doesn’t bring up religion or Muslim. He uses generic terms like “people” to mask the underlying discrimination. For example, he says “People are coming into the country looking to do tremendous harm”. He doesn’t say Muslim people. He just s says “people”. This gives the appearance of being non-discriminatory: “I just want to stop the people who want to cause harm - race or religion doesn’t matter”. This is the cover Trump uses. Trump does not have a “people ban” or “any person that harms us ban” - it is a Muslim people ban. And Trump followers know when he says “people” or “they”, he means Muslim people. . . Trump also does this with black and latinx people as cover for racism. The first part of Trump’s manipulation is to define the narrative as being non-discriminatory and just trying to protect Americans from harm. He then has a transitory manipulation step. Before Kimmel can question/challenge Trump on his view, Trump immediately cites all the significant people that agree with him and call to congratulate him. So now, someone that disagrees with Trump is un-American and is odd. It was now too late for Kimmel to address the first manipulation, and he took a swipe at Trump’s second manipulation by saying “They were probably crank callers”. Trump did not like this response, because it undercut his second tactic. As interviewers have wised up, they have challenged Trump’s tactics. Trump doesn’t like this, so has discontinued press briefings and has manipulated the environment when he interacts with press. For example, nearly all of his contact with the press in “chopper talk”. Trump stands besides an active helicopter making lots of noise. This gives the appearance Trump is very important and is off to some urgent important work. It also weakens press challenges. A reporter may shout out “When you say ‘people’ are you referring to Muslim people?’”. With all the noise of the helicopter, Trump can pretend like he couldn’t hear the whole question and can shout back “What I said was that people enter the country wanting to cause harm”. The reporter is trying to shout back “No, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking if. . . “. In all the noise and chaos, Trump can pretend like he can’t hear the reporter and say “Next, question please”. . . The helicopter noise environment gives Trump cover to avoid and evade questions - yet it doesn’t look like he is rude or trying to evade questions. If he did the press briefing in a quiet room, it would be totally obvious. When he does interviews with international leaders, he os occasionally asked challenging questions. Trump can’t pretend he didn’t hear the question and usually gets angry and confrontational. @Hansu I think you make a super important points about relative meaning of terms in conversation. Yet in the context of the first video, Trump’s core terms of “problem”, “injury” , “harm” and “death” are being used with standard meaning nearly everyone agrees with (If someone can into a neighborhood killing people, all the neighbors would agree it is “harmful” and a “problem”. Here, it’s not so much the literal meaning Trump gives to these terms, it is how the terms are used.

Last week a friend of mine told me about a guy she dated. She is average size. This guy liked thick curvey women. She told me this was the only guy she ever dated that loved her weight and even encouraged her to gain weight. He genuinely loved her weight and thought it was sexy and beautiful. She told me he was the only guy she felt completely comfortable with her physical appearance and weight - and she misses that about him.