mandyjw

@FoxFoxFox Yes.

Yes, I always avoided such situations by dressing like a slob putting my head down and avoiding eye contact.

@FoxFoxFox I am it. But I can still forget. When I forget, that's ego. Ego is an illusion created when you forget who you are. All that really changed is the intensity with which I am it and the amount of time I am. But I still definitely fall back into my old self sometimes. It would be really dangerous for me and everyone around me if I couldn't separate the two.

It's not really all that interesting. So I always try to get a business expense when I go get groceries so I can write my mileage down and take it off my taxes. Sneaky. Whatever. So I decided to look for a better tripod for my phone since I can use it to make beadmaking videos anyway. An employee around my age with bright red hair asked if I need help in electronics, so I ask if they have tripods. He asks me why I need it and I say for youtube videos, and he asked what I make them about so I just said "spirituality." His reaction was really uncomfortable but a minute later he made a big effort to make up for his reaction and said "no, that's really cool." So we talk about the tripods and I decide to look online and thank him and he won't let me go. He says "You're not from here, are you." and I said I was and told him where I live. And he tried to tell me someone he knew and I didn't know them and he kept saying that I looked familiar and thought he knew me. He introduced himself and held out his hand and said his name and I shook his hand told him mine. Still won't let me go. He's just starring into my eyes. I know what he's going to ask next and realize I'm not wearing my wedding ring so I more forcefully end the conversation and thank him for his help. he yells after me "Sorry, I didn't mean to make that awkward I just really thought I knew you."

@FoxFoxFox I still feel the same way I guess. Nothing is what I expected it to be. I still have an ego and still battle with self interest. I still have knowledge and desires in life but they are no longer my own. They seem more like a gift rather than a transgression or a desire that comes out of lack. I still have a certain perspective, and only by 100% owning my perspective and limitations, being too heart led and not very smart, etc, I have found out how to look to others for what I do not have. And they give it freely. Because they are me. It's not wrong for me to eat, to destroy things to live because nothing can ever be destroyed. It's not wrong for me to want to build, to want to acquire, because the time will come when I've built will satisfy the law of entropy. it's all perfect. It's all beautiful. I've been put in my place. I've been constrained and limited. I accepted it. It feels like freedom. It's all done out of love. I'm listening to Leo's new video right now. He said that people don't want to go down the rabbit hole. They don't want to have the boundary between their inner mind and outer world fall apart. That's what it feels like has happened to me. Everything is true in the moment. It's not what I thought it would be when i did this work. it's more like one of my childhood fantasies come to life. Only now i'm an adult and it's terrifying until I remember to quiet my mind.

Aakash, I didn't raise you to be the type of person who FLOUNCES.

Same to you honey.

Every moment of everyday. You can go barf now, it's ok, I'll be grateful for that too.

Being a complete slob is really enjoyable too though. I enjoy being a chameleon best of all.

You are right, but we don't disagree. It's just another way to say the same thing. My favorite teacher I got too attached to was Eckhart Tolle. I thought Osho was possessed. Opening my mind up to Osho teaching something different but also necessary, another way to say the same thing... that changed everything. I didn't have to listen for hours upon hours to get the message, I got the message like a knife to the heart. Eckhart's message felt like hours/years of sitting out in the sun, feeling its warmth. It was lovely and I thought it was everything but it wasn't. It wasn't enough. I was attached.

@FoxFoxFox Another trick is looking at the ideas that don't resonate with you with an open mind. That nauseous feeling you get when you do it is your ego slowly dying.

@tsuki That's exactly what I've been realizing before and after this whole thing. You should have seen what I accidentally did to this poor guy in Walmart the other day. I still feel bad but slightly amused it happened. I've identified my problem, if you think you can help me come on over to my journal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVRCyELQnSw

The mind can never understand anything else either. It's fun to try though, isn't it?

"Relentlessly improve, let's see where it gets you", says Sadhguru, that's the part Leo teaches you to do extremely well. As he says you have to let go of your idea of enlightenment. No teacher can give you the truth, everyone has a different way of pointing at the moon. They point in different directions at different times. The moon moves around.

This is me right now. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/04/29

Your disabilities are your super powers.

You are right. Free will is the knowledge of good and evil, the original curse that eating of the apple signified in the garden of Eden. Having free will is to suffer. Surrender doesn't seem like a prison though, it feels like freedom. It feels like the freedom to be one's true self. Freedom means to question one's true self constantly. I believe that personality remains after enlightenment. I need to be more aware of my tendency to assume that everything should happen for everyone else the same way it happened for me. I recognize that I'm still too caught up in my own impatience.

I wonder what makes us resonate with different teachers.

Don't create duality between your teachers though. I had to listen to Eckhart Tolle for years and deal with my depression and anxiety before I could even open my mind up enough to listen to Abraham Hicks. I thought it was such a materialistic scam. I needed Eckhart Tolle to teach me and I needed her to fill in things. I needed all the other teachers I sought out, or teachers that life threw at me, including many people on this forum and especially Leo to fill in all the things I didn't see in myself. They are all me, I created them. I am them, they created me. Just try to listen to her with an open mind. But maybe she's not the teacher for you, we all pick different ones because we need different things. Honestly though men love intellect and science and I feel like she is a master of emotions and heart and men look down on that. Emotion scares them. It's unconscious sexism. Maybe I'm projecting but... prove me wrong.

She is! Who said enlightenment couldn't be fun? I am thankful for my hours and hours and hours of Eckhart Tolle before discovering her but my mind was too closed to listen to her then anyway. Materialistic stuff always made me sick. Ironically I had a really big desire to move away and I tried to force it into happening. But I couldn't. That offset a spiral of events that made me realize that I'm here, like physically here, for a very good reason. Also Tsuki, thanks for that too. Sorryiforgottogiveyoucreditthereasecondsorry.

Ok. Create yourself a shallow luxurious physical life that your parents will be proud of and all the while you're doing it get enlightened at the same time. Come on son, get to it. I gave you life, you gave me gray hairs, you owe it to me.

I just wrote this in response to another thread but I think it explains her methods really well. Yes, she's a trickster. She seduces you into thinking that you're going to get sex, money and fame in the future and when you fully embrace the desire of those things, in a way that really feels like you actually have them NOW... then you realize that all you ever wanted was that feeling. And that feeling is the vortex, presence, enlightenment, love, God. It's timeless. Your future desires melt away into a present moment feeling of bliss. Also @Serotoninluv When I awakened/leveled up recently it was really painful. Physically painful. It was because I had no education about yoga or chakras. I was too busy for it, I didn't accept it. it didn't resonate with me. I paid dearly for that. Still do really.

@Aakash Your parents don't think that you are wasting your time. You think that.