Emerald

Rethink what a relationship is. It seems like things just haven't stuck because you haven't yet gotten onto a path of mutual growth. I see relationships as a path towards deeper self-exploration and integration and a process of learning more about yourself by learning more about the other person. It's all about intimacy and deep exploration. It's also a partnership for getting through life together. So, I feel your focus is only toward the maintenance of the relationship without knowing what the benefits can be. If you wants sex, just go for sex. There is no need for deep relationship if that's the case. The maintenance isn't worth it if sex is all you're seeking. But if you want a relationship with all its potentials for intimacy with another human being who takes your best interests to heart and vice versa, the maintenance is VERY much worth the effort. It's one of the best investments you can make.

You really don't get a lot out of relationships do you? Relationships are really about depth and exploration of one another's souls and merging together as a reflection of the divine. Getting to know another human being at the deepest and most intimate level. But your relationships sound like a domestic chore. Like a boring roommate situation with some mutual masturbation thrown in for laughs. It sounds way better for you to stay single.

Well put Gita.

There is two. There is one. There is nothing. There is infinitely many and infinitely few. You can try to suss this out using human systems like mathematics, but it will never understand the nature of God's knowing. I certainly don't understand how it is possible. But I have experienced and it was beyond all dichotomies and dualities. It was all and none at the same time. So, it is always at all levels of knowing and not-knowing of itself at all times for eternity. Think about it this way. You are God and yet you are neither in a state of 100% knowing nor are in a state of 0% knowing from your perspective. You as an individual are somewhere in the middle. But yet, what you are knows everything. And what you are can know nothing. I wish I could explain it better than I have.

In order for God to be truly infinite it must also be all intonations of the finite. So God hides truth from itself because it must always be simultaneously at all levels of knowing and not-knowing all at once. God must be both fully enlightened and fully in the dark at the same time as it is the place where all dichotomies collapse.

I recommend practicing Vipassana meditation as this will help you strengthen your ability to focus without the mind going off in a bunch of directions.

Here is a good exercise for anyone who is interested in Shadow Work. We can often tell what's in our Shadow (which is unconscious to us) by looking at our judgments.If we judge something harshly we are unlikely to recognize that which we judge in ourselves. So, think about qualities and types of that annoy you about other people that you'd hate to have associated with you. For example, if you're really annoyed by hippies, ask yourself what positive traits that most hippies have that you have pushed away in yourself because of this annoyance. If hippies annoy you because you've known some hypocritical hippies, you may have thrown out the baby with the bath water and suppressed the more positive traits too like creativity, peacefulness, and non-conventionality. Write what you've selectively judged away from yourself and dis-identified with and why. And think about how your personality would be if you allowed those traits back into your personality in their positive expression.

It's more about being grounded in the empirical reality of emotions. Emotions arise as sensations in the body. Awareness on that level of the emotions helps you ground yourself in the empirical perception as opposed to getting swept away in the content of the mind.

Actually, according to polling data, Biden ranks better than Trump in regard to law and order. It's very likely that many people will see Trump as a fire-starter as opposed to someone who puts out fires.

Definitely the latter. That's the trick. Most people are concerned about free speech in good faith. So, far right wing thought leaders know this and use concerns of "infringement of free speech" as a way of demonizing the other side... thus softening their image and their bigotry to the general audience. It's how they recruit people and warm them up to their more radical agendas. And they can create the caricature of the oppressive leftist who wants to undermine free speech as a strawman to make themselves look better by comparison. And people are really susceptible to the mentality of "An enemy of my enemy is my friend" and this idea of the redemption of someone who was once believed to be the bad guy. So, it's really a recruitment tactic to get average people parroting their talking points and warming up to their ideologies and to generally shift the Overton Window more towards their side to give them more political influence.

Free speech is obviously more important than an individual's feelings. But feelings were NEVER what this argument was about... that was just what it was construed as by thought leaders of the far right to delegitimize those that protest against racism and xenophobia in the eyes of the average person. And it's worked incredibly well for softening the image of Richard Spencer types in the eyes of the masses. And this false dichotomy of "free speech vs feelings" makes the average person far less likely to call out people who are engaging in bigoted behavior, as they don't want to seem like caricature of the overly sensitive and suppressive left-winger who sees racism where there isn't any and tries to silence all opposing voices. No one wants to seem that way, so most average people will let it slide to avoid looking like an SJW. And if Fascist leaning thought leaders can create an illusion that those who are fighting against racism and xenophobia are the unreasonable ones who are trying to take away people's rights, they know they can shift the public consensus to where the average person is far more sympathetic to Fascist ideas and actively antagonistic to those espousing more socially progressive ideas. And this tactic wins a lot of support from those taken in by this illusion under the idea that "an enemy of my enemy is my friend." So, if Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists want to get the average person to be more sympathetic to them and their ideals, it is in their best interest to create an caricature of the left wing radical that is overtly sensitive, exaggerative, unreasonable, and suppressive of people's rights. And from the left, for anyone with half a brain, it was never about feelings. It was always about trying to put a stopper in marginalization and to put the brakes on society falling into Fascist ways. So, never believe anyone who says it's "free speech" versus "feelings". It's actually the much more gray area of, "What happens when people use the idea of "fighting for freedom speech as a veneer of plausible deniability to hide their Fascist leanings while actively promoting it." What so many people have done is to use "Free Speech" as a dog whistle for "Let me gather people to my racist agenda while hiding behind the veneer of devil's advocacy and open-minded freedom fighting." That way they can argue that they are fighting for people's freedom of speech instead of actually using that freedom of speech to try to take other's freedoms away... which is what these figure's actual agenda is. And they want to trick as many normal people into sympathizing with them as possible. That's how they grow their following and get more influence in society... where they can actually make progress towards taking away the rights of those who they hate and see as inferior. It also gives a convenient way for those espousing bigotry to move the goal posts. So, if you call them out on their bigotry, they will simply obfuscate and make the conversation about "freedom of speech" and how they have a right to say what they're saying. Meanwhile, putting the other person on blast for not respecting their freedom of speech. So, it turns the whole conversation around from "Hey, you're saying racist things that are harmful" to a conversation about the person calling them out on that racism being too sensitive and suppressive of their rights.

I hate getting in discussions like this. Perfect satire.

That makes perfect sense. The Jedi were quite repressive... especially with fear.

Yes, the aspects of the self that are being judged away will feel hated by the conscious personality. When we split an aspect of ourselves off from our personality and repress it, that part of ourselves feels hated.

Yes, this is part of it.

When looking for Shadow, the main thing to look for is aversion to identification with open relationships and people who are in open relationships. So, it may be the case that open relationships are not for you or vice versa. But in terms of Shadow Work, you'll want to see if there are any assumptions and judgments about people who engage in that life-style or about the life-style in general. And this can reveal some Shadows. For example, someone might judge people who are in open relationships because of what they assume are the sexual habits of people who are in open-relationships. So, this may not necessarily hint that open relationships are right for the judger. But it may hint that the judger is dealing with sexual repression of some kind that is then being projected onto others.

That's a good one too. We definitely don't want to look at what we fear.

Yes, all of that would fall under the category of human stuff. But deeper than that, it's really about immersing yourself in the experience of your life as opposed to trying to simply transcend it. The spiritual and the human are opposites that are meant to complement one another instead of work against one another. So, it's important to reconcile the two. And yes, I have a YouTube channel called The Diamond Net.

Spiritual bypassing is definitely a sneaky trap. The way that I conceptualize of spirituality that helps with this is to think of it as though it's a tree. The branches and the fruits are the spiritual stuff and the roots dug into the ground are the human stuff. So healthy spirituality is one that includes both transcendence and embodiment of the individual perspective. You want to stretch your roots deeper and deeper into the ground of your humanity and stretch your branches out further into the skies of your spirituality.

They are all human from the relative perspective. None of them can ever transcend their humanity, nor would it be valuable to do so. There is nothing to escape from. But that which experiences their experience is not the person they see when they look in the mirror. The same is true for everyone. The difference between them and anyone else is the degree to which they directly realize that the experience isn't directly tied to anything definable or knowable. It could just be that the universe was created two seconds ago. It could be that it never existed. It's how much abiding awareness that it's just awareness. There is a kind of letting go of taken for granted notions of selfhood that makes it clear in any given moment that there is nothing knowable happening.

You don't have one

The highest it's every been is 93% top marginal tax rate under the Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. This lead to the golden age of economic expansion. Now, it's important to note how tax brackets work. So, you can never make less by making more. This is because (whether the top marginal tax rate is 62% or 93%), this only applies to every dollar earned after entering that tax bracket. For example, with a top marginal tax rate of 62% for anyone making over $1 million a year, that means that their first $999,999 is NOT taxed at 62% but at lower levels within the tax bracket. They are only taxed 62% on every dollar made over a million dollars. So, if they makes $1,000,001 dollars, they are only taxed 62% on $1 of their income. And this also leads to wealthy business owners finding economically stimulating ways to find tax cuts like hiring more people or improving their businesses.

Whiteness is unfortunately thought of as default. So, if you specify the race of a white person, you're likely to have images of people of color in there too. Because their whiteness is only mentioned in relation to non-whiteness.

You could probably do it in less than a year if you have a good strategy for getting clients/customers.

1. Medium/small value - When I make this amount it feels nearly negligible. Anything under $100 really does. 2. Small 3. Buy something small like a relatively nice article of clothing. It's about 40% of my grocery bill 4. I don't care too much about losing it. 5. A normal gift amount to give to others. I might spend about that much on someone's Christmas/birthday present.