Bill W

For me it is the below which is Step 3 of my 12 Step recovery programme. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

He did say read to be fair, no mention of understanding.

If you want to seek and/or carry out God's Will, there should first be an acknowledgement that it is your responsibility to obey God. Then you can begin to align your behaviour with God's Will.

I'm going to agree and disagree if that makes sense! I can see the point you are making. For me, if I am pursuing spiritual wellbeing then I am by default helping myself and hopefully helping others. That's the way I see it anyway, loads would disagree no doubt. But if there was a poll on here and people answered 100% honestly I'm guessing maybe 80-90% people on here are in some way trying to help themselves? And in the relationship and dating sub-forum that percentage would be about 105%

Nice, and I agree, it's the same thing. Self Help and Spirituality.

What's funny here? I missed the joke?

Hi All, I feel I am in the early stages of a love affair with a particular well known Christian author. I wanted to give you a couple of snippets from one of his books and you let me know if you fancy guessing who this is? Some of you might know, most will not. If you can't guess, and are curious, you can Google a couple of these lines and you will probably find out who this is. I'm awestruck with his writing. I'm about to finish reading a second book of his in a 24 hour period (some of his works are quite short, about 40-50 pages). To dissolve a problem that now seems so real to you all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of its seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Take your attention from being imprisoned and begin to feel yourself to be free. FEEL it to the point where it is natural – the very second you do so, those prison bars will dissolve. Apply this same principle to any problem. As long as you are conscious of being imprisoned or diseased, or poor, so long will you continue to out-picture or express these conditions. This cue is given you in words, “Whom seek ye?” And they answered, “Jesus.” And the voice said, “I am he.” ‘Jesus’ here means salvation or savior. You are seeking to be salvaged from that which is not your problem. Claim it in consciousness – not in words – and consciousness will reward you with your claim.

RISEN https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3231054/ PAUL, APOSTLE OF CHRIST https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7388562/ THE CASE FOR CHRIST https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6113488/

Hey, great thread! I'm trying to digest it slowly. I bet most of the replies will lean towards logic not having anything to do with it and to throw logic away! I'm like you,unsure of it all, but very curious

You know there is something you might really like if you haven't discovered it yet. Another OCD cracker jack like us (I'm joking, what he did was awesome) typed up almost word for word many of Leo's videos. I think it's called ACTUALIZED.ORG TEXT BOOK and there is a thread somewhere on it. I think you can even download it in either Word or PDF format. I'm loathe to tell you this because it might mean your husband does not see you for several days while you work your way through the text. If you don't know about this let me know and I'll try and find it.

@Zigzag Idiot indeed. Or sometimes just a half day with family could suffice lol.

@studentofthegame Cheers buddy, will keep an eye out. His 12-step book on recovery is brilliant by the way. UPDATE: I found the link and signed up. Cheers buddy. https://www.onecommune.com/recovery-russell-brand-sign-up

Thanks for typing up all that video from Leo about meditation, very helpful! And great joke on raising the bar perfectionist post on my journal

THIS ENTRY IS ON MEDITATION (TEACHINGS & INTEGRATION) Outside of general interaction with other forum members, hopefully most of my posts on this journal for now will relate to one or more of the below TEACHINGS & INTEGRATION - This is will be content from various sources, either written sources from books, written sources from the web, or clips via YouTube. I will write a short piece along with the teaching on why I think it's relevant to my journey and, hopefully, I'll briefly write about how I will try and integrate the teaching. ACTION PLAN - One step along from integration talk. A clear plan of action I intend to follow through on. ACTION REVIEW - A review of the above planned action. The following descriptions of meditation resonate with me and help guide me. Gil Fronsdal Developing an enhanced capacity to pay attention We are trying to stop thinking getting in the way The breath is at the centre of meditation We are training the mind to stay in the present Stay present with bodily sensations, even when agitated We are practising being non-reactive and non-judgmental You are not trying to accomplish anything other than to pay attention and notice your experience Thich Nhat Hanh Mediation is mindfulness, concentration, and insight. It is bringing your mind home to your body. If you find yourself in the present moment, it means your mind and body are together. When you practice breathing mindfully, you bring your mind home to your body. Mindfulness is the energy that helps body and mind come together. Concentration is born from mindfulness. With concentration, you’re able to look deeply into what is there. You can make a breakthrough into reality. Insight is born from mindfulness and concentration. When you are focusing your attention on something during mindfulness, that something must be the most important thing in your life at that moment. The opposite of mindfulness is when our body may be there, but our mind is somewhere else. My experience Inexplicably, I've come away from my meditation practice over the past few weeks. The mindfulness element really helped settle monkey mind for me. I mostly noticed that my mind was getting quieter with less "internal noise". I'm pretty sure it was also one of the reasons for being able to fall asleep faster at night. There was three types of meditation I was doing. Not even spending a lot of time on it, but still getting good results. One of them was just sitting down, eyes closed, taking in the sounds around me. I'd always focus on sound. If I was somewhere so quiet where there literally was no sound, I would use an app on my phone (normally a ticking clock), but ideally, the sounds would not follow a set rhythmic pattern. So, good sounds for me were things like the wind making the tree branches move, birds singing, even the noise of traffic.As long as there was a noise to focus on, it kept me grounded. Whenever my attention wandered, I brought it back to the sound. Another type I did was in the bath. I'd be lying in the bathwater and I'd turn the tap on down the other end so it dripped, but only a tiny bit. Every time a water droplet hit the bath water it would cause a ripple, so I focused on that, and brought my attention back to that when my mind wandered off. The other type I did (and I call it meditation), was to sit down and really focus and contemplate on powerful texts. This would either be versus from the bible, written parts of my AA 12-step programme, or other spiritual type texts. I would read a small sentence at a time, but really slowly. When my mind wandered I brought my attention back to the text. I guess some would just call this normal reading! But for me, it was more than that.

It has even made to the front page of the BBC news website, which highlighted some quotes from him. The one about family made me smile! Some of Ram Dass' most popular quotes "Treat everyone you meet as if they are God in drag." "If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family." "We're all just walking each other home." "You've gotta become somebody to become nobody."

@Amandine Thank you, Thank you! Stay tuned my friend. I aim to become fully 100% enlightened after my First Action Plan, and when that happens I will pass on some of my enlightenment to my closest actualized.org buddies, you included. There will be plenty of enlightenment to go around as I think my Cup will Runneth Over. I will become so enlightened it will be dangerous, and I will then need to undertake many days worth of low consciousness behaviours to bring my enlightenment down to manageable levels of enlightenment. Tongue firmly in cheek of course! Funnily enough I almost wrote entitlement instead of enlightenment, have a look at those two words and see how similar they are. Never noticed that before! You'll learn a lot from this journal

I've been active on the forum for months and haven't asked any direct questions of Leo or many general question to everyone. CARL JUNG A lot of my journey and the content I get into seems to trace its way back to Carl Jung in some fashion. Some examples, The book I'm about to start on Shadow Work (Shadow Dance by David Richo) The whole beginning of the Oxford Group and then Alcoholics Anonymous I've just finished watching the Wayne Dyer film "The Shift" and Wayne Dyer attributes a lot of inspiration gained from the work of Carl Jung. However, I'm mindful that Carl Jung has so much literature out there. I wouldn't know where to start? Perhaps people would need to know more about me or my goals to advise here? But I don't want to turn this post into chapter & verse. I will say if it helps, that I am an addict in recovery, long history of anxiety disorder, and recent convert within the last year to Christianity and the Bible. Also, thus far falling in love with the work of David Hawkins (Letting Go). Just wondering what people find useful or not useful (I know asking this can be pointless sometimes as it's an individual taste often) with regards Carl Jung's work (I know this is a vast body of work). Or tips on what books or articles of his you found to be a good introduction to his work? Or if me giving you the above very brief history on me indicates any particular element of his work that I might really resonate with? Again, hard for someone else to answer this for me, but you never know...... Thanks in advance

@Nak Khid All of you! Thanks for this. Powerful feeling swept over me reading the above (honestly, not even kidding), and I will watch that video too. For me personally, to try to stay in "not-knowing" mind can keep my ego and/or monkey mind from getting carried away.

@Leo Gura There are about 2.2 billion Christians according to the internet, so that means at least 1.11 billion Devils. But I will let them know that you mean devil in a kind and loving way , and that you are promoting that there is a path out of devilry for everyone should they choose to take this path. The horse has not bolted, the ship has not sailed. There is still time for everyone to let go of their devilry. Me included.

Loving your journal.

New Testament. Book of James. Will only take you 10mins to read it. One of the shorter books in the bible. If part of your self actualisation journey is to benefit both yourself AND others, give it a read and implement as much as you can from it.

Thanks for your post. I'm very new to the Bible. Me considering myself Christian is a new thing for me. I've just finished my first book of the bible from start to finish (Gospel of John). The rest of the Bible I only know through various versus I've collected along the way. In a few months time I would probably have been better placed to contribute to this. I'll be interested in what others say. I was just curious as to the above quote from you. Why would someone be sad if something "is not nonduality?", genuine question. Not a trolling comment. I'm really interested if you don't saying?

From this point onward, each post I make in this journal I will allocate one of three headings; TEACHING - This is will be content from various sources, either written sources from books, written sources from the web, or clips via YouTube. I will write a short piece along with the teaching on why I think it's relevant to my journey and, hopefully, I'll briefly write about how I will try and integrate the teaching. ACTION PLAN - One step along from integration talk. A clear plan of action I intend to follow through on. ACTION REVIEW - A review of the above planned action.

How you gonna break that cycle?