mandyjw

I spent a lot of my life trying to keep up with men at physical labor jobs. Raking blueberries, demoing, lawn work, whatever. It was an obvious thing that i eventually had to accept that I could work twice as hard and still not match them. When we hired out a ton of plumbing work I had to leave the house because the plumbers dope (pipe adhesive), started literately making me high. I don't remember what I said to the plumbers but I left the house and drove to my parent's house. The roads were snowy but it was warm and sunny and I remember seeing the sky reflected in the road and just being so fascinated that the road looked like it fell away into the nothingness of the sky and having an almost enlightenment experience. Then I thought about how all those men have gotten so used to those fumes, day in and day out working stuck in a basement all day. And I was really really grateful to them. Most women are too smart and care too much about their health to do that kind of work. I truly admire men who do blue collar labor, the truck drivers, the construction workers. Sure women can do that kind of work, but most can't or won't. This is a fact that we're just supposed to ignore. And our ignorance of it, is why rural America elected Donald Trump. Stage green feminism elitism has created a monster.

@now is forever Yes, it occurred to me. But all phenomena are things that we created that we won't accept about ourselves. So I'm told.

@now is forever Who doesn't get it?

nowisforever You're so vague everything you say is like fertile soil for projections, they pop up like weeds. I'm going to avoid the trap this time, I have to go do yard work. Trouble is, round up kills the bees and causes cancer.

@now is forever Georgia O'Keeffe painting?

I'm super uncomfortable making this explicit comment BUT it seems important for some stupid reason. If you're a feminist it's not about the vagina, it's about the clitoris. The vagina is for someone else's pleasure, not entirely, but it's the gateway to life. Feminine power and pleasure is about the clitoris. It has no other function.

Sorry I fucked things up.

@tsuki None of us have this figured out. Not a single one of us. Don't pretend that you do and that your wife's feelings don't matter and are her own problem.

@tsuki

Ugh. I feel like this forum is scaring me off again.

I still think it's much smarter to be the tomboy, be seen as an equal and a friend first, then weed out the shallow ones from the honest ones. When they see you as some sort of angel "above" them, you'll always be something that will or will not fulfill their desires, instead of having a real relationship of any type, platonic or romantic. I mean attraction has way more layers than just visual attraction. Why settle for just that?

All women are beautiful. I've never met one who wasn't. I HAVE met women who don't believe that they are beautiful but I see through it.

@CreamCat I've spent the last few years of my life like that. Sweatpants, glasses, looking like a slob, hiding. It works, people treat me a lot more like a person. If I dress up and go somewhere around men they act stupid and look at me like I have three heads. If I dress like a slob, they aren't attracted to me but they will relate to me on a personal level much more easily. So when I care for my appearance I'm objectifying myself? That doesn't seem quite right.

@arlin It's a general "you". Our society places a lot more importance on women to be physically attractive. Personality is less important in a woman than it is in a man, society wants us to believe. This creates a shadow and an unmet desire to be seen for her personality or who she really is. So even though she puts on make up and attractive clothes she hates herself and when it attracts a man, she hates him too.

Many women have two choices in many environments, either be seen as an object and risk being harassed and abused or hide completely from people. The problem is that you only want the "hot" women. You objectify them before you even started trying to form a relationship. As long as you treat women like an object they will in turn treat you like something that doesn't have feelings.

I needed to hear/read this, thank you.

@Nahm I recently found this note that I wrote in the night sometime weeks ago, and I laughed and laughed and laughed. I have no idea, "write this down" is clear but the rest? No idea.

This place can be intimidating at first, especially if you are female. Women love Eckhart Tolle and are more likely to gravitate to teaching's more like his. Leo's style is much more masculine but you need both to be balanced. I have often felt alienated by it in the past but the wide range of things that Leo teaches lays a foundation for spirituality better than anyone else I've ever come across.

@whoareyou I am not the things I have knowledge about or the skills that I have worked to acquire. Yet I am using them, I am using my ability to think and write to you, and I use the abilities I worked hard to learn to make money and provide for myself. Just because I know that I am not those things doesn't mean that I can't use them for good, or for my own survival, or to communicate with others. The truth cannot be spoken and yet it must be, as Leo says. I feel like a lot of people need me to let go of my religion because they find it disgusting. You don't know the inner battle I have already fought within myself, and the disgust I went through with my own religion. I can only say that forgiveness and integration feels good. It only happens when we let go. We have to let go of both the things we cling to and the things that disgust us.

As a Christian you separate the world into strong shades of black and white, so there is God and good and there is evil and demons. It's duality on steroids. As a kid I had impulses to accept the devil into my heart, and they drove me crazy. I later learned that those impulses were obsessive compulsive disorder, or I thought that they were. There would also be impulses to go places, pick up things and say or confess things. Those impulses were intuition, trying to get me to do a kind of shadow work and discover the truth of nonduality. They were my inner spirit. My love, faith and desire for Jesus and Truth was an open window to spirit at that young age. I was afraid and I slammed it shut. Only after I grew up and let go of my faith did that window open again. It kind of felt like someone threw a rock through it, but I guess I asked for it in a way.

Are you suggesting that I'm rotten? One bad apple ruins the whole bunch I guess.

It's funny that you just posted this now because I've been going through this, only for me it's a revival. I was raised as a Christian and my parents had already left the church and were bitter about the organized religion part of it when I was very young. I took an interest in it myself and studied my Bible on my own, mostly just the gospels but I also loved Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. There were a lot of verses that I would read again and try to understand. As a teenager and young adult I deeply, deeply hated other Christians and the status quo. It's like I wanted to suffer because most of the friends I made were Christian and those friends judged me for being friends with other people that they thought were "bad". I even had a Satanist friend and he was a blast. I was always trying to separate out the truth of Jesus from all the bullshit. I let go of the whole idea, shortly after getting into Buddhism. It's a really scary thing to step away from the thing that you've been taught is your "salvation" and "hope of eternal life". But I knew I had found the truth with nonduality. Those verses that perplexed me and frustrated me, one by one I understood them as epiphanies. My new dogma was nonduality. My new dogma was letting go of my past, not putting hope in a future. My new dogma was the present moment and nothingness, no attachment. Then after a few years it stopped serving me. My entire purpose for nonduality was so I could have mental peace. I became depressed and old patterns flooded in but at the same time, I started connecting deeply with different types of energy from places, and having inexplicable attractions to them. It all unfolded into an awakening in which I accepted that I had always tried to be good, and never recognized the devil in myself. I had been raised to be a moral, good Christian girl and I had truly wanted to be one. When I outgrew it I turned to Buddhism and non duality to serve the same purpose, so I could see myself as a good person. After I recognized the Devil in myself I truly experienced what is meant by the Holy Spirit, it is the same as kundalini energy. Of course! This is nonduality! My eyes were opened to the true mystic, Gnostic Jesus I had loved all along, more fully himself/myself. Christians have buried the nondual teachings and they don't understand the ones that persist in the Bible. They weeded out hundred of years ago. That's why it's so very dangerous, without an open mind, without wisdom and understanding you will turn nondual teachings into the worst kind of hell. I highly suggest reading the gospel of Thomas. Jesus goes way deeper than Buddha. He has an outrageous sort of love, and there are predictions and signs and tough riddles to understand that aren't present with Buddhism. It takes a very open mind to dive into this stuff.

@Truth Addict You can also set a timer, it really helps when you aren't focused. 20 minutes studying, 5 or 10 minutes break, repeat the cycle.

@Shin She's a pessimist, and she doesn't like the outfit I'm wearing just now, so she's being mean about it instead of seeing me for me. Otherwise, she could be part of the bridge. Last night I started having powerful experiences again, it must have been the meditation. I started to wake up with this intense intoxicating feeling of love, a physical feeling in my heart and I had a battle within myself of whether or not to make it conscious in this world and wake up, the pull of sleep was so strong. I got out of bed and couldn't walk straight. I felt like I was being pulled in two, trying to mediate between two worlds. Then I had a battle of my shadow self, a part of me wanted to be superior and a part of me wanted to be kind. I watched it closely, and tried to decide which part of me was trying to survive and I knew the answer was both, they both were a part of me that wanted to survive but I just watched the battle. Then I gave in to superiority for just a moment, and after that I was able to be kindness. A mediator has to have great love or else she will be torn in two. Maybe I love only to survive.

You know what I am now? A bridge. I can sit through a church service and smile instead of fuming like I would even when I was still a Christian. I already had a nondual belief in God brewing as a kid. I decided that I would visualize him not as a man but as a lion. I got the idea from C.S.Lewis, and I thought Jesus could be someone else in a different world. Love doesn't burn bridges it builds them, it doesn't cut cords, it ties them. You say yourself, we have to integrate nonduality, all religions, science, philosophy, and technology, political science, and self help. What else are we doing here? We're a melting pot! A bridge!