Just Imagine

[mandyjw]

Q: Can there be true knowledge of things?

M: Relatively — yes. Absolutely — there are no things. To know that nothing is is true knowledge.

One of the major "problems"with this forum and the people who tend to follow Leo is that they conflate knower and knowledge, actualizer and actuality. There isn't anything to get and there's no one to get it. Leo doesn't have anything or know anything to teach you. However the hidden grace of this conflation is that nothing can be misunderstood when there's already no one to misunderstand it. You wouldn't want knowledge if you didn't love it. Love of knowledge and love of truth will burn away the false without anyone having to do anything about it. 

It's the same as my love for gurus, my love for those with knowledge, Jesus, Dr.P or Leo. It's a fire. An all consuming fire. 

Path of devotion or path of truth is the same. 

My love will consume me and whatever I fain to seek as its object. It consumes as much as it creates, timelessly. 

 

[zeroISinfinity]

You can do be and have anything you want. Stop allowing spiritual teachers to pull your nose. It's all nonsense. 

[mandyjw]

2 hours ago, zeroISinfinity said:

You can do be and have anything you want. Stop allowing spiritual teachers to pull your nose. It's all nonsense. 

Maybe that's what I want to be, do and have?  I love them just like I do the light of the sun. 

Actually, I probably should come back down to earth someday. It's also no different from a teenage girl with boy band pictures all over her bedroom walls, really. But I mean, y'all do other things around here, so whatever, just sayin'. 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

Impulse today that made me change checkout lines and stand behind a man wearing a Def Leppard Las Vegas shirt. Kinda pissed at my inner being for her fantastical bullshit and making me wait about 3 more minutes in line. She's such an impractical fucking bitch.

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

Today was just one of those deliriously wonderful summer days.

I could pick all the petals off, "he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, loves me not." I'd be left with this yellow center that just spirals into infinity (no center) in some kind of crazy sacred geometry pattern that changes as soon as you change your point of focus and try to imagine where it begins and where it ends. 

 

[mandyjw]

On 5/8/2020 at 8:15 AM, mandyjw said:

“You must learn to wait properly... By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension”
― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

Oooo... 

The teacher who drew me as a yabut also gave me impatiens seeds when I graduated, because I was so goddamn impatient. She also taught me how to identify trees and draw a tree. Never really appreciated her that much. 

"They" are everyone all, all our teachers. Apparently. 

 

[zeroISinfinity]

It really is not secret what band posters I have. Guilty as charged. 

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

On 6/16/2020 at 5:13 PM, mandyjw said:

Nisargadatta Maharaj, I love you. I passionately, deeply, deeply love you.

My favorite Nisargadatta quote - "Nothing is wrong anymore ".

[mandyjw]

@zeroISinfinity I LOVE Aqua. 

@Zigzag Idiot I can only handle reading a little bit of I Am That at the time but it always amazes me.

 

I had a session with @Nahm yesterday, which is always fun and also terrifying. I don't think there's anyone who can teach intertwining "real life", self actualization and awakening like he does. He always hits me with new ways of seeing that I didn't see before. 

One thing he suddenly said in the conversation was that there was a sense that there were other people around me. I've thought about this from a lot of different angles since and I'm always imagining other people, fears, reactions, even when they aren't there. There's often a sense that someone might be judging me. But they also keep me company, they are like imaginary friends. This is how I hold myself as a concept as an imaginary being, I create other imaginary friends to keep imaginary me in line. I project my own fear and judgement out. 

I really am like Calvin. Hobbes isn't real, but he is to me. But Calvin isn't real either though. Shocker. 

Of course while making videos and writing this journal there is usually a sense of other people reading or listening, which is still my imagination. It makes sense in that case but maybe it comes natural cause I'm so well practiced at this. It's like I project judgment and fear outside myself as imaginary friends. The storyteller needs an audience to tell a story. 

I told Nahm in a previous session that sometimes falling asleep at night I would be half in half out of a waking states, and had a sense that there were other people around me and it felt very uncomfortable. In the session yesterday he asked me for an example of something in front of me and used a water glass as an example of a belief of something there. Last night when I was falling asleep this same sort of sleep/awake state of confusion came in. I had a sense that I had no idea how I had gotten "there", couldn't recall getting ready for bed or any of that routine, and I was thirsty and thought there was no way I had a water glass beside me. I reached out and grabbed for it, found the glass there and it was like "oh. right.". It wasn't until meditation this morning that the funniness of that synchronicity struck me. 

In the background Nahm had a large Buddha statue which appeared just as an ominous black silhouette on the screen to me and was a hilarious example of how my fear manifests. It's terrifying to be in the presence of Love which points out to you your own bullshit. 

 

I went for a hike last night.  I had an intuition to go out to a beach, and ended up in bugs so thick it was maddening. I ended up cutting across off the trail to shortcut and coming to this area of pure clay. I grabbed some and it covered my hands and the bugs I swatted. Thought about how some of the natives would use clay to protect themselves from bugs. I finally got out far enough to get away from the bugs and there's this area over the cliff where lightning struck and burned the roots of some trees. There's a large pine tree that survived this and a table like rock under it. A couple weeks ago I took some charcoal and wrote "Love" and "Clarity" on the rock. When I came back someone or something had set up some sticks to make a sort of house shape in a bend between the pine trees roots. I went into the water, which was so cold I couldn't help but sort of gasping. Washed away the clay. Then wondering if people are concerned about me, because I'm doing something somewhat risky and shouldn't be where I am. (Imaginary friends say this) I can't be afraid for myself anymore, so I have to be afraid of creeping out or concerning other people. And The more alone I am the more I worry about other people. I have twisted love around into something close to but not quite unrecognizable. 

I came home and found a video of a man covered in the same gray "clay" I found on my hike in my facebook feed shared by a Christian family member. Same band as the song I was laughing about the synchronicity of "I Can Only Imagine" a week ago. 

 

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

Be Melting Snow

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me. Is someone here? I ask. The moon. The full moon is inside your house.

My friends and I go running out into the street. I'm in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren't listening. We're looking up at the sky. My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden.

Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where. It's midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out in the street thinking, The cat burglar has come back. The actual thief is there too, saying out loud, Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd. No one pays attention.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self, or things that have happened to you There's no need to go outside.

Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in quietness. Let your tongue become that flower. -Rumi

[mandyjw]

Habakkuk 2:11
For the stones will cry out from the wall, and the rafters will echo it from the woodwork.

Luke 19: 40 “I tell you,” He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”

Psalm 96:11
Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof.

[mandyjw]

I wonder if Christianity as it is understood and commonly interpreted by most, is an attempt to secure the self and stop seeking. "I have been saved, this debt has been paid, I am free from my sin and free from death." There's a true and honest understanding here that changes people's lives.

Yet, the Christian believes they have hacked (Jesus did it for them) the energy of seeking, so they discourage any kind of spiritual seeking outside the secular materialistic world. Don't look, don't open the door, you might open it to demons and monsters.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."- Jesus

Christians- "STFU Jesus, we're all good now. Close the GODDAMN door, it's getting COLD in here!" Hence the Gospel of Thomas doesn't make it into the Protestant Bible. 

This divide between what is spiritual and what is materialistic doesn't exist and doesn't work out though so the Christian self still seeks because he must and sometimes in the most dramatic fashion finds that the divide is non existent. When I was a teenager it infuriated me that Christians didn't seek within the spiritual realm, didn't feel, it felt to me like they had checked a box off on a multiple choice question they hadn't even read.  

Funny, Christianity reminds me of the neo-advaita side of things sometimes.  I had a hard time coming around to it. Some of the teachers I've found recently have carefully read all the possible answers to the multiple choice question though. They realized it wasn't a test question after all but an opinion survey just to note your preference. So of course it doesn't matter. It's just there for your creative expression. "You can't get it wrong and you never get it done." -Abraham Hicks

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

Had a mindset shift today, noticed the pattern that my libido is higher when I am a few pounds heavier than I like, which is a probably a mindset thing more that physiological. So why am I still trying to fit myself to a standard *I* made up so I can *think* other people find me desirable just so I can feel desirable?  Is the thought of being desirable better than desire? Actually I hate that thought. There's a whole lot of other complicating thoughts that come from this sort of thing. My husband is fine with me whatever weight, and if I want to concern myself with someone's opinion it should be his, so what? 

Just added a whole new meaning to the phrase, "letting yourself go" 

Oh... Ben. Oh... Jerry. 

When I found Leo's videos I was looking for how to deal with anger after a big outburst because my husband bought a really expensive gift for a friend without asking me. I had basically trained him not to buy me gifts at that point. It was a bunch of computer parts. A couple months ago he bought an expensive part for his computer and found out today that it wouldn't fit. In the past I'd be really upset by this and say something to make him feel worse but I didn't, I tried to be sympathetic and just let him deal with the stress of it himself. Later he found a friend to give/sell it to. I felt really happy about that and said so. It just seemed like funny synchronicity, resolution or something like that.

[mandyjw]

Oh, almost paradise
We're knockin' on heaven's door
Almost paradise
How could we ask for more?
I swear that I can see forever in your eyes
Paradise

[zeroISinfinity]

@mandyjw Talking with @Nahm is terrifying. 

Yes that's why I avoid ever calling him on skype. That's the last thing I will ever do. Nothing scares me away more then that. At the same time having deepest admiration and I know he knows this stuff to full extent but at the very same time I am so afraid of him.

You know I tried to BS Leo but they do not allow that once you expose yourself kinda expect from you to help lol. 

Edited June 21, 2020 by zeroISinfinity

[mandyjw]

@zeroISinfinity Love is scary. Not really, but seems that way at first. Glad I'm not the only one. 

 

[zeroISinfinity]

Infinite Love is not scary it is terrifying. Nothing more terrifying then that. 

Really wish you to experience yourself as that. 

This enlightenment stuff is about that. 

[Nahm]

@zeroISinfinity  @mandyjw

I understand, but if you guys keep saying I’m terrifying, people might get the wrong idea and believe I’m terrifying. 

[mandyjw]

@Nahm “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most, or else just silly.”
― C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

“No, little friend,’ said the Lion. ‘You have not made the first joke, you have only been the first joke.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: "The Magician's Nephew", "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"

[Nahm]

@mandyjw

(you already know exactly what I’m gonna say lol)

What’s the difference between bravery, and silliness?