mandyjw

She's the real deal. The lyrics to just about all her songs are spot on. Know what the guy in the video has tattooed across his head? "War inside my head"

This is sort of a variation on my thoughts in yesterday's post about the difference between mockery and spiritual teachings. You are the dog crap on your shoe. You are the janitor. You are the President. You are your body. You are dead. You are alive. You are beautiful. You are ugly. You are a banana. You are Big Bird. You are the color yellow. You are the color purple. You are colorless. Don't you have to do this sort of thing at the same time as you say "not this, not this" ? Because you ARE, you ARE it all. Isn't that nihilsm when we say neti neti and don't also bask in the beauty of everything and infinite abundance?

I just went running and meditated on this some more. It's colder than I thought, the wind is blowing cold rain on my face, thoughts like I didn't dress for this, or feeling pained come up and I disidentify and I become the rain too and it feels good. So I know how to disidentify but i also identify with things outside me. Maybe this is a stage, or maybe it's it, I don't know. A car goes by me too fast, I feel annoyance, and I remind myself that I am that car, i am impatient and inconsiderate of others in my impatience sometimes. I try to experience everything, my body, my breath, what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, the sound of the wind. I can narrow in my focus on one and intensify it. I can't focus on nothing. Coming back to nothing breaks my focus but it immediately goes somewhere else, within sensing and feeling. I only use not this not this with thoughts, never sensations or feelings. With those I go with the flow because disidentifying puts me BACK into thinking.

I hit a brick wall of ego backlash or depression or something like that. I had just started a mediation practice, I'm getting over the flu and I have young kids. It become very obvious to me quickly that too much focus on my "spiritual journey" means neglecting my kids. I was reading about the five hindrances and it made sense to me intellectually, but I didn't care. Buddha ABANDONED his wife and child to go off on a spiritual journey. Who am I to think that I can go about a traditional path of meditation and dedication? I can't. I can't abandon my kids. I can sit in meditation and stay still for 30 minutes but it's much easier to meditate than it is to listen to a 3 year old scream and be patient with her for God knows how long. Self care is knowing that some days I just cannot expect myself to do both. I decided to do a 180 and totally waste my time today and I watched clips of Borat on youtube when I take breaks from cleaning. A Jewish man trolling and pretending to hate Jews and be from a country he's misrepresenting and making a total racist mockery of in all possible ways, making sexist and horrific comments to everyone at the least appropriate times. He's provoking reactions that show how closed-minded people are in their idealism. Once in a while there will be this amazing person he encounters who takes it all in stride, lovingly corrects him and treats him with respect and love. Those are my favorite ones. It dawned on me that maybe this wasn't actually a waste of my time. What's the difference between complete mockery and spiritual teachings? Aren't we trying to tear down beloved and cherished beliefs in this work? Is there a danger is taking yourself too seriously? Is there a danger in not taking yourself seriously enough? I don't know anymore.

@tsuki I'm really sorry that that happened. Hope you are feeling better. This just got me wondering, have you done kriya yoga or played around with moving energy around in meditation? I think one of the catalysts yesterday of my terrible mood was meditating and I was messing around with moving energy up and down my spine. I ended up with an awful headache and it lasted the entire day. It and some other events that day resulted in my wanting to throw spiritual work out completely, and I still haven't sat to mediate since. I'm going running, my stomach hurts really bad again today but I need to do a type of meditation that I trust and have a long history with. PS. Am I allowed to post 80's songs in a journal titled "Sacred Space" ?

It's all about balance, harmony and working together. It's not about cowbell or no cowbell. It's about just the right amount of cowbell in every moment.

@Aakash Focus on what you want not on what you don't want. If you feel like you're not organized, focus on a part of your life that is organized and glean lessons from that about how you can organize the rest. Whenever i would focus on losing weight, i would obsess over food and eat too much. If I instead found that i really enjoyed going running I'd lose weight without thinking. Spiritual development is the same principal.

When you focus on a deficiency, you ARE that. When you focus on what is whole you ARE that.

@Aakash @Serotoninluv Hear the cowbell? This is the for real recording. With cowbell. Don't fear the cowbell.

@Mu_ It's ok to believe that you everything as long as you aren't selective. The ego picks and choose which it think it is and isn't. Believing that you are everything and believing you are nothing is the same thing. Some people may find it easier to believe that they are nothing and to believe that they are everything because believing that you are everything gets, really tricky. The mind gets attached and repulsed and it wants to pick and choose. Believing that you are nothing is a great way to erase attachment and start with a blank slate. But then you have to go on with your life and interact with things. It's important to understand and experience both as a spiritual practice. One thing I do a lot while running is I'll get stuck no a thought of judgement and I'll say one way or another "I'm not that." but then I lose myself in something I AM. Like my breath or a tree along the way. That's what's so beautiful about life and consciousness, it's all here for us to experience, in its fullness indiscriminately.

@Aakash "Jesus said, "If one who knows the all still feels a personal deficiency, he is completely deficient."

We are Will Ferrell in the "more cowbell" sketch. We screw everything up and make everyone mad, but we're an integral part of the joke so it's all perfection.

I'm telling you, God and realizations are EVERYWHERE. Humor is a great place to look. When I was a kid I was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes. I learned so many spiritual lessons from those comics. Can you imagine though, in the time of Jesus, what a stir he caused? A disruption to the well known "song" of thinking and religion in his time? His message must have seemed very jarring and disruptive to the Pharisees.

You're always perfect. Welcome back.

Aww. That's God too though! Live life to the fullest.

@Serotoninluv Christopher Walken represents God. That's why he created ego. More cowbell. So we all can laugh at the joke.

They're not wrong. They aren't right either. There's no reason not to go to church. Usually the only time most of the people experience oneness is when they sing together. That was always my favorite part. But the symbol of baptism and communion are really beautiful too. I never understood until I had looked outside of Christianity for truth. I was never baptized by anyone, but I'm pretty sure God baptized me this past summer when I got knocked over by a wave, went under and got slammed into the sand. I hadn't fully respected the power of the ocean until then. That taught me how to jump right in and float along the waves instead of resisting them after that. I'm teaching myself again aren't I? Damn it.

@thesmileyone I've noticed the same thing. Spirituality is hard to escape from once your eyes have been opened even a little. By the way how do you teach a 6 year old to turn on the on switch of empathy?

@Serotoninluv I live in a very rural, quite disconnected area so getting together with people in person is a huge challenge but the good news is that my entire life has been like a retreat. The energy of this place has had quite an effect on me and I didn't realize the full impact until recently. I'm also really luck that my sister is highly conscious and also a mom, she does yoga teacher training and teaches tai chi. I told her what happened to me and she said that awakening was unique, and was still possible for busy moms and to prioritize self care. @Leo Gura Thanks. I only started this journey consciously after I became a mom, something about the challenges of it made me realize how broken I really was. I won't watch Borat for the purpose of spiritual development, I was just trying to cheer myself up. I guess it was on my mind because of the discussion here about Stefan Molyneux's race and IQ video and it just got me thinking about how people can go about discussing such incredibly volatile subjects without getting offended. @Key Elements Will do, thank you.

@Leo Gura I'm hopeful that won't be long until I'll be able to finally dedicate large chunks of time to it. My oldest has autism and is just now getting more independent. I came here a little over a month ago and had incredibly fast growth, someone here helped me to have an awakening, I was able to open my third eye and started seeing signs. There was lots of erratic behavior following it, sorry for that. During the entire thing I had to get my kids ready for school and pick them up and go to appointments. I felt like someone would suspect me of drug use even though I hadn't taken anything and the whole thing was crazy and terrifying. I wouldn't suggest doing it that way for anyone. @DrewNows That's exactly why I was SO obsessed with Eckhart Tolle. He made me truly believe I could do it no matter where I was or what I had to do. @Surfingthewave Great advice, thank you. I've always been bad at giving up at things, I have to pretend that i have every now and then though.

@Vinnie Thank you. He's really trying to support me but I realize that it's impossible for him to do unless he also understands or really WANTS to understand nonduality. Luckily I'm insane enough to have weird experiences on my own without psychedelics, ironically he's the one who could probably use them at some point though. I'm less identified with thinking and logic by nature, he is very much so.

@Serotoninluv Thank you. I have limited experience as an admin for a Facebook group but I know how tricky it can be sometimes.

My kids are too little to know. The three year old is an enlightened she devil/angel though. My husband thinks he's being supportive when really yesterday every time I tried to rest and rest my voice because my throat was sore, he used the opportunity to ruin it by ranting at me the whole time about how dangerous psychedelics are and even though I told him I have no plans to try them for now he thinks I shouldn't be around people who do them. He also ranted about how I'm too obscure about my wording of things and misleading people. He's trying to get it but he's not there yet. @Serotoninluv You know better than me as I have no faced the challenges of moderating a forum. I wouldn't have been caught dead here at all when I still highly identified myself as a Christian and nothing else in addition to that. So it surprises me that that is a concern here, but again I realize that moderators have to anticipate problems before they actually occur and that makes sense.

@Serotoninluv I say this with respect because I really do appreciate all the work that Leo and all the mods here do here, including you. I value this place and I'm really thankful for the privilege to be here, and I understand that some discussions just have to be cut off for the greater good of the forum. So please forgive me because I have to say it. You locked a thread yesterday for this reason. "A bizarre distortion and immature mockery of Sadhguru's teaching on Hinduism." Are you sure you're not ok with people having fun deconstructing? There truly was more there than what meets the eye.

@outlandish Thank you.