Leo Gura

You don't need to have a child to understand how love feels and works. There is no fundamental difference between loving a child, loving a dog, and loving a car. Obviously a mother's love is self-biased because the mother chooses to love "my child" rather than a million other children on the planet. That why I call it selfish. But it's still love. Love is love. We're just talking about degrees of limitation. Of course you could also say that a mother's love is selfless in that she would be willing to sacrifice herself for her child. But the same was true of Hitler. Hitler's love was also selfless in this sense because he was willing to sacrifice himself for his love of his country and his race. But as you can see, that was a very limited form of love. The point is, much higher levels of love are possible.

Now you're getting into word games.

Yes, that's life. That's a tricky balancing act. You are God in human form, so you both seek the infinite and the finite and you're torn between the two. You are divided. You seek unity but you don't know how to get there so you grasp around in the dark and you are addicted to division, so every time you grasp you make another division, thinking it will bring you to unity.

Survival is a never-ending tail chase. That's true. Survival's function is to constantly look for more advantage, regardless of how much one already has. These are tricky issues which are rooted in complex and profound existential dynamics that few people have any awareness of, and such understanding is not part of our shared culture. In the end everything is an unfolding of Love. But limited beings like humans get attached to limited forms of love and their capacity to love is very limited because they are preoccupied with survival and they are too unconscious and too selfish to love in the highest ways possible. Survival is just a limited manifestation of love. To kill another person to maintain one's survival is love for life. But it's a narrow, limited kind of love. Surrendering one's need/desire to kill another person would be a higher form of love. Selfishness is love! But a limited form of it. Selflessness is an unlimited form of it. A mother of course loves her children out of selfishness, self-bias, and survival, but this is still genuine love. It's just very limited. The only problem with limited and selfish forms of love is that they become an obstacle to much greater, unlimited forms of love. Love is all there is. It is the highest structure of all reality. At the level of the Absolute, structure and content become identical. We are Infinite Love. The trick is being able to live in alignment with that.

Well... I would just encourage you to contemplate What is evil? It's a deep question -- if you're interested. Try to avoid speculation and focus on observing what it is.

@CreamCat That's on the right track. Although, notice, "I want to improve my life" is itself a high-level structure which runs the whole show of how you go about doing this. It might turn out that the structure "I want to improve my life" itself needs to be questioned and gone meta on. Maybe striving to improve my life is a big part of the problem here? Maybe the very notion of "my life" is the problem?

@Zigzag Idiot It's deeper than that. Evil doesn't just come from culture (if that's what you meant). How did culture become evil in the first place? What is the source of all corruption?

This is a very deep ignorance to correct in someone. A person who believes that there is no value in existential investigation is hard to convince that it has value. It requires serious inquiry to start to appreciate the limitations of things like language, science, psychology, culture, etc. Only very seriously openminded and curious people will go down that rabbit hole. Entire books could be written (and have been written) about the limitations of science, language, and psychology. It requires a lot of reading, research, and personal contemplation to start to see a big enough picture, then the limitations become glaring. Until then it will appear like there are no problems. In practice maybe just skirt around the issue. Rather than trying to convince people that science or language is limited, just teach them whatever helpful thing you want to teach them which is beyond those limits. If you teach people helpful techniques they won't really care if it's "scientific" or not. People are suckers for effective, practical techniques that can help improve their life.

@Identity Survival is the structure you're looking for in that GF situation. How are you using her for your survival? How is she using you for her survival? What is the "you" that is being survived? What is her "you" that is being survived? Manipulation is another sub-structure that will be important to understand in the context of relationships. Notice how you too manipulate each other constantly to meet each others needs. This manipulation creates a dysfunctional dynamic. Successful relationship requires becomes conscious of your manipulations and letting them go. That's a lot of work since you manipulate so much and you do it so seamlessly and habitually.

So then you have what you want. Unless you don't want it. Get very clear about what you want and what the costs are.

I didn't suggest that you to come up with theories. Contemplation/inquiry is not a matter of guess-work or speculation. You don't know that. You haven't even bothered to contemplate or observe what desire is. Maybe if you looked at it, you'd find out. After all, there it is -- in you. If you can't understand it, who can? After all, we're not talking about understanding moon rocks or kangaroos, we're talking about the desires you feel and act out every day. Is desire really unexplainable? Everything is God. So that doesn't help you.

@Identity Very good analysis. Zoom out further and your girlfriend is revealed to be a projection of your own mind. But let's not get ahead of our skiis

If someone says that to you, run away while you can. Such reassurances don't need to be made in healthy relationships. Your descriptions of him are getting more and more toxic and dysfunctional. There is no way this will work, so don't feel bad, you're not really surrendering anything workable by leaving. You are simply accepting that this is unworkable. You will save yourself years of suffering and dysfunction by leaving now. Such a guy can drag down your entire life. So treat this rationally. Don't let your feelings for him cloud your wisdom. Frankly, why are you settling for this shit? It's like you go to a nice restuarant, they serve you a turd, and you persist in eating it. Stand up and walk out.

Why do you not desire death? Think about it.

That's karma and requires consciousness to overcome. You are stuck operating from the lower chakras, as they say. You basically live like an animal, shitting whenever you feel like it and then complaining about the mess.

@Swagala Your question more broadly is: What is desire? Tis a good one to contemplate. Why desire anything at all?

@Preety_India You are too conscious to be in a relationship with him. If you're into this work, you need to find partners who are willing to actually communicate, self-reflect, and be conscious about how they relate with you. Find a guy who values personal development so you can be on the same page. Don't get stuck in a dead-end relationship. It's better to be single.

You can't replace a bad habit with nothing. You need a new healthy habit instead.

@GabeN Nothingness is not an idea. You will never understand it in the way you're trying to. Only awakening. No other way. Any attempt you make at trying to understand Nothingness takes you further away from it. Just stop and sit in silence. Look at your hand. Do not talk. Do not think. Do not move. Do not try to figure it out. Do not ask questions.

No, memory is mental imagery. That is not consciousness proper. That is mind activity. The Absolute cannot be stored in memory. Memory happens inside the Absolute. This is a crucial mistake. You cannot get to the Absolute through memory.

Where IS mind. Get it?

It's a delicate balance of staying open to feedback and willing to re-asses one's position, but also being very clear about what the Absolute Truth is and not giving an inch when it comes to that. One of the fruits of lots of serious self-inquiry is that you become grounded in direct experience so deeply that other people's ideas/beliefs no longer become important. Basically you ground yourself in Consciousness, God, Truth, and Love. When you are coming from that place, nothing else matters and you have true strength.

@Preety_India This is a communication problem. You need to communicate authentically with him. Tell him exactly what you told us and leave room for him to speak his mind. There cannot be a relationship without honest and genuine communication where both partners can air their thoughts & feelings without argumentation or debate. It's called "clearing". You two sit down, each takes 5 minutes to talk without interruption and gets everything of his/her chest. Then you switch sides. No interrupting, no debating, no rebutting, no justifying, no criticizing, no name-calling, no blaming. Just say how you feel and what you want. Let him do the same. Of course he must be emotionally mature enough to handle this kind of communication. If he cannot handle it, if he refuses to try it and put effort into it, then leave him because it will never work anyway. A relationship with such a person is impossible.

Masculine/feminine is a duality. You cannot define yourself as a man without simultaneously defining yourself a not a woman. You can't really work on one without affecting the other.

Another doozy: