jbram2002

And without seeing the Shadows, it's hard to appreciate the Light. I need to identify my own Shadows and deal with them, either by accepting them or by making sure they don't overtake what makes me me. I need to dig beneath my Persona and see what lies under the mask. I tried watching the spiral dynamics video last night, but it was too late and I was struggling to not fall asleep. I know I've heard the basics, but I have a hard time memorizing what each stage color stands for. I will try again when I can dedicate more focus.

I don't know most of these guys. But I do know that we all have different definitions of the truth, even in this forum. Who's to say whose version is correct?

I don't know about you, but I disagree with myself all the time.

What is man? Some would say a miserable pile of secrets. Some would tell you what he is not: an island. Is he an artist? Is he a monster? Is he not simply who he is? Why is that hard to accept?

@ivankiss Words are a tool used to paint an inaccurate picture.

Neither. I see an optical illusion of a body that does exist, but it is not myself. It is the house that contains me.

I will be honest with you: It is very difficult to turn around nine years of bad habits in a single year. Most likely you will fail at getting a near-perfect grade. But you can improve. Having someone who you are accountable to is a great first step. A school counselor is a good option if one is available, but you also should have a peer of your own age. They don't necessarily have to be a study partner, but it doesn't hurt to have one. This person will be the one you talk to when you don't want to do the hard work, and hopefully they will encourage you to stick with it. The next thing you should do is as Nahm said: investigate yourself and your life. If you are having significant personal issues (diet, sleep schedule, etc), it's difficult to focus on improving your academics. Third, figure out what it is that's holding you back. Are you bad at taking exams? If so, talk to your teacher openly and honestly about that issue and ask if there's an alternative option. Perhaps taking the exam after school in a quiet space would be an option your school might allow. On the other hand, that simply may be out of the question for your school. How are you at taking notes? Focus on taking notes that you can use later to study for exams. This doesn't mean writing down everything you see, but it might involve highlighting things you don't understand so you can come back to them later. Do you do the homework or struggle with staying consistent? Homework sounds boring, but it's teaching you to do things over and over so that when the exams come, you don't have to think about how to do something. You'll already know. Do you talk to the teachers after school? Tell them you're struggling and want to improve, and most good teachers will bend over backwards to help you. Several people have already stated this, but it bears repeating: You don't need to be successful in school to be successful in life. If you still fail after giving it your all, your life isn't over. Don't measure your value based on your grade. You are so much more than a number. However, that's not to deter you from trying your best. There are definitely opportunities out there that are only available to someone with a college degree. Even if those opportunities are not your end goal, there's nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself. I commend you for identifying something you feel you can improve and taking steps to better yourself. It takes a certain amount of strength to do that, and that strength will serve you well. I understand that this advice is not exactly the most enlightened advice focused on improving your spirituality. I'm focused on answering your question regardless of your spiritual state. But don't neglect that aspect either. There is some excellent advice here that might even contradict my own.

We all think we're awake when we're dreaming.

@Nahm I feel that it's a little bit difficult for me to dedicate the time that I need to really absorb some of this in a timely manner. On the other hand, I have the rest of my life. I will try to spend some time tonight looking through that paper and giving your words some thought.

This is the part that is stuck with me the most. This is how I show love: by helping people fix their problems. Sometimes I forget that it's unwanted at times. So I'm starting a new Journey now: I'm going to try to avoid offering my wife advice without her asking for it. To me, this feels unloving and borderline hateful. It makes me feel like my main method of connecting with her will be gone. You could say it makes me feel vulnerable. But it's what she needs, and I would do anything to help her. Update: I'm so bad at this but I have already failed about five times in as many minutes this morning.

I ran out of free time past night and wasn't able to get to this. I will try to watch it tonight. <3

So, this video wasn't quite what I expected when I heard about it, but I'm remaining open to it. I think she has plenty of things that she can teach me. Keep in mind that a lot of this talk is about being vulnerable, putting yourself out there, and not just risking failure but knowing you will fail and dealing with that failure. Some parts that stood out to me: === "The deal is that you have to be very specific about people whose opinions of you matter.... [R]eally solicit feedback from the people that do give you good feedback. And you know who makes that list? ... People who love you, not despite your imperfection and vulnerability, but because of your imperfection and vulnerability." --- She talked about a vacation she was on with her husband. They were both professional swim coaches, and they were on this long vacation at a lake. As they swam across the lake, she told her husband that she felt so connected with him. What was his response? "Yeah, water's good." She was mad because he didn't say he shared the same connection, so she planned to talk to him when they got back. He'd ask her what's for breakfast, and she would say, "Oh right, because while we're on vacation, I'm in charge of breakfast, and lunch, dinner, packing, unpacking, bug spray...." But instead, she asks him when they get to the dock why he wasn't connecting, and he said "I don't want to do this with you." "It's just the story I'm telling myself" - What some of the most resilient people say. Seems to be in common with nearly everyone she has researched. The story she was telling herself at that moment was that either he was disappointed she couldn't keep up with him after 25 years of desk work, or he thought she looked ugly in the swimsuit after 20 years and two kids. His response? "I don't know what you were saying to me in the water. I was trying to not panic [in the deep water] and just counting strokes." When looking at what women are most ashamed of, it's often body image. When looking at men are most ashamed of, it's often being perceived as weak. "You show me a guy who can sit with a woman who is in a state of fear and vulnerability and not fix anything but just listen... I'll show you a guy who's done his work and doesn't derive his power and status from being the fixer of all things." "We usually reserve using someone's vulnerability against them for the people we love the most. Why? Because we're scared when we see vulnerability in other people." --- There's a difference between "fitting in" and "belonging." Fitting in is just doing what's expected of you: saying the right things, doing what others expect, wearing the right cloths. Belonging is being true to yourself first and never betraying yourself for other people. True belonging doesn't require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are, and that's vulnerable. --- When we lose our capacity for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding. It becomes scary to let ourselves feel it. The people who really practice joy without thinking about the negative possibilities all practice one thing: gratitude. But gratitude is also vulnerable. Is it dangerous to say I'm grateful for something? Because then someone (God?) might be listening who can say "Ooh, I can take that away." She gave an example about someone deciding to not share pictures of their children with someone who had lost a child. The latter sees this refusal and says not only are you not sharing your stories of your child, but me talking about mine is obviously not on the table either. Our gratitude can be healing to others, and we rarely think about it that way. --- "I get so busy sometimes chasing the extraordinary moments that I don't pay attention to the ordinary moments." --- Sometimes you should just do the joyful thing for the hell of it. Don't worry about a return on your investment. Spend time without purpose. --- "No vulnerability = no creativity. No tolerance for failure = no innovation. It's that simple: If you're not willing to fail, you can't innovate. If you're not willing to build a vulnerable culture, you can't create." --- "You're going to learn about blind spots that you didn't even know you had. And then you're going to be grateful for that moment, and take learning it into your own hands, not make other people responsible for teaching it, and that's how you move forward." --- Vulnerability is not weakness. We were raised to believe that courage is a positive goal, but there is no courage without risk. We were raised to believe that being vulnerable makes us weak. We should be brave, but never put ourselves out there for failure. How does that even work? === I think I needed to watch this video even though it wasn't what I expected. I'm not extremely uncomfortable with vulnerability, but I'm also not generally willing to put myself out there either. There were a lot of truths she shared. I'm not sure if all of them fit on this forum or not, but I certainly needed to hear some of these things. If anyone has Netflix, I recommend you search her video and listen. It's a little over an hour long, but Leo puts out longer videos than that. Shouldn't be too hard to watch, right? Honestly, I'm sitting here wondering if I should post this. But wouldn't it be hypocritical if I didn't? Thank you if you read the whole thing.

I'm planning to watch Brene Brown: The Call to Courage tonight. I would post a link, but it's on Netflix. I'm not sure if this aids in enlightenment, but at the very least, it should aid in understanding myself.

@Truth Addict Thanks for the reply! I'm always fine with you using my journal for your own insight. Anything I can do to help others will help me, after all. I understand that I have a fairly logical and thinking mind, but unlike a lot of men, I think I'm also in tune with my emotions. However, I'm not an erratic emotional person where everyone can see what emotions are on my sleeve. I internalize a lot of my emotions because I need to be able to be there for my family. If the wife is acting emotional, then the kids and she need me to be calm. I've gotten probably too good at internalizing emotions over the years, but I still feel them. I don't see emotions as cheesy or ridiculous. Love is, in my opinion, the most powerful force in the world. Hate isn't far behind, although many would say they're the same thing. Fear, Happiness, Depression all have their place in our lives. The problem is that I have a hard time knowing what causes another's emotions without it being explained, and when one is angry, explanations are kinda not on the table. I often tend to say or do the wrong thing when I think I'm doing the right thing, and it makes me feel like I shouldn't have even tried to begin with because then she'd just be annoyed at me not being present instead of yelling at me for saying the wrong thing. The former is easier to deal with, but it's not healthy to be distant all the time. When it happens a lot tho... you tend to want to give up. I think I have heard of Spiral Dynamics, but I don't know anything beyond the name. Do you have the quick version of it, or perhaps some resource I could look into?

@SQAAD Perhaps there is, but then, perhaps there isn't. If we are willing to pursue Absolute Truth, then we must be willing to accept that possibility. Perhaps all of our perceptions, even flawed ones or ones that are provably, demonstrably false, are a part of that Truth. Perhaps Truth is everything... or perhaps it is nothing.

Truth is an interesting concept. I grew up in a legalistic family where everything was black and white. True was true, and False was false. But I eventually learned that almost everything I came to believe as Truth was... well, subjective. I learned that the color blue that I see is not actually the color blue, but literally every other color instead. I learned that water is not wet. I learned that you cannot physically touch anything because of the repulsion forces at the atomic level. I learned that my political assumptions had very strong counters on the other side, and that anyone can look at something and create their own truth from it. I learned that DNA samples are faulty and that multiple witnesses of the same incident often see very different things. Truth is subjective. But still I crave it. What does that say about me, that I crave something that is as fluid and nonexistent as Truth?

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there's always always more.

Good point. Sometimes one imagines things they don't want.

Although He is certainly the Truth, one person's perspective of the Truth can vary from another's. Understanding all of the various perspectives may help you in your own personal journey, and may widen the Truth you see. Be careful not to put Jesus or God into a box. He's much larger than your or my understanding. You have to be willing to be wrong before you can ever be right.

With relativity and nonduality, anything is true if you want it to be. And also false at the same time.

My wife recently bought a deck of Tarot cards. When they arrived, she was surprised that I had spent some time studying Tarot. I'm by no means a master of it, but at the time, I knew more about Tarot than she did. I took the box that the cards came in and opened them, and with her permission, gave the cards their first shuffle, all the time thinking of her. The Empress card seemed to show up over and over. Each time, I showed it to my wife because it stood out to me. I wasn't drawing cards, just shuffling, but it seemed that I would either cut the deck at the Empress, or she would show up at the bottom when I shuffled. I believe I saw the Empress six times in that short period of shuffling. For those who don't know Tarot, the Empress represents the mother. This link is a decent description of all of her details, but the short version is that she represents mothering, abundance, experiencing your senses, and nature. My wife is, whether she believes it or not, a perfect picture of the Empress. She spends a lot of effort in being a fantastic mother, and she is in tune with her senses and nature, far more than I ever have been. She works hard, helping our family welcome the abundance we are fortunate to experience. She asked me what my favorite card was, and I responded with The Hanged Man. He represents taking a moment to let go of things, and in so doing, he can help control both himself and his destiny. The oxymoron of control through letting go has stuck with me for a long time, and I feel that's something I have done quite a bit in my own life. Over time, she has drawn several readings for herself and me. When she does, I seem to come up as Strength, the ability to show compassion or being patient. She drew this card for me on the day we had our last big fight. I'm starting to wonder if that day it was drawn in reverse. I don't know what it means: is it something I should work on more, or a quality in me that she should focus on? Perhaps it's both, or perhaps it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. After all, Tarot is only as powerful as you let it be.

If nonduality is a part of your enlightenment, then you know that your path is my path.

If you believe you are enlightened, what is your next step to improvement? Or do you believe you have reached the end and have nothing further to improve?

I feel like this statement sums up a lot of thoughts I have when reading things here I don't understand. Then when you spend a while on the substance of what was said, sometimes it makes a little more sense. I've always subscribed to the idea that all of the best people are a little insane. It's rare that you find someone without a little bit of crazy in them. Sitting at work on the computer for 40 hours a week is insane, but so is doing hard manual labor for that long. Abandoning your home to go on a spiritual journey for even an hour is a little crazy, but so is staying at home and listening to the kids scream about getting the wrong episode of Blippi. Life is insanity. Embrace the crazy.