Emerald

You can cope with it on the surface level by creating rules for yourself that you (and others) must meet in order to consider yourself worthy of admiration. So, you can arbitrarily pick a human trait such as "high work ethic" or "friendliness" or "creativity" or any other trait, and arbitrarily decide that that's the most important trait to embody. Ideally, you want to choose one that you have a natural talent for. Then, you want to pour a lot of effort into becoming better and better at that thing until you're the most proficient person that you know relative to that trait. And every time that you achieve something relative to that trait, you can allow yourself to feel good by confirming your superiority to others relative to that trait. This will allow you to feel good about yourself for a short period of time. But then the good feeling of self-admiration will fade. So, you have to seek out more opportunities to prove your (fill in the blank arbitrarily chosen aptitude) to yourself. Underneath everything, you'll still feel a baseline sense of inferiority. So, you'll have to constantly reaffirm your superiority to yourself to safeguard against it. But if done with a high degree of rigor and with enough ability to believe your own lies, you will be convinced that you have a high sense of self esteem and that you are happy. But you will always feel like an island because your sense of self-worth stems from comparison to others. But it will do in a pinch. It's at least slightly better than feeling a constant sense of inferiority to others with no ability for relief from that sense of inferiority. So, it's an effective coping mechanism. But it's better to just let go of the entire illusion, lest you spend your entire life chasing a carrot that you can never catch. This coping mechanism requires tons of energy.

Judgment serves a function if it means judging between healthy and unhealthy or functional and dysfunctional. Perhaps his opinion is that psychedelics are unhealthy to the seeker's search or that they are a distraction and he thinks that there are better practices. It doesn't mean he judges people who do them as bad or that he doesn't love them. It just means that he thinks that psychedelics are not conducive to seeking, which is a normal judgment based in functionality, even if there are divergent opinions on the matter. The enlightened person is still able to judge. But they are more likely to judge based on functionality as opposed to labeling reality as good or bad in any inherent sense.

What beliefs did you adopt 15 years ago? Sometimes the most innocuous seeming beliefs can create so much repression that all kinds of nastiness grows in the unconscious mind. I recommend doing consciousness work slow or you may end up biting off more than you can chew, like I did eight years ago. It caused me a major dark night of the soul and it was hard for me to pick myself up out of it. Sometimes, if you open up to things all at once, all the monsters that have been growing in your subconscious can all escape and overwhelm your conscious mind. The best way to deal with them is through understanding and awareness. But it will take a while to process and reintegrate. Just try to keep in non-judgment mode in order to reintegrate them.

I've only been capable of true self-love when I transcended the ego. Otherwise, there have been times where I felt good about myself and there have been times where I have felt bad about myself. But it was never love, because it was always conditioned upon my meeting certain standards. The way to love yourself it to allow yourself to be exactly as you are without any negative or positive judgments of SHOULD or SHOULD NOT. But this is difficult to do because we're in the habit of functioning in the opposite way. To love yourself means to love everything unconditionally in reality (including the self): good, bad, and ugly. It's a complete equalization of love toward all things in reality, because it's a realization of God and reality and love as the one thing that everything boils down to... including the self. So, you can't love yourself if you think reality needs to be any other way than exactly as it is. And this is difficult with all the turmoil. But only then can you see reality as perfect and recognize yourself as part and whole to that perfection. This is the only way to truly love yourself. But if you want to like yourself and admire yourself, all you have to do is to do things that you consider admirable. So, set goals to achieve and become very hard working and count your victories. But this is only a coping mechanism to deal with a lack of self-love. It's only us drawing a line in the sand and making a rule that we can only celebrate if we cross the line. Deep down there will always be a sense of un-fulfillment because no action can ever make you any more lovable than you already are. And there's nothing you can do to make you unlovable either. Because your very nature is love at its core. So, in order to love yourself, you must recognize your true nature which is love.

It depends. Sometimes it can be your intuition leading you toward your center and away from distraction. Other times, it can be a psychological avoidance mechanism that makes you unconsciously recede from life due to various fears and negative emotions that you don't want to face. However, your emotions should be able to guide you to where you need to go, in so far as they're not obstructed by unconscious distortions. And no one can tell you if your intuitions are right or not, other than you. It's not meant for everyone to recede from life and become hermits, but it is right for some people. I tend to think of life in this way. If I only have one life to live as this particular person and will only be around for another 50 years or so, is it really wise for me to recede from life simply to live the truth of what I am which is always infinite? So, I have an eternity to be what I actually am, but only one lifetime to live the illusion of the person called Emerald. So, I think it's wiser to play the game of life and not recede from it. But for some, the answer may be different. But my caution is to refrain from using spirituality to justify an unhealthy avoidance mechanism that makes you recede from life and be at war with reality as it is.

It won't allow me to post the video here for some reason. But Shinzen Young has a video regarding the experience of pleasure and discomfort relative to suffering/purification and frustration/fulfillment. It's titled "Purifications and Fulfillment: Four Formulas - Shinzen Young". You can look it up on Youtube.

Exploitation means to victimize someone for your own gain. So, slavery is an example of exploitation as is human trafficking. Hiring child laborers or paying poverty wages are also examples of exploitation. What you're referring to is not exploitation but admiration. It's okay to be inspired by other people, but you must also bring your own stuff to the table.

Your body type will determine the proportion of your belly to the rest of your body. If you are naturally apple-shaped, you always will be. There is no way to target weight loss to a particular area of the body. The best thing that you can do is try to strengthen your entire body, and you will look and feel better. But there is no way to actually lose belly-fat without losing weight all over the body... except liposuction.

Gossip provides the social function of determining in-groups and out-groups. So, it's a way to confirm to one's self and one's peers that "we're the ingroup" and "they're the outgroup". And it has an empowering feeling about it as it's part of our lower nature to be concerned about status and hierarchy. However, if a person is over the 'in-group' and 'out-group' mentality, it will allow them to think about other things that are more interesting and satisfying. So, it isn't stupid, per say. It's an evolutionary trait for socialization. But it's the nature of the beast that makes us suffer when we have no control over it. So, constantly talking about others is a sign that a person's 'inner beast' is out of control and that they're not a very good 'beast tamer.' So, it does speak to their character, reliability, and trustworthiness... but not necessarily their intelligence.

I understand your feelings, and I have many of them too. As a teenager, I was a nervous wreck because my awareness of suffering was becoming more and more apparent. And I was also very afraid of death in a very pre-occupied way. But when I had my experiences of ego transcendence at age 20, I no longer had fear of death and everything was beautiful and perfect: good, bad, and ugly. I even loved the things that I disliked. So, from the ultimate perspective, we're living in a literal heaven. But through the lens of the ego, we always interpret it as hell. So, the best thing to do is to continue becoming more and more aware and eventually you'll be at a point where you'll realize the heavenliness of reality. But until then, the increase of awareness will only make this place look more hellish. It gets darker before it gets light. Until then, just continue to practice compassion to reduce the suffering of others... and that includes compassion with yourself.

To be honest, it sounds like you're a Feminist but don't want the ridicule or self-image associated with it. But I would say that seeing this issue as simple or straight-forward in any way would be an oversimplification that would just lead to the demonization of men, who are just as innocent as anyone else in the equation despite being in a more privileged position relative to many issues. This imbalance itself doesn't stem from issues of gender as many people think. It's a much more global and non-gendered phenomenon that centers around how aware of and how much we value Yin and Yang. And currently Yin/feminine values, such as care for the Earth and all living creatures, intuition, stillness, valuing reality over ideas, non-hierarchical thinking, etc are not being recognized or valued as much as their Yang counterparts. So, I see issues of Feminism as being far more extensive than just being about man/woman issues, even thought this is one of the many negative effects of this Yin/Yang imbalance.

I'm just saying that what you said is ironic, because it contradicts itself. You made a post that's criticizing men, saying that men are always the ones criticizing women. Women definitely do it too, in different ways. However, I would certainly agree that there are a lot of misogynistic viewpoints in the world... and on this forum due to a number of men in the dating/relationship section equating their value with female attraction and feeling like the preferences of women are real indicators of their personal worth. So, they lash out at women because they feel like they are in a position of lesser power than us. But this is the result of multi-facetted social conditioning that's part of the sickness of our society. But I definitely identify myself as a Feminist with a capital FEM! It's really clear to me that the world has an imbalance that values the masculine principle (Yang) at the expense of the feminine principle (Yin). So, a Feminist in my eyes is someone who desires to fix this imbalance by valuing the feminine principle (in all its depth and breadth) as equal to the masculine principle, and desires the political, economic, and social equality of men and women. So, understand that I didn't accuse you of being a Feminist at all. I accused you of posting something that's a bit hypocritical and untrue. But to give a bit more of my thoughts on misogyny and why it's such a pervasive issue... Everyone unconsciously represses their feminine side due to early social conditioning from living in a Yang-oriented society, especially boys who are expected to be only masculine. Most men are conditioned to vehemently attack and repress any sign of femininity in themselves from early childhood, so that they don't lessen their social value and get called a pussy or (fill-in-the-blank feminine insult). This is especially true for men who are pre-millennial. But even millennial men have had to deal with this social pattern. It's pretty difficult to escape. So, we end up with a lot of boys who grow into men who are very sexually obsessed with women because sex is the only outlet they can allow themselves for connection to the feminine. All other outlets to be in touch with the feminine are too painful and taboo. But the same guys who are obsessed with female sexuality usually also have very negative feelings toward women because that's how they feel about their own feminine side. Sometimes, this can even brandish itself as domestic violence in extreme cases. So, that's why you see a disproportionate amount of woman-hate. Men (and women in lesser degree) have been conditioned to hate their inner woman. So, women get the brunt of negative stereotyping and the brunt of obsessional focus all at once because they are the projection screen for all that inner turmoil. Then, as a reaction to the misogyny which is quite constant in subtle ways and sometimes very apparent ways, women become jaded and develop reactionary misandry. So, you'll see that women tend to pigeon-hole men as well and have incredibly negative ideas about them. And it can get just as vicious as the misogynistic insults. Everyone has deep wounds about this issue so any amount of salt is going to hurt tremendously.

Your irony is showing.

My husband quit smoking back when he was 30, and used that insight as a tool to help himself quit. He hasn't smoked in nearly a decade. But every once in a great while, if he ever gets a craving, he'll run himself through that mindset. "I'm allowed to smoke if I want to." Then he goes through all the steps mentally of what smoking would entail and how it would create the habit again. So, he's been able to quit without going back.

Willpower is your friend in many situations, but not in seeking enlightenment. Using willpower as a tool to seek truth, is equivalent to pulling on a plant to try to get it to grow faster. You'll just end up uprooting it. All you have to do is let the plant grow in the mysterious way that it grows and watch with curiosity and presence. So, seriousness will hinder any attempt to open because seriousness, by its nature, is a closing and stiffening. All you need to do is put the plant in the right conditions while removing the wrong conditions and the plant will grow on its own. All you can ever do is facilitate your growth. You cannot will yourself to grow. The growth happens magically and spontaneously when you relinquish control and put your plant in the right conditions. But you have to take the time and energy to put the plant in the right conditions. That's as far as willpower goes in the entire conversation.

The name "Higher Balance Institute" makes me cringe a bit. But I haven't heard of it, so I don't know.

Shankaran Pilai, you will definitely die if you walk into traffic or drink poison. It's just the way the illusion of duality works. Don't expect for yourself (as the creator) to undermine the consistency of your illusion's rules just for the sake of confirming your ego's intellectual beliefs about how the world should be. You (God) doesn't change its creation for the whims and wishes of the ego. So, if you walk off a cliff, it would be foolish to expect yourself to float. Plus, why would you want to float anyway? There's nothing any cooler or more magical about it than walking or taking a breath. It's all a huge miracle. Are the laws of physics not good enough for you that there needs to be some sort of exception made? There was a Buddhist parable about a student and a master. The student came in to have tea with the master in the traditional tea bowls, which are cupped in both hands when they are used for drinking. The tea bowls the master provided were very thin. So, when the student picked it up to take a drink, the bowl shattered in his hands. The student said, "That tea bowl was too thin." And the master said, "No, the tea bowl was just as it should be. You gripped it too hard." Now, in any other situation the student would have a good point. But since the master was using it as a teaching tool for learning the Zen way of being, there is an important message being conveyed. The message is that, we must adapt to the circumstances of life as opposed to expecting life to conform to our expectations. This is the way to flow with life.

There is nothing morally wrong with it. I would imagine that doing it with awareness can also give you insight into the nature of reality, if you treat it as a meditation. However, a lot of people are addicted to it and feel spent afterward because it takes a lot of energy. Many men try to refrain from ejaculation because they're trying to send the energy, that they would normally use for orgasm, upward for 'higher' purposes like intellectual or spiritual work. You can look into spiritual practices such as Tantra and Alchemy which talk about transmuting sexual energy to more exalted energetic expressions.

I bought it, and I definitely recommend it. It's hard to find good self-help books and this will help you avoid buying books that aren't great quality books. A lot of self-help books are pretty meh.

@Will From the dualistic perspective, a whole litany of negative things do exist. So, from that perspective, abuse does exist, suffering does exist, negative things do exist, etc. They exist within the illusion of duality as perceived by the mind. And no one alive can fully avoid this perspective and still be alive. Even enlightened people, still need to be able to function from this perspective if they want to continue to exist. So, the mind is wired to deal with situations by using judgments based on instinct and past experience to avoid negative situations and go toward positive situations. There is nothing wrong with this. It's just the way that the mechanism works, and it's the reason why we're able to survive in the first place. If we didn't have this, we'd just walk right into the lion's den to be "one" with the lions in a literal way. Resisting the way the mind-mechanism works is just another form of resistance toward one aspect of reality and setting it aside from all other aspects of reality. It's a way of saying this aspect of reality is not valid and it must be changed because it is not reflective of what I believe about "love" and "oneness". I have to make the mind fit the mold of my ideas about reality. However, if you try to practice the idea that you're entertaining in any kind of real way that doesn't cut any corners, you will die within the day. You will walk out into traffic because you'll see everything as one and there being no negative. So, walking out into traffic is no worse than walking on the sidewalk. You will drink your bathroom cleaner because it's really no worse than drinking water. And from the ultimate perspective, you will be absolutely correct on all accounts. Your pain and death will all just be part of the illusion and everything will still be "one" and "love." But was it really worth it to be so correct? Maybe it would be better to be wise instead.

It's important to be honest and call a spade a spade. If someone is being abusive, don't be afraid to point this out and call it what it is. There is no need to muddy the waters of practical functioning, just to live by higher wisdom. And also don't feel like you should tolerate the abuse or enable a person to abuse another person. The abuser should not be entitled to a degree of acceptance in a way that deprives their victim of peace in life. Their actions should be stopped, if at all possible. However, you should also practice compassion for this abusive individual and not make the mistake of flushing them down the toilet or invalidating their existence. You should still be able to recognize them as part of yourself and part of love/God/oneness/etc. Also, don't expect them to change their behavior. Most times, compassion and understanding will do little to impact the way someone else acts, anyway. Just accept them as they are and the fact that those types of things happen without needing it to change. This is unconditional love. But you should remove yourself from a harmful situation. It's not your job to be on the cross for someone else's sins, so to speak. But (and this part is really important for you to understand) also don't forget to accept and recognize your own negative emotions relative to these harmful acts. Your negative emotions are also a part of love/God/oneness. So, to ignore, invalidate, or over-ride your negative emotions relative to abusive actions for the sake of accepting the person, misses your entire intention of accepting all as one. This is why I said you were engaging in spiritual bypassing in an earlier post. You seem to make the mistake of thinking your repulsions and negative feelings toward the actions of others are invalid or antithetical to the recognition of love and oneness. And so you seem to ignore them as less valid than the intellectual truth that you learned about oneness. But your emotional repulsions are exactly the thing that you want to accept unconditionally because they are reality itself. So, they are also part of oneness and need unconditional acceptance. But also because it will help you realize what you don't want and it will help you navigate your way through life more skillfully. They are there for a practical function in decision making. And if you actually realize the Truth of oneness in an experiential way and see other as self and self as other, and recognize the non-necessity of suffering. Then you naturally won't want to suffer and won't want others to suffer either. So, you will naturally try to take actions to reduce suffering for all parties involved. And sometimes, tough love and justice are necessary when addressing the actions of wrong-doers. So, it's important to let go of the non-dual dogma that is obscuring reality from you. If you haven't experienced it, you can't intellectually figure out what wisdom is. Wisdom is like an infinite river that changes from moment to moment. A wise action in one moment, can be a foolish action in the next. So, the insight "all is one" might function in some situations... but definitely not all situations. My advice is to stop trying to get reality to fit with your beliefs regarding love, abundance, and lack. Reality doesn't fit into these ideas at all.

This is why it's important to be able to embrace paradoxes. Yes, "all is one" and "all is love" is true. However, if we behave in an outwardly accepting way toward "evil" actions, it will simply enable all sorts of ills. So, we have to be able to say, "I'm not tolerating any behaviors that contribute to pain and suffering in myself or others." And for a society to function properly, there should be consequences for actions that cause harm. Now, modern justice systems are not the most conscious systems. However, justice can be done in a conscious way that focuses more on maintaining social health and preserving human dignity. We're just too "punishment" focused now, so we treat wrong-doers in a manner that we will likely one day see as very barbaric. However, you can still recognize and accept that "evil" and "evil-doers" are still part of love and that they are part of yourself. And you can still practice compassion toward them in realizing that their birth as themselves was arbitrary and that all actions are innocent in the end, even if they cause tremendous amounts of suffering. You could just as easily be living their exact life, and you don't know what compels them to behave in the way that they do. It's probably a very hard life. So, you have the right-ish idea about recognizing that all is perfect, love, and God. But recognition doesn't mean complacency or enabling unhealthy and harmful behaviors and social patterns to take root. There is no need to cause or enable unnecessary suffering. So, it's foolish to do so based on the idea that "sometimes suffering is supposed to happen." That's true that suffering does often happen. But there is no need to put your hand on a hot stove and leave it there. Avoiding the burn is just as "one" as experiencing the burn. So, why not avoid the burn if you can choose to? But if you really feel like you want to experience the burn based on some ideological understanding of oneness and love, then you can. You'll just find out the hard way... the way that I had to after my experiences of ego-transcendence and the remembering of the insights from that state of being.

I never said that mass murderers do their acts from greed. I said that they do so in search of positive emotions of pleasure and to escape a sense of numbness. Or maybe they feel like power is a good stand-in for happiness. But greed is also made of love. Everything is. So, it's not that "Behind every mass murderer is a beautiful creation of love and joy, locked in false belief." It's that "Every mass murderer with all their greed and evil deeds are still an inextricable part of love." It's not that there is a need to show the loving "good self" that's locked under the false belief. The false belief is also love. The bad self is also love. The murdering happens from and in love. The murderer is love. The victim is love. The murder weapon is love. The place the murder occurred in is love. Every disgruntled emotion felt by the murderer is love. Every anguished cry from the victim is love. All the suffering and joy in the world is also love. There is literally nothing that isn't.

@Will If suffering is unnecessary, why would you consciously choose it? It isn't like it's any more divine, beautiful, or perfect than any other thing. Everything is perfect from the ultimate perspective, so why not choose something functional and healthy from the finite perspective? The finite perspective is not invalid or even less valid than the ultimate perspective. You are not required to choose dysfunction just because it sounds like it jibes more with higher wisdom. I'm afraid that you're engaging in spiritual bypassing and you're going to talk yourself into believing that you should stay in negative situations or create negative situations in your life because you expect yourself to be unconditionally accepting because "Everything is divine and perfect." However, if you do that, you're just going to end up with a lot of issues that will rob you of your peace. Don't expect yourself to have the equanimity of a Yogi that's practiced for 30 years while still having the foolishness to remain in a bad situation on the basis of some intellectual understanding of the truth. But emotions are always what motivate actions, from large to small. For example, a child eats candy because they want the feeling of enjoying the taste. Someone who hates their job, goes to work because they want the feeling of financial stability that their paycheck give them. A philanthropist donates to good causes because other people's happiness makes them feel happy and they like the feeling of contribution. A serial murderer kills people to feel pleasure or as an escape from numbness. A person decides to be in a dysfunctional relationship because they crave the emotions that the relationship gives them. A consciously or unconsciously dishonest seeker seeks enlightenment because they want to have the status of being enlightened and to feel more novel/important/wise than others. Or a seeker seeks enlightenment because they want the emotions that enlightenment and its byproduct convey. A person who is trying to live by higher wisdom in all situations does so because they either want to feel good about themselves for being wise or they hope that it will bring them closer to enlightenment (either the emotions related to "wise" status as mentioned above or the emotions relating to enlightenment itself). But it's a trap. It won't do this. It's a cul de sac on the path.

@Will In my view, being wise and what I call "spiritually mature" is about being able to determine which paradigm is most effective for proper functioning and expansion in a given situation. So, it means being able to hold higher truths such as "All is one." at the same time as using practical truths such as "I am a separate person and it's important for me to set proper boundaries and to respect myself." which seems to contradict one another. The opposite of what I call spiritual maturity is to always reach for top shelf truths for all situations even when it puts you in a precarious situation that makes happiness, fulfillment, and peace impossible or nearly impossible. Understand that, at the root of all human action (including enlightenment seeking) is the pursuit of positive emotions. So, understand that enduring unnecessary emotional suffering simply for the sake of maintaining a relationship is very foolish because you got into the relationship to feel positive emotions in the first place. At that point, you've become attached to a means to get your desired emotions that won't produce to you the emotions that you want. Now, you could feel positive independent of the situation, but this is a lot to expect of yourself. And chances are, if you were in a place where you could feel positive emotions unconditionally, then you would probably leave the harmful situation rather unceremoniously and put yourself in a situation that didn't have as much struggle and had more benefit for you and the other person. So, I understand what you're saying, but I do think would be foolish to live in the way that you're talking about. I was in a dysfunctional relationship for four years and I suffered immensely for it. And I stayed because I thought that I was helping him with his demons and loving him unconditionally. But this wasn't so. I was actually enabling him by accepting him and all his demons unconditionally simply because I didn't want to see him hurting. I was so attached to the relationship that I couldn't see how much harm I was doing to myself... and ultimately to him too. So, my advice is to avoid dysfunctional relationships because it doesn't really do anyone any good. It's a waste of time and energy, and there's no need to make yourself suffer just to live by some insight from higher wisdom. Let your emotions as experienced in the moment (and not your remembered intellectual knowledge of insights from higher wisdom) lead you.