RickyFitts

Self-awareness and self-honesty are indispensible qualities, I think.

I think you need a modicum of intelligence, but you don't need to be Einstein. What's much more important, in my opinion, are the qualities of self-awareness and self-honesty, which aren't qualities that seem to come particularly easily even to many spiritual seekers, it seems.

One teacher who still seems to be pretty obscure is Jon Bernie, whose teachings I stumbled across at an extremely difficult and painful time in my life and for whom I'm eternally grateful, because he's the most heart-centred teacher I've come across. He puts out podcasts from time to time, all of which can be found here: https://www.jonbernie.org/podcasts/

@ivankiss Oh yeah, there are definitely times to speak up. Just depends where it's coming from I think, if it's coming from a judgmental, reactive place then I prefer to keep it to myself if I can help it (I can't always).

I think having compassion for yourself rather than beating yourself up for not being able live up to your spiritual ideals is important - that doesn't make you a failure, it makes you human. And the more you fight your apparent inability to surrender, the more stuck you'll stay.

@ivankiss You're welcome True enough. I don't even waste my breath with such people if I can help it, to be honest, don't have the energy for it at the moment. Boy, though, biting your tongue and walking away can seem like the hardest thing in the world sometimes.

Preach, brother On the subject of the relationship between honesty and horniness, I've heard both men and women say that they feel aroused when they're open and honest with the opposite sex (or the same sex, depending on their orientation) - I think that's completely natural, even those people who may feel a fear of intimacy really desire it, deep down, in our hearts we all desire union I think and sexual union is the closest we can get to that on the physical plane. Hiding behind an inauthentic facade isn't ultimately very satisfying, so expressing ourselves honestly does tend to feel so much better (just so long as we feel like we're understood and not being judged).

Yep, you've pretty much nailed the human condition right there! I think of meditation as being, in its most basic sense, a willingness to stop and just be with ourselves without all the external stimulation that we usually use to distract ourselves - and it can be a real eye-opening experience to start to become conscious of just how much we've been suppressing. You need serious discipline and dedication to stick with it, it's little wonder to me that so many people give up pretty quickly. I think you've almost got to be at the end of your rope in some way to keep going (that's certainly how it was for me, at least).

Great analogy

That's very much how I saw it when I had my initial awakening about nine years back - the feeling that I'd had myself locked in a mental prison the whole time, and yet the cell door had been open the whole time. Weird thing was, I subsequently seemed to move from a minimum-security prison to Arkham Asylum

I think one of the most loving things you can do for yourself is to simply give yourself some attention - start by asking yourself, 'What am I feeling right now, in this moment?' Notice where you might be feeling tight and tense in your body, and allow those areas to relax and breathe. The majority of humans are holding an awful lot in without even realising it, simply because we've been so conditioned to do so from an early age, so a big part of spiritual development for me is to become conscious of this habit of holding, and to allow it to gradually relax. As we do that, repressed emotions might start to arise - that's okay too, that's completely normal and it's actually a sign of progress when it starts to happen, though it might not feel like a good thing. You just have to trust that those emotions will eventually pass, although you'll probably only believe it after they actually have passed.

This is good, I'll have to try this. I think it does ultimately come down to underlying intention, sometimes our intentions are good and we're just wanting to share some wisdom with others, but maybe at other times we're just looking for attention and/or validation. But even if that's the case, we can still utilise these moments when we have these urges by noticing what's going on inside us when they arise, being very present in our bodies and noticing exactly what we're feeling.

The hatred you're feeling towards your mother is what's known as a secondary or 'cover' emotion - we humans tend to get caught in such surface emotions (anger, resentment, hatred, bitterness, etc. - ie all forms of negativity), and we find it very difficult to feel the deeper, more vulnerable feelings of, for example, grief and hurt (this tends to be more difficult for men, I suspect). I've struggled to let go of such feelings myself; I've found that becoming more sensitive in the body and allowing it to relax and gradually release both the surface emotions, and also those deeper feelings that the surface emotions are unconsciously designed to keep at bay, is what's required. It can be a bumpy ride, but I think it's necessary to do that inner work in order to let go of the negativity you're feeling.

On the question of whether it's right to sleep with someone who's in a relationship with someone else, I think this is where it's helpful to put yourself in that person's shoes - how would you feel if you found out your partner had been sleeping with someone else behind your back? I imagine most of us would be in bits. And her saying 'It's not my problem'? Not being funny, but that is an appalling attitude to have - this girl sounds seriously messed up.

I've had issues with observing the breath in the past, too, I found that I was becoming neurotic about it which just made it a really frustrating practice. I eventually found it much more helpful to think of it more in terms of allowing the body to breathe, and not attempting to control or force the breath in any way.