Eph75

It depends on who you are, "where" you are and what you read into "postitive thinking", it could be in respect of law of attraction and that if you're just positive about something then everything will be alright. But somewhere along the road you have to hold the understanding that you have to to sow in order to reap. If you fail to see this relationship and somewhere think that you can just wish for things and they should magically appear or happen to you, then you are disillusioned. It is only after you "sow" that the universe seem to align with your intentions and things appear or happen seemingly without effort. If you come from the perspective that you should get stuff without having put some stake into it, it's easy to see that one would say that "positive thinking is projection bullshit". While this is just a lack of basic understanding. If you put in the work that is needed, fueled but positive energies then it's a whole different matter. You get the energy you need to realign your reality to whatever your needs are and there will be a sense of it all being effortless - at this point events simply unfold. But in fact there is more to it than mere positive thinking. We tend to romanticise and neglect the not so romantic aspects of things. Doing that, it's easy to say or see only the positive thinking being the magical "fix all" component.

Here's my take on this, based on my personal experiences and relationship with the subject. Emotions are directly connected to your ego; your way of being, your belief systems and paradigms and how firmly attached your are to these. The firmer attached you are the more emotionally triggered you will be. Understanding your emotional triggers and stakes is required. They determine how you will respond. It's easy to see that something that carry no mean at all won't trigger emotions in you. Such events are likely to pass you by without any particular thoughts; if you are conscious in that moment you would notice and let is pass, if you are less conscious it would pass you by without any notice. It would mean nothing. See yourself as a guitar and you therefore have your a number of strings. If whatever happens flicks any of your strings, you resonate with the movement of the affected strings. Understanding the mechanics of what emotional impulses are and knowledge of your "strings" allows you to distance you from or remove some strings so that you don't resonate - or - resonate less with that "happening". This is about understanding and managing your emotions, not controlling or suppressing them. Mastery is based on this understanding of emotions and self and the ability to not having them affect you in a substantial way.

Life crisis or other very challenging scenarios [can] typically generates leaps in personal evolution as the way you have functioned before stops working so that you are forced to create a new way of being. How this may turn out is hard to predict, it can result in progression or regression. I would guess that you won't be able to do such a leap over such a short amount of time, but you can have an instantaneous discarding of your a lot of or specific sub-sets of your beliefs which allows you to relatively quickly start build new beliefs or replace old beliefs with new ones. In the small scale this could be an A-HA moment, in the large scale it could be a car crash and you loose your legs which turn out more of a "blessing" from a life purpose perspective than a "curse" connected to change of mindset. So my, 100% speculative answer, is that no, you won't be able to leap up in the spiral. Instead you have accelerated your consciousness evolution that allows you to move upwards much faster than you would have, which might be experienced as a leap. Besides, there are no fixed steps in the spiral, it's a "sliding scale", you can certainly stretch your upper part of that sliding scale upwards from such events.

This happened this night as well but with lower amplitude, I stayed with it for maybe minute but didn't want to loose sleep one more night - not that the lack of sleep from yesterday affected me - and I was able to let it go and go back to sleep. It's as if consciousness is there throughout the waking process, waking up from dreaming rather than the regular being "ripped" out of dreaming. Instead waking happening without exiting that dream/meditative state. Much like meditation can produce experiences that are like dreams in that we feel that we experience rather than being in thought that we know we think or construct. Just a theory, but it sounds plausible when looking at it from a logical standpoint. I'm not implying that this mean anything, I don't think it does. It's just one more of those things that it worth noting and letting go. It's interesting that new phenomena keep appearing. Being is quite a beautiful and wonderful thing.

This isn't much more than just that I felt that I needed to share and check if anyone else have experienced the same. This morning at 3 AM sharp I woke up to find myself having a visual display going on behind closed eye lids and my body was in a meditative "heavy" / "numb" state, the exact same state that you can end up when you're meditating and have "slipped into it" a bit, a bit more deep meditation, somewhat "electric" vibration in my limbs. I just stayed in the moment and enjoyed it and after about 45 minutes it ebbed out into a shallow meditative state. I weren't able to go back to sleep after this, I get up at 5 AM anyways so not much difference. Anyone care to share similar experiences?

What do we mean with opening the third eye, release of DMT? Should be more temporary/incidental than a permanent flow?

If the emotion is disconnected from carrying meaning that is emotional to you, they become impulses only which can be objectified and observed without experiencing the emotion in a personal way. When doing that, they all loose their emotional meaning in a traditional sense. That doesn't mean that an anger impulse is the same as say the impulse joy, but you can find peace in both - if you are able to add that distance. Ego of course comes into play here. Removing the ego, there is no bad emotion, no suffering. It's not all the same, the resulting experience can be the same - being at peace.

Scandinavian - from my perspective Swedish - "green" is a problematic green with a lot of shadow work to be done, not the least seen in the younger generation, where the message comes across single minded and more dictatorial than a yellow tinted green that breath healthiness. It's progression though, it will take time to mature.

Yes, that was what I was getting at. What *was* perceived as suffering no longer is. Missed the experience seeking angle on exhilaration, thanks.

Both, Peace is Exhilaration, they are the same. As is Suffering. They're all the same. With Acceptance everything changes, everything becomes Peace and at Peace comes the realization that it already was, is and only could be Perfection.

Chasing awakening is a catch 22, the need for awakening prevents you from awaken to the fact that you're already exactly where you should be, and allow yourself to see the perfection of what is. You can't get there without changing something but chasing that something is in a sense preventing you from finding it, there is always going to be "more" to chase - like a dog chasing its own tail, caught in a loop. So in a sense, that awakening is the pure realization that your relationship to your being/expectations have changed so that you can allow yourself to truely accept it all. That allows you to see all of those things that you mention, that you already see that you should be able to feel. But how do you get there? This is something you can't read up on in an instruction manual of life. You have to find your own way

What is it in your life that you feel is "perfect"; the Perfection of imperfection and the acceptance of this or a connection to attributes of the life you live? Question is what are you missing. The answer depend on where and who you think you are.

I'm here due to the videos being as, in depth as they are. There are plenty of shorts videos on Youtube but there are few if none single topic videos that stay on point for that amount of time. It is a bit of a nisch, Leo nisch. Letting go of that would be loosing edge. Besides, the videos have a chronological order that does serve a purpose. Start from the beginning and hang on towards the end. As you evolve as does the video Content as well as the appreciation of the length. With that said, maybe the odd promotional video spots that only serve purpose to direct new viewers back to past topics would be good, so that old content don't stay old.

@Sonya You do have a problem but the problem is not that you are drawn to men who take care of you in that way. Your problem is that you have a cognitive dissonance within you, you hold a contradiction within you that is throwing you off and you need to come to terms with it so that you can accept who you want to and need to be, so that you can allow yourself to love both yourself and your way of being fully. Pondering about the man-aspect is just a side-track, whatever you choose is right is right, as long as you yourself are fully aligned with your own choice. In that, that best thing you could do is what you're doing now, which is to process it so that you can grow stronger and more assured in who you can be.

@Bestyle2209 Yes I think I will have to take that networking beast by the horns. Living in a small town there are not many opportunities though, or at least that is what I would think but then again I wouldn't have been looking for those opportunities in the first place. What we don't bother seeing, passes by unnoticed. I saw they announced some local or at least locally arranged retreat the other day, I should look into what that is about.

In your self actualization journey, in what ways have you managed to find people that can help being mentors / being a gravitational pull upwards in development? I'm not counting Leo's videos or authors via books but people that you real life interact with. I don't have anyone myself that I can interact with, except a book author that I've met with about every month for the past 1/2 year. He asked me this question; where can you find people on the same level or one level above that can help accelerate my development. I just don't know... I'm an early yellow SD kind of person. I want to try and find people that can help me with my development in such ways but I have no idea how to find such relationships. I thought hearing your stories would be inspirational and might give me ideas. This forum of course being a place with such potential, which is why I registered.

From a SD point of view, having a center of gravity above you accelerates your development tremendously, so that's something I wouldn't say no to if I stumbled upon it. But tend to agree with you @MAYA EL; a solo hard learned lesson weights in heavier than a shortcut to an answer, losing much gained understanding on a intermittent journey lost. The question I was asked was more from a business field point of view, which is that of an organizational transformation catalyst and from such a point of view it would be easier to find mentors. Well, at least if you have been good at networking - which I haven't - which probably is more in line with why I am here, being more of an introvert, individual kind of guy. Thanks for sharing perspectives.

Real life mentors I think are a difficult thing. People that self-actualize I think tend to do so in their solitude but these people are likely to be doing something more in life than just self-actualizing and therefor they could be good mentors in whatever field they operate in. But, to me, it feels like an impossible mission. It would be cool if there were self-actualizing focus groups that you could attend. It would be interesting to consider starting one of these but I wouldn't expect any "higher beings" to attend and if that would be the case, it's back to square once since I'm already in a position where I can practice the knowledge I've already attained. @Elham That's great. The internet is like it is, real life what it is. I wouldn't having either personal connection but right now, where I am today, it feels a bit like utopia. If anyone in far north of Sweden would happen to read this and feels like stretching out a hand, please feel free

@Ibn Sina I like your posts, I appreciate them - they appear full of knowledge and make me want to learn more about the religions you write about. A bit of a red flag is the emotions that is awakened within you. It tells us that you have a strong emotional attachment to your beliefs and with emotional attachment comes a need to defend your knowledge and your perspective. Detaching yourself emotionally from your beliefs is at some point inevitable for continued spiritual growth. You lose your need for understanding, approval and acceptance and view your perspective as mere one perspective. No need to defend anything, only a need for sharing your perspective whatever way you have gained that perspective. At the same time as you stop clinging on to your beliefs - which is where the emotions come from - you also open up to be surprised by other peoples perspectives, maybe even looking for shifting your own perspective.

The day I had that insight was a beautiful day, somewhat surreal and that insight has made me looking at a lot of thing differently today. Another insight that happened almost simultaneously with about a day in between then was moving from just knowing about the me being god aspect to living and feeling it and a series of insights connected to this which has completely changed how I relate with other people, myself and things in the world. I don't recall which came to me first. I've never felt such a profound experience as that day when I spent an hour with a leaf I plucked from a tree, randomly, and watched it die in my hand, change shape and color, dancing in the light, crawling to the edge of my hand to finally leap out into freedom. I moved through a feeling of having killed it, felt bad and sad to quickly moving to understanding that it was part of me and me it and that I didn't kill anything at all, into comfort and awe before the me being all. The day before I shed a tear for a stone. You are not insane, not at all, you're just waking up to see something bigger. How about celebrating yourself for how much you have left to discover rather than putting you down for not knowing "enough"? It's the beauty of life, knowing that what I know is nothing in the whole.

@CreamCat Thanks for the adding perspective to "godly responsibility", I haven't heard that expression before.

What if it's not the minimum nor the maximum bar for performance that needs to be raised, but rather what kind of performance you are able to produce? In the sense of shifting what kind of contribution you have to offer, that works better for you or for whatever purpose you want to fulfill under the circumstances under which you need to operate. Sometimes adding amplification is not the solution. Removing, understanding and/or accepting limitations tend to improve performance regardless. Distractions created by the ego and through the ego unfavorable emotional responses is a good thing to deal with even without focusing on performance and the pressures that performance anxieties may result in. What kind of performance and why is performance important, what are the underlying reasons. I'm curious to hear about the godly responsibilities.

I've been contemplating questions like this myself. How to best interact with individuals in lower stages, from their point of view, without immediately presenting solutions, solutions that those very individuals are not likely to either see/understand and at the very least not accept. All this from a developmental perspective where I wish to help by being a catalyzer for growth in people in general. Pulling too hard and too obviously will only create resistance, we're not likely to want to be convinced of things, so arguing is a complete waste of time. The key I think it so find a way to communicate on the same level and in such ways that the other part subtly reasons him or herself towards an emergent sense and meaning making - being/offering a subtle upwards gravitational pull for long term growth/change. I'm struggling with this. I tend to much too quickly offer my perspective and understanding. I need much self-work on this front.

For me building a fundamental understanding for how emotional impulses work was essential and helped me to get "unstuck" about a year ago, understanding what the impulses are for and how we misuse them. Further understanding how emotional impulses in the rawest form are neither positive nor negative but instead they are pleasant or unpleasant. What we do is apply interpretation to these in themselves harmless emotional impulses and turn them into, for the most part, negative sensations as we're prone to being negative from a survival perspective. Lack of action turns into procrastination, anxiety and angst. In the long term, depending on which of the primary affects we're talking about, and this is detrimental to self-esteem and self-worth. It might be interesting to look into Sylvan Tomkins research on affect theory. A lot of our problems stem from a poor relationship with our emotions, that which is closest to us all and effect us tremendously. Negative thinking is a huge part of this, getting to terms with this is good and limits the effect, but it's important to understand the underlying cause and examine those as well. A spin-off on unpleasant emotional impulses is that we do hold the power to change so that we redefine what previously was negative into something positive, e.g. anxiety is more than likely to be an invitation for growth and we can learn to want and like anxiety as we start seeing it as a possibility rather than a limitation that holds us back and down.