Emerald

I definitely will.

@NoOne @Nic @SkyPanther @Harry @Pinocchio Well, an enlightened person is a person who has woken up to their true nature... that they are not the small egoic self, but the infinite awareness that is aware of all of the content of the sense perceptions and thought. So, an enlightened person lives as the phenomenon referred to as 'god' once they have debunked the illusion of ego. So, from this vantage point, it isn't too much of a stretch that prayer might work. If you consider that you are a direct manifestation of god itself and the your awareness is god's awareness, then "you" (the higher self) might also have the creative capacities of god and are the creator of your subjective reality. That is, as long as your desires come from the higher self, beyond the ego's small wants. Because you are the container for all of your subjective existence, it isn't so outlandish to consider the possibility that your preferences and prayers have an impact on the reality that you're experiencing. So, it's important to put out the right prayers. But, even if everything I just said is bullshit, praying will never hurt you. So, you totally should. I tend to pray for personal qualities: like clarity, the ability to love, and the courage to face fears. I also pray for all the suffering people in hopes that they don't suffer any longer. I pray for what's most likely to be in line with the higher self which is concerned with love first and foremost.

I'm going to one this Saturday in Orlando.

I'm going to one of her synchronization workshops this Saturday. Has anyone else been to one?

Thank you. I've never been involved in Toastmasters or anything like that, although I hear it's great. Honestly, the reason why I can speak conversationally in front of the camera is because I have a (nearly compulsive) habit of talking to myself. I've always had a lot of ideas that I didn't have anyone to talk about them with, so as a child I developed a habit of pacing/thinking/talking to myself. It's embarrassing when someone walks in and catches me doing it. But it helps for getting into the zone when I'm making my videos. But I still get nervous, so I sometimes have to re-record. And I'm working on improving filler words. But here is a Ted Talk about public speaking that I found helpful:

I fall into this trap from time to time, where I start thinking self-congratulatory thoughts about being "more conscious" or knowing something that others don't. It's funny because it's a very unconscious thing that I'm doing when these thoughts spring about. The only way to influence people is to be a positive example... but even wanting to be is ego driven because there is a distinction being made between self and other.

I realized six years ago that so much of my drive toward self-actualization was rooted deeply in struggling for significance and trying to outrun the reaper. I was using my ambitions and success drives as a crutch. This was woven in seamlessly with genuine inspiration to meet my fullest creative potential. So, the topic is how to remedy feelings of worthlessness, insignificance, etc. that lay underneath ambition and drives toward self-actualization without losing motivation toward self-actualization... or at least how to move in a more genuine direction with life even if self-actualization falls away with the neuroses.

Keystone Habits and Practical Life Update- 66 Day Challenge Yesterday's Habits Update (Day 12) Wake Up at 6 am- I woke up fifteen minutes late. But I was able to get going fairly quickly because today was a filming day. I meditated for 10 minutes and did my 15 minutes of exercise right away. Keep a Food Journal of everything I eat with calories accounted for - Check - Morning Weight= 128.8 lbs. I ate 2180 calories today. Colors: Banana (White) Orange juice (Orange) Tomato Sauce (Red) Spaghetti Squash (Yellow) Water - 32 oz- Iced Coffee - 20 oz; Orange Juice- 12 oz; Coconut Milk- 12 oz Fluid intake= 74 oz Exercize 15+ Minutes a Day - 15 minutes dance workout Other things I got done: Meditation - 10 minutes Tidied the whole house with dishes, laundry, etc Filmed two videos Edited one video (It's currently still rendering) Will post in the morning Made dinner Responded to messages on my channel Today was rocky with my food journal. I just now wrote down everything that I ate from memory. I think I got everything but I'm not 100% sure. I was in a rush for filming, so I neglected to write down breakfast, then it was easier to not write down lunch and dinner to. I should modify this habit so that I have to write the food and calories down before I actually consume it. It would be a lot more beneficial. Otherwise, I really liked the videos that I shot today. One was about what enlightenment is, and another is about how a 'self 'is created. I'm glad that I decided to reshoot. Tomorrow, I have to get prepared for the weekend. I'm super excited!!! I'm going to one of Teal Swan's synchronization workshops in Orlando. It was my splurge with tax money, so I'm staying in the "Tribe House" too and I'm sure that I'll meet a lot of interesting people there. I'm going to shoot a video next week about my experience at the workshop.

Also, if you want to discuss it, I'm game for that too.

I've read it and it's wonderful. I did a video review of it. If you're interested, here is the link:

Thank you.

Thank you.

Don't share too much with anyone. Reticence will be necessary in most of your interactions regarding this topic. If you feel like conversing regarding enlightenment, you can use this forum for that or interact with others on the same journey. Just think about how much you've had to explore to be able to understand the things that you now understand. Most people don't even see the benefit in this, and that's valid too. It can be unnerving that your wife doesn't get it, because it's very often a lonely, uncomfortable process. But keep in mind that you can only become enlightened in the present moment... the content within that present moment is arbitrary. Your family isn't holding you back from enlightenment... this is an illusion. One that I've grappled with myself. This idea is an ego-defense to keep you from waking up. Your thoughts say, "If only I had time... I need time to become enlightened... it takes years... etc." But it doesn't. It only takes one moment because there is only one moment. On the more practical level, it's important to tend to the gardens that you're responsible for. You only have one family and only so much time. Accept everything in your life the way it is. Trust your pain and discomfort. Don't resist what is. Push forward. Non-resistance and unconditional love toward whatever is, is a necessary ingredient for the paradigm shift of enlightenment.

Keystone Habits and Practical Life Update- 66 Day Challenge Yesterday's Habits Update (Day 11) Wake Up at 6 am- I woke up. I was tired because I stayed up late. I meditated for 22 minutes but it was difficult to keep myself focused because of sleepiness. I've been having a hard time keeping a 10 o'clock bedtime because I've been jam-packing my to-do list. Thanks to my husband, I was able to catch up by taking a 2.5 hour nap in the middle of the day. I should do a better job at prioritizing and planning my days by deciding which activities I'm going to do at which times. Keep a Food Journal of everything I eat with calories accounted for - Check - Morning Weight= 129.4 lbs. I ate 2225 calories today. Colors: Banana (White) Orange juice (Orange) Green Beans (Green) Strawberries (Red) Water - 32 oz; Coffee - 12 oz; Chocolate Milk - 12 oz; Orange Juice - 12 oz Fluid intake= 68 oz; I definitely need more water intake. Exercize 15+ Minutes a Day - I did 6 minutes of yoga this morning after I meditated. I will finish the rest of it after I'm done with this post. I should set a clear window of time to do my exercise within. Like, I have to begin exercising by 7:15 and finish by 7:45. Otherwise, it interferes in my day. Other things I got done: Meditation - 22 Minutes Cleaned the whole house with dishes, laundry, etc. Picked up some things at the produce stand Cooked dinner I got a lot of things done at the house today, but my sleepiness and catching up on sleep cut into my more creative/personal development type goals. It felt like a productive day because I finished a lot of practical things, which is good. But I have to split my time better and a lot more energy to my more long-term goals. My daughter went back to pre-school today because Spring Break just ended. So, that gives me about 2 hours during the day where things are a little more chilled out. I should start training myself to use this time for my more creative work, because I have a tendency to use this time to just chill out. This can really help me get into more of a groove with my creative work and not be rushing and compromising the quality.

Keystone Habits and Practical Life Update- 66 Day Challenge Yesterday's Habits Update (Day 10) (I'm posting a day late) Wake Up at 6 am- I woke up. I don't remember the details of it. It must have been pretty good because I was able to get a full 30 minute meditation and do 20 minutes of exercise before my daughter woke up. Keep a Food Journal of everything I eat with calories accounted for - Check - Morning Weight= 130.4 lbs. I ate 2100 calories today. Colors: Mixed Berries (Red/Blue/Purple) Banana (White) Orange juice (Orange) Tomato (Red) Artisan Lettuce (Green, Purple) Water - 48 oz; Smoothie - 12 oz- Coffee - 12 oz; Fluid intake= 72 oz Exercize 15+ Minutes a Day - 20 minutes Other things I got done: Meditation - 30 Minutes Tidied the whole house Wrote and posted my blog Read to the kids I can't remember everything that I got done because this is a late posting. But I'm always happy on a day where I get 30 minutes of meditation done.

Very well said.

I was fired too. I spent 10 years of my life pulling myself up by my bootstraps to become a teacher. Last school year, when I was 8.5 months pregnant my superiors called me into their office letting me know that they wouldn't be renewing my contract next year because I "didn't fit the culture of the school." Because a teacher in their first 3 years in Florida can be let go at the end of the year for any reason and no reason, this really screwed me. No hiring administrator is going to take a chance on me because the teaching field is so competitive. So, over the past year, I've been getting used to this and hoping to "fail forward" as your name says. But it's been difficult because I was providing almost 2/3 of our households income. It really sucked to have my career dashed at the age of 25. But I've been doing a lot of personal development things and staying home with my kids.

That's very true. I tend to get caught up in the map a lot. I think it's because I'm afraid on some level of just being. I've always been cerebral and somewhat disassociated with other aspect of reality because I was always scared of my vulnerability to death, loss, and strong unpleasant emotions, so I tend to habitually wall myself off in my head seeking solace with concepts and thoughts. With the only exceptions to this being some moments in my childhood and my two enlightenment experiences that I go on about. It was the only time that I didn't have to seek anything at all. It was all there already and perfect. There was nothing to seek and nothing to fear. So, this tool is good for awakenings but not the actual detachment/deconstruction part. This just made me realize that these things are different from one another. I had been assuming that these go together as one cohesive thing. But this makes sense. There are some very mundane things that are keeping me tied to the concept I have spun for myself. Attachment to being good, admirable, competent, attractive, intelligent, etc. in the eyes of others and myself. I'm aware of it intellectually and in an abstract way I can see it is very silly, but there is still an emotional attachment there and a feeling of needing to be something to someone else to be significant or worthy of love. I do see that. Since a few weeks ago when you gave me that article, I was able to see that I could also see myself as the container for all of existence and the contents of that container as well. But the emotion about it isn't very strong and I still get caught up in resistance, fear, and small minded concerns. During my second enlightenment experience, I felt like I was thinking my thoughts outside of my head. I can now look right in my experience and see that my thoughts aren't anywhere inside the head or body. But would I continue along this same line of questioning/observation to further the self-negation or are there any other self-negation techniques that you would recommend more?

I feel like my conceptual understanding of this is getting in the way of my experience. But it reminds me a lot of the process used to draw and paint realistically. Instead of depicting my concept of an object, I paint the shapes and colors in my direct visual awareness. So, it is applying this skill to all of reality in the present moment to detach from all beliefs and assumptions. But I sometimes experiment with flipping my experience to the "I Am" perspective but it doesn't really feel like a breakthrough. Any thoughts or advice?

New blog post from my site - http://www.thediamondnet.org/blog/2016/3/28/spiritual-autolysis-existence-and-non-existence Spiritual Autolysis : Existence and Non-Existence So, it is a “goal” of mine to reach enlightenment by changing my relationship to my self-concept and debunk all the falsely held beliefs and assumptions based upon concepts for making things easier to understand to the rational mind. So, I’ve recently been looking into various processes for questioning and deconstructing my beliefs about reality to perceive what is truly there before any assumptions, labels, frameworks, or concepts are placed over top of reality. So, the idea is to perceive of reality before any thought story is created. To see reality as a newborn baby sees it, only with the developmental capabilities of an adult. This deconstruction process reminds me of when I first learned to draw and paint realistically. When I was 15, I took an art class in high school where I learned to switch from thinking about the things that I was drawing non-symbolically to seeing objects as a collection of shapes imbued with colors. So, instead of drawing my idea of a chair or even thinking about drawing a chair at all, I would just draw/paint the actual shapes and colors that I saw in front of me. Having seen through the illusion of the labels put upon visual phenomenon enabled me to make progress quickly, almost over night. It was like a mini-enlightenment for the visual sense. The process of deconstruction of beliefs that I engaged in as a teenage art student, is the same one that I’m engaged in now, only with the goal of enlightenment. So, I need to turn this deconstructive, non-symbolic awareness and questioning toward my ideas and concepts regarding myself and reality. So, I have been using a process called “Spiritual Autolysis” from enlightened author Jed McKenna. In this process you attempt to write something true and then question it and rewrite it until it is true. It is through this dissection process that we can have a real experience of our own being and be ripe for the breakthrough and paradigm shift called enlightenment. So, here is my most recent Spiritual Autolysis session, to explore my unconsciously held ideas and feelings regarding existence and non-existence. Questions: What is existence? What is non-existence? Write something true regarding these questions... 'Things in existence exist. Things that are not in existence don't exist.' or 'Things in existence are. Things not in existence are not.' My definition of existence- Everything that is. Are there things in existence or is there just existence? Not sure Can there be any thing that is a 'not' thing? - Maybe empty space Is empty space a thing or the absence of a thing? - Seemingly the absence of a thing. But I've never experienced this. Even emptiness from my experience contains air. So, empty space is a concept that I have in my mind, and not a thing that I'm experiencing in the now. Does my concept of empty space mean empty space doesn't exist? No. But it means that I don't know Am I experiencing anything right now that doesn't exist? Not sure What is existence? When something is there Where is there? In reality Where is reality? In my subjective experience right now Where is my experience? No particular place. Places exist only within the content of my experience. My experience isn't located anywhere, because anywhere is a concept within my subjective experience. So, is place a 'not' thing? I'm not sure. How do I perceive of place visually? Visually I experience a flat screen of shapes imbued with colors that I interpret based on my previous experiences in the world. How do I perceive of place tactually? I feel sensations that seem to have length, width, and depth which seem to correspond to the sights that I see because of a lifetime of experiencing them in tandem with one another. Either way, I don't know if my sensations have any special relativity to one another. I could perhaps convince myself that some sensations are bigger, smaller, more left, more right than the others. I could also focus on my sensations to the point where they feel like a universe in themselves. Do I perceive of place any other way? No. Only as a thought story Does place have to have an up, down, left, and right? No. Directions are a concept to make space more understandable to the human mind. Can existence happen in a "place" if none of these directions exist? Maybe. Could I narrow down the location of 'my' experiences to a particular point? No. Does this mean that place doesn't exist? Maybe. Rewriting what's true: Non-existence is. Existence has no particular place. If there are no "things" inside of reality and there is no place for reality, does reality exist? Maybe not. Are my perceptions themselves (not the content of perception) objects? No. Objects are content of the perception and not the perception itself. Asked by jjer94 (a friend of mine on the forum I posted this on)- What is the substance of an object? Do objects even exist? So, visually the substance of the object appears to be light. But light itself is just content within the perception. It's another assumption based upon what I "know" about how color is perceived. Tactually, an 'object' is just a sensation. But the sensation related to my experience of the object has nothing to do with my visual experience of the object nor any other sensory perception of the object. What I have is a flat plane of shapes imbued with colors, perceived by no one that is seemingly floating in nothingness. It could just be a screen with seemingly corresponding sensations that are also floating in nothingness So, the biggest ‘aha!’ moment for me was that place doesn’t exist separate from my thoughts regarding ‘place’. I had always known that space had no up, down, left, or right. This is all relational. So, are the concepts of big and small. An atom and a universe are both infinite. But I had assumed that my reality was located someplace as a point within some empty dark field. That in that dark field at a point where my visual, audio, tactual, olfactory, gustatory, and thought perceptions floating there as things. But now it seems like these are sort of a non-point. Sort of like you can’t really find a point on a mathematical graph because a single point has no height, width or depth. It doesn’t really exist even though it seems to have a location and is mathematically viable. But even this is just a metaphor.

Is it the empty space around "my perceptions" that is aware? Like if I were to focus just outside of my perceptual awareness... into the emptiness that "I" am not aware of.

So, visually the substance of the object appears to be light. But light itself is just content within the perception. It's another assumption based upon what I "know" about how color is perceived. Tactually, an 'object' is just a sensation. But the sensation related to my experience of the object has nothing to do with my visual experience of the object nor any other sensory perception of the object. What I have is a flat plane of shapes imbued with colors, perceived by no one that is seemingly floating in nothingness. It could just be a screen with seemingly corresponding sensations that are also floating in nothingness.

If there are no "things" inside of reality and there is no place for reality, does reality exist? Maybe not. Are my perceptions themselves (not the content of perception) objects? No. Objects are content of the perception and not the perception itself.

Questions: What is existence? What is non-existence? Write something true regarding these questions... 'Things in existence exist. Things that are not in existence don't exist.' or 'Things in existence are. Things not in existence are not.' My definition of existence- Everything that is. Are there things in existence or is there just existence? Not sure Can there be any thing that is a 'not' thing? - Maybe empty space Is empty space a thing or the absence of a thing? - Seemingly the absence of a thing. But I've never experienced this. Even emptiness from my experience contains air. So, empty space is a concept that I have in my mind, and not a thing that I'm experiencing in the now. Does my concept of empty space mean empty space doesn't exist? No. But it means that I don't know Am I experiencing anything right now that doesn't exist? Not sure What is existence? When something is there Where is there? In reality Where is reality? In my subjective experience right now Where is my experience? No particular place. Places exist only within the content of my experience. My experience isn't located anywhere, because anywhere is a concept within my subjective experience. So, is place a 'not' thing? I'm not sure. How do I perceive of place visually? Visually I experience a flat screen of shapes imbued with colors that I interpret based on my previous experiences in the world. How do I perceive of place tactually? I feel sensations that seem to have length, width, and depth which seem to correspond to the sights that I see because of a lifetime of experiencing them in tandem with one another. Either way, I don't know if my sensations have any special relativity to one another. I could perhaps convince myself that some sensations are bigger, smaller, more left, more right than the others. I could also focus on my sensations to the point where they feel like a universe in themselves. Do I perceive of place any other way? No. Only as a thought story Does place have to have an up, down, left, and right? No. Directions are a concept to make space more understandable to the human mind. Can existence happen in a "place" if none of these directions exist? Maybe. Could I narrow down the location of 'my' experiences to a particular point? No. Does this mean that place doesn't exist? Maybe. Rewriting what's true: Non-existence is. Existence has no particular place.