RickyFitts

I can really relate to a lot of what you're describing, having been on a path of surrender for a long time now (my internal mantra has become, 'Not my will, but thy will be done'). Particularly the sluggish feeling and everything feeling like a chore, just making something to eat feels like an intolerable chore a lot of the time and I often don't have very much of an appetite anyway. Also the fear of the unknown, it reminds me of what Adyashanti said in one of his books (the one I'm currently rereading, funnily enough, 'Emptiness Dancing') about how enlightenment requires a blind and unpredictable release of control - I think it's the willingness to relax as much as anything, I meditate a couple of hours a day with the sole objective of keeping my body relaxed and still (ie in a state of non-resistance), that seems to help. Thanks for sharing this update, it's reassuring to know that maybe I'm not regressing as I'd feared I was.🙏

I know it's a cliché, but I really do believe that we possess all the answers - a true spiritual teacher is only teaching us how to access the knowledge we seek, they're not trying to spoon-feed us the truth. If I have one piece of advice, it's to simply tune into your heart, because it's the heart that knows all, I feel. The problem is that trauma tends to cause the heart to contract, and a closed heart prevents you from finding the answers you seek, so you may well have to work on allowing the heart to soften and open. I know I've personally found this hugely challenging (though heck, I'm a geezer - you might not find it so challenging as a woman), but it's the heart of inner work (pun not intended), it seems to me.

Did you exist in any sense before you imagined yourself into a finite existence? I guess really my question is, what even is existence? What about awareness, can awareness be said to exist?

Just had a look at quote #101 myself, it's got me curious too - Leo says that I only exist because I imagined myself into existence, but don't I have to exist in the first place in order to be able to imagine? Doesn't existence precede imagination?

'Ditto'? Or were you calling him a dildo?

I know, it's looks really naff compared to this place. Plenty of discussion on non-duality if you can look past that, though.

This might be of interest to you: https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=165

In a sane world, getting an endorsement from this doink would be just one more nail in the coffin for Trump's election chances.

Not quite, octogenarians are in their eighties and Trump's only 78, which makes him a septuagenarian. Though admittedly that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily. (I say 'only', obviously that's still pretty ancient and just one of about a hundred reasons why he's not fit to be in office.)

'The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name form.' - Eckhart Tolle

I struggled with this initially, too, I found that the trick was just to let the lens come into contact with the eye and then the eye would 'take' it, whereas trying to force it into the eye wouldn't work.

Great! A consistent meditation practice is one of the best things you do for your general wellbeing, in my opinion.