Mal

@Rashad The only way you can change is to become awakened.

Mmm.. true...

@Orange Just out of interest, did you focus on that question I asked you? I'll ask you again: What has never changed? Even the I had to come into existence at some point. So that changes too. What is beyond all of that? Can you try to grasp it??

I'm sorry, I don't really know how to interpret what you are saying. What do you mean by meditations? Like "sitting"? And are you talking about different techniques? And how are they becoming "messed up"? Unless you provide some context I can't know where you're coming from.

@governor Just admit that you don't know what is happening. The more you try to make sense of it, the more you suffer.

Hold on. I don't think you're ready for these kinds of things. Don't take any of this literally, holy Moses it's just ideas. Maybe take a break and go do some fun things? I feel guilty now because I had no idea that this could affect someone that much. Chill yeah and discard every single thing I said, it's only words. Just live in the present moment and you will be fine. This is about getting out of the head, not deeper into it!

It's not even that you are alone. The reality of it is that there is nobody here. What you think of as seperate people doesn't exist.

Mmmm... don't let it mess with your head. This is just an idea. Remember, never borrow peoples ideas. You need to realize this for yourself. You need to experience this for yourself. Just do the excerise Charlie gave you and you will know for yourself what I mean. You will remember it, and take it with you when you become the identity again. That's called a micro-disidentification from your identity. The more of these you have the better.

It's obvious to me that everything I see is actually "me". It's inside my head, everything apparently "out there" is only a representation of something that is in me. Think of a cinema projector, there is nothing actually on the screen, the picture comes from a projector. I have no idea what is actually out there (if there is anything out there at all). So if I see something in somebody I don't like, I own that trait, because it really comes from me, as part of my psyche. When I do this the "other" begins to take on a different quality. We are conditioned to think that there is a world out there distinct to a world "in here". This is not actually true. But it takes some investigation to see this. Think of when you were a child. Did the world not seem different? That's because your subjective meaning has changed. But what has been constant all your life? Can you sense the part of you that has never changed?

Thanks for sharing. This is true. I myself am going through extreme suffering at the moment. I get myself in quite a state, but as soon as I begin to own the characters in my dream the whole nightmare grinds to a halt. The only think I know for sure is that I really know nothing. The mind creates all of this, and until we are able to master our own minds we will not be able to really help other people. But to accept these truths we need to have an awakening experience. Because if all we think we are is a human identity, we can not begin to entertain that there is something more than our conditioned mind. Once we awaken from that dream it's much easier to start to work with these concepts. Until then, these insights can't be accepted by the ego.

@Teags Shadow work is about wholeness. The Big Mind process is a kind of shadow work, where you let an undersierable part of yourself speak, express itself, and doing this heals the pain body and integrates the poles of your psychic life. If you want in depth, read the last 10 posts I've contributed, it's about my personal understanding of shadow work.

@Salaam Im continually sharing my experiences on here daily.

You are the belief attempting to talk about accessing something you will never know.

@Salaam The only thing that has to hold it is the character in the dream. The real part of the being IS the void. When the fictitious character apparently evaporates, thats when the body relaxes and we get the benefits.

Nature is not cruel. Nature is nature. The "cruel" part is made up purely by the human intellect because it has been programmed this way in order to create societies that seem to work. The only beings on this planet that make these distinctions are human beings, and they make them based on innacurate assumptions. The problem the human race has is that we have natural impulses and urges, but we distort them by imagining that we own them, or are culpable for having these impulses. If somebody hurts our feelings that's natural. The problem comes when we create an ideology around getting our feelings hurt. We take things way too far and blame others for doing things that are just natural and innocent, and that sometimes can't be helped. We create bad names for people and aspects of man's nature, we label simple natural emotions as something good or bad, and we can even do this to the point of "splitting", which ironically is an immature ego defense mechanism. To be unable to integrate the wholesome and unwholesome aspects of ourselves and others means we are using this splitting defence unconsciously ourselves, and inadvertently creating a nightmare for ourselves in the process. The more whole we are as people (accepting of our apparent good and bad aspects) the more whole others appear. The less dangerous the world appears, because in reality our world is merely a reflection of our inner world. If our inner world is fragmented then our vision is fragmented and innacurate. Awakening is about becoming whole again. Making peace with the world and our inner world too, so that one day there is nothing left to do except facillitate others in making these internal changes in their own lives. We change the world by changing ourselves first. If we try to change others while we ourselves are not whole we create a whole bunch of problems for ourselves and others.

I like this Ayla. This reminds me of a Tony Parsons comment, he said we don't need the "I" to pay the mortgage. The only thing the "I" does is worry about the mortgage Everything that has happened has happened anyway without the involvement regardless of whether the "I" agrees with it or not. The only function the "I" performs is resistance, as far as I can see.

This is the genesis of all religions and spiritual teachers. They make nothing into something...and off on a wild goose chase we all go after them...

This might sound odd right now, but what this gentleman says about sorting yourself out first is true. Awaken first, then observe the view. The only thing that will be left for you to do is waken others up from the dream. Fixing the world the way you see it right now is like trying to paint some makeup on your reflection in the mirror, attempting to make it seem more palatable, while you ignore the fact that it's only a reflection.

@Lorenzo Engel @Salaam (David, ignore the tags, I quoted you by mistake) Ken Wilber speaks of it as "the only thing you have ever really known" "The only thing that is real, more real than what you thought was reality" Others call it coming home, or waking up from a dream state. These descriptions imply that enlightenment is really nothing special, but more of a recalibration back to reality. It's a little like when you're asleep in bed and inside a very convincing dream. Then you wake up and say "oh thank God, it was just a dream" and you recalibrate back to reality. Ever had a nights sleep like that? You were caught in something that seemed so real, and then this sense of relief comes over you. It's that simple.

That's right. The ego blocks the shadow from being assimilated. You're going to have to throw away your beliefs about being a "good person" or whatever other stupid nonsense you're holding onto, and come to terms with the fact that this is not "your" life, it's just life as it is. The main problem you have is labelling your experience. As long as you continue with these labels you won't experience peace, you will just experience a false conceptual haze. Believe me, people won't treat you with the hostility you have towards your impulses at the moment. The problem is you, it's not out there. Occasionally you will be accosted by people who have not dealt with their own shadows, this is the classic "crabs in the bucket" syndrome - but continuing to stay rooted in "what is "will keep you on track.

@khalifa Maybe my choice of words was wrong.. You can make life a meditation. Just by letting go all the time. Some of us go to our special room and sit on our cushion to spend an hour or so "meditating". Yes that's good, has some benefits and for sure don't give it up if you don't want to. But I've personally found I get better results by not the quality or length of time I'm sitting watching my breath, but its really about how many times I can catch myself drifting from the present moment during every day activities. And then noticing the feeling inside my body as this happens. This way I'm able to get more insight of how I'm feeling all the time and observing the related story, rather than spending a chunk of the day trying to empty my head. Integrating the feelings and observing the story is what is important

For a moment, if you like, ditch the idea of becoming "aware". Actually, when you see what this process really is about, it's about becoming less aware. Less "self conscious" and more automatic, spontaneous but at the oddly at the same time more 'in control'. You could call this awareness, but it's not a kind of self consciousness that some talk about. There is just more wholeness, and that means less self consciousness. Only humans have this dis-ease of self consciousness. Nothing else in nature has self awareness. "Aware" suggests that we must become aware of something. But the awareness that I'm speaking of in this instance is the glow of reclaimed energy, less bounded and contracted energy. Because we become identified with more of "what is" and less in ones head playing stories to uphold our illusiory self image, it feels like what was controlling us before has become less autonomous. It can be said that the more wholeness and identifying with more of what is allows us more choice than we had as an ego.

@khalifa Go to Ayla journal "Mind Attacks After Initial Seeing" thread. There is a lot of information there for you. Don't bother with meditation. I gave it up recently. Just become still and let your identity go, literally just let it go and witness what happens. Do it in a safe place, lying on the bed. All the emotions that you have been repressing that are causing your judgements will come to the surface, you will act them out because you will have become one with them. Don't worry about it, you will be fine. But you will notice that what you had been judging in another was something you stuffed down in order to keep your identity in tact. Once the identity evaporates then all the feelings come up. Thats when the peace comes.

Sure. Follow Charlie2dogs, listen very carefully to what he says and you will have an awakening very soon. Then you start making friends with your shadows. When the crabs come to pull you back it will be easier because you can clearly see what they are hiding in themselves. They need a target, like giving you a jacket they don't want to wear because they hate it, so they try to make you wear their jacket and then attack it. But it's not a problem really. It hurts more, but bothers you less because you know in the background that you are doing the right thing. Eventually you will get to the point where you can see who's stuck in their heads and who isn't. This takes time and the support of people who know the score. Just fob off any crabs.

@khalifa Not exactly. "Enlightenment" is the final realization that there never was a person, that the individual "you" was an illusion. That's a permanent thing. Awakening experience is what you need. An awakening helps get the "me" out of the picture so that integration can begin to take place. It's been said that awakening is a process of integrating the shadow so that the game of black and white eventually runs out of steam and all there were left with is "this". All the "me" can do is play this game of black vs white. So when we exhaust the me of this game by integrating the poles of existence the me collapses because there are no more shadows to fight anymore.