Loreena

@Vladimir @Gabriel Antonio Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences. More experiences from others are welcome.

This is one the many realizations I had over the past week. I know that socialization is a very useful skill and man being a social animal needs to be in a family structure which is the basic unit of the society as a whole. However over the past few days, I had been reading about a lot of abuse cases involving children who were abused by their parents. It was disturbing to.say the least. And I gave it a thought which led me to a few realizations. It seems that living as families is beneficial for getting love and affection which are very basic human emotional needs, however it can even be that it is all a part of deep social conditioning that makes it seem like living alone or in isolation to be an oddity. Humaninteractions are beneficial only if they're conducive to emotional growth, positive and non-toxic. However if such interactions are dangerous, abusive, dysfunctional, toxic then it's best to cut them off isolation is preferable over such a system. So the conclusion I came to is this - Interactions which are beneficial need to be kept and encouraged. Any interactions which are destructive to progress and growth should be immediately cut off and the person should be taken away from such an environment and raised independently in isolation or at least surrounded by a less toxic people in sort of a general commune where people are not related. We should get rid of the social conditioning that parental and spousal relationships are indispensable because they're not. They're only essential when they are conducive to love and growth. We should not be ashamed to stay single and devoid of social interactions. There should not be any pressure on an individual to follow social norms. As a society, we should not demonize, isolate, ostracize those who wish to cut off family relationships and stay single. Their choices should be respected. Also it's important to condemn domestic abuse severely. It's not all bad if a person lives in isolation as long as he is able to stay away from all the toxicity that arises out of relationships. Isolation can hinder social skills but social interactions come with their own set of pros and cons that generally get ignored by society which is deeply conditioned to believe that human social interaction is foolproof. Human social and family system is not foolproof and hence a family is not always a perfect option. We should embrace isolation especially in abuse case scenarios. If we adopt such attitudes, we can curb domestic abuse to a certain extent. After some thinking, I have come up with a solution keeping abuse case scenarios in mind. And this solution is to keep and maintain an ambiguous social structure and get rid of the fixed structure. Till now, humans believed in a fixed social structure or unit consisting of parents, children, siblings and spouse.This was considered to be the closest circle meant to support you through life. However I thought of a new flexible social structure. I am not sure if such an experiment has been tried before. I don't think foster homes is a very good solution since a lot of abuse happen even in foster homes. So the flexible structure should consist of both families and communes. Only those families should be maintained who are happy and healthy. Any family which is abusive, dysfunctional, unproductive should be disintegrated and the family members should be separated and sent to stay in different communes. These communes should consist of people who do not necessarily have relationships with each other but they stay in separate houses like employees in a company, disconnected from each other and formal in behavior towards each others. It will be more or less like people living in hotels/hostels. This reduces the toxicity that arises out of close relationships and gives the chance to grow independently. Such unrelated formal communes(not the cult types) can be a better option to reduce family abuse in society and it can serve as a secondary alternative to a fixed family structure.

Yeah I don't eat healthy because I am careless. It is also because many more things going on in my life that makes it difficult to focus on what I eat. What I found is, in order to start eating healthy,those issues need to be resolved first,otherwise the mind is not ready to focus on positive changes. Food is medicine. I need to keep reminding myself to eat healthy food which is not easy. It takes a lot of work to get rid of bad habits. But before the bad habits are broken permanently, the emotional psychological issues need to be resolved because those issues are causing those bad habits. It all needs to go full circle. Refer to Leo problem solving video and you'll know what I mean.

@Joseph Maynor Everyone has a varying degree of self awareness. So yes it is a separate sense so to speak. I am not aware of what truth it points to other than that all existence arising out of the same awareness and therefore no difference between different objects of awareness. It's like reality is a sheet of molten gold and everything in reality is being created or moulded out of the same sheet so no difference at all. All objects of the same unity or oneness of existence and experience. When the sense of self awareness is developed, it brings us closer to the truth. So self awareness is different from the truth. However it brings the object who is aware closer to the truth.

@The White Belt both engagement and presence are absolutely essential. engagement is like food and presence is like water. You need both. Without presence engagement is not possible. You first need to have presence of mind before getting engaged. The only reason you don't feel present when you're engaged is because you're so engaged that you are not aware of that presence. The only thing that you have to be careful about is to remain engaged in good things, things that are good for you. Sometimes we get engaged without realizing that the activity is toxic, example videogames or something that is addictive. Such engagement is bad. Such engagement is unproductive. So be engaged only in productive activities. I would say engagement is like the food for the heart, because your heart feels happy when you're engaged, whereas presence is like food for the mind because it keeps the mind stable. Sometimes you do what the mind needs and sometimes you should do what your heart wants.

Beautiful men appreciation thread. Lot of beautiful men on this forum. Appreciate such beauty All men and women here are beautiful.

A few years back, I was on medication for my health issues that caused me to suffer from asthma and brain damage at that time. My concentration was very high in school when I was thirteen. It has significantly lowered since then. I would like to regain it back to the same previous level. Any tips (both dietary, exercises, mental) will be very helpful. Thanks in advance.

My name is Loreena Frankl and I'm Christian. Rural Texas.

@Dizzy Thank you.

@Dizzy I have a question. This felt like a basic non-dual experience to me. Did you feel good while having this trip. What was your emotional state ? You said you felt everything was, your hand was you, you were the water, and you said you had no emotions, wouldn't that feel very passive or robotic like dead. How is that feeling beautiful ? If you had no emotions, it means you neither felt good nor bad, just like a statue. Mundane and unaffected. How helpful was such an experience in real life as you were coming out of the trip ? It's like a " Zero Experience" or "No Experience," right? ...How is that a good experience. It's like you are temporarily cut off from life.

You have a tremendously high intellectual maturity as per your age when you started with PD. I would rate you 10 out of 10 on the scale of intellectual maturity, whereas most people cannot even make it to 5. Either you have to be a genius or it must be a lot of work you put in early on. So I was wondering maybe you started out with PD pretty early on, just speculating. Did you start reading PD books as early as 16 or 17. When did you actually start. And do you think it was reading PD books that boosted your intellectual growth/maturity to a very high level. If not that, then it must be an in-born skill which obviously others cannot acquire very easily.

This forum helped me to learn social dynamics and things that I was not very aware of before like shadow work, jhanaa meditation, enlightenment stuff. I had no idea about enlightenment before joining. After being here I am better at distinguishing high conscious from low conscious behavior. I was not even aware of a lot of the new age spiritual gurus and teachers. This forum introduced me to Adyashanti and now he is my favorite. Before joining the only ones I knew were Sadguru,Osho and Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh

Well now that we know that experience never ends, how about making the most out of the experiences we have . Like Nahm said, eat well, exercise, practice spirituality and enrich the experience you're already having. Btw imo everything is experience. Without experience there's nothing, nothing at all. Experience is king. We may say lot of words, but at the end, what really matters is what we're experiencing right now in this moment. We may try hard to collect all information in the world and attend all kinds of workshops to learn a lot, that learning will remain a learning until we really begin to experience the benefits of it. What matters is what and how you feel in the here and the now. If this experience isn't good, it's not really working out. Experience is the key.

Why not. You should try it. If that's what you are passionate about, then you should focus on it. But always have a plan B in place if things don't work out.

@Raphael I eat everything lol, bread, biscuits, ice cream, cake. Just yesterday I had 5 cupcakes lol. When I make something I add sugar, sauces, salt everything. I don't want to lose out on the fun just yet. I eat lot of macaroni, fries, chips and everything else. I like it. Maybe after a certain age, I might need to restrict but don't want too many restrictions. I am living this life once. Don't want to miss out the goodies for a while.

You have a job and you love to do it, considering there are so many jobless people on this planet. Anyway, it gets okay after the phase is over. Take a look. This video is good.

@Peace and Love Interesting indeed and thank you so much for sharing. Romantic energy is the most vibrant kind of energy. It's like fire. The flame of passion. If you allow the fire to consume you, you get destroyed but if use this passion to ignite a mission,you achieve great heights. I think this is the gist of the post. Good information.

@Key Elements Thank you for sharing. Wonderful review.

Everyone is free to have their own meaning of love.Btw, speaking of definitions, you have already created your own definition of unconditional love. Look below in your own words. Your definition of unconditional love is that it should even mean loving and hugging Hitler and rapists. Now that's already a definition.

If you want love to conform to your expectations of what unconditional love is/should be, it is nothing but setting conditions to it again, testing to see if it matches your criteria.

Why would such an expectation be that one should love everyone and everything without a single restriction. Wouldn't that expectation itself then become conditional. And where does such an all encompassing love fit into the paradigm of personal freedom. Why would a person be expected to love without freedom ? He/she should be free to love anyone in anyway they want. Now that itself is unconditional enough. Love is to be never tested. A love that has to conform in order for to be accounted as unconditional is analogous to an exam that needs to be passed to show merit. Where will you set the boundaries. How will you decide. Love that comes naturally is already unconditional. To test it in the fire pit of unconditionality is to put conditions on it.

Well unconditional love also includes tough love which means that when someone does something wrong, they need to be shown the right path. So when your mother loves you unconditionally she really wants the best for you and so when she gets angry at you, she is still reflecting her unconditional love for you, the only thing is she wants you to do the right thing. So unconditional love will teach the rapist to not rape and to not kill. Punishment is also a part of the same love.

@Preetom Because we always focus on our lower needs rather than our higher needs. This makes us primitive and dysfunctional. Also our education system is not equipped in turning us into healthy self actualized functional individuals. @pluto what kind of distortion.

Read my review of your book. I hope you'll like it.