Clearing Out

[mandyjw]

The author talks about the symbolism of doors, veiling something from us.

There's a long running joke between my sister and me. My aunt and uncle owned a greenhouse or plant nursery and I worked there a lot before I was even legally able to. In the spring, we had to move hundreds of boxes of pansies from one greenhouse to another. It was always our job and it was exhausting and repetitive. In order to keep the heat from escaping we had to open and close the doors behind us, with all these fragile plants stacked across our arms carefully balancing the trays. I would nudge the door shut, and push it open with my foot. On one run, our arms loaded with plants, I was in front and the door wouldn't nudge open with my foot. 

"Just kick it." She said from behind me waiting to go through the door with me. I kicked it really hard and it didn't budge, it just shuddered and we realized it had probably latched.

"Oh." I said quietly, knowingly. 

Something about being exhausted and that exchange made us go into hysterical laughter. We never forgot the incident. She even drew me a cartoon strip of it years later.

I don't think I ever understood why exactly it was so funny. 

 

Pansies are one of the earliest flowering plants, blooming right alongside the spring bulbs. The name pansy is from the French word pensie, meaning thought or remembrance. The pansy is a delicate looking flower often with a "face".

Strangely enough, the last project I have ready to list for my business is a pansy flower one. My best friend's favorite flower. 

 

[mandyjw]

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

My house as a metaphor, and the dreams about it, are all coming together as are many other things. 

When we bought this house, I found out a lot about the family who lived here. At the end it was an old matriarch, who everyone loved and respected, who planted all the beautiful roses, flowers and red tulips I still enjoy. Her favorite color was red and she LOVED flowers. 

I heard lots of rumors about her sons. One was notorious. One worse than. One was charged with a heinous crime against an old woman, another suspected of a heinous crime on a young woman, but that mystery was never solved and there were multiple suspects in the local gossip. It was a long standing unsolved mystery, murdered young woman's naked body found in a river after a drunken party on the lake. 

"The dark man dream tells a woman what predicament she is facing. The dream tells about a cruel attitude toward herself as personified by the thug in the dream. Like Bluebeard's wife, if the woman can consciously gain hold of the "key" question about this matter and answer it honestly, she can be set free. Then the muggers, lurkers, and predators of the psyche will exert much less pressure on her. They will fall away to a distant layer of the unconscious. There she can deal with them conscientiously instead of in crisis."

 

Edited April 3, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

2 hours ago, mandyjw said:

I have a troll on youtube with the profile picture of a lion. Making comments that awakening is for men not women, that he sees alterior motives in my eyes, that I'm a fraud.

He's not wrong. 

How can I love when there's no other, no one to focus it on? How can I love myself when there's no self? 

Maybe there's no doer, no lover, no loved, maybe its all in the place in between where there is and isn't, the middle of the riddle. (I don't feel sure about this.)

My son just insisted I watch him play his video game. The title was Troll Busters: Stranger Things

stranger, stranger. Getting to the green door was the objective of each course. 

Edited April 3, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

“Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.”
— Ben Okri

[Zigzag Idiot]

7 hours ago, mandyjw said:

I have a troll on youtube with the profile picture of a lion. Making comments that awakening is for men not women, that he sees alterior motives in my eyes, that I'm a fraud.

He's not wrong. 

Awakening for men not women,,,,,hmm,, that must mean that women are more naturally awake in general than men and so men need awakening more than women? ? Sounds like a probable Trump supporter has come into your life. 

[Raptorsin7]

@mandyjw  How do you feel about the negative comments from people on youtube?

[mandyjw]

@Zigzag Idiot I think he got triggered by my saying that I was initially triggered by Leo's emphasis on pick up in his first videos. 

@Raptorsin7 I think that I'm attracting them into my experience to show me something or help me work through something. They make me feel a fear and uncertainty, and become aware of a lack of self love that proceeded the comments themselves.

My husband told me in the past that the internet is worse to women youtubers. My husband is a feminist more than I am. Sometimes I think feminism can limit individual women worse than what they speak out against.

 

Last night I dreamed that a man got into an accident on his bike and the frame was destroyed. The man was really angry and upset but unhurt. I was with my father who was helping him. My dad pulled off the tires off the rims, chains and some other parts and I asked him why. He said that they were valuable. Then I was supposed to take them and walk for miles with them, for some reason, in service of who I didn't know but I assumed it was for the man who got in the accident. 

I recently saw this quote on a box of tea, "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. -H. G. Wells"

I saw a kid go by on a bike yesterday and thought about how I don't see even kids on bikes very often.

Yesterday I was trying too hard to figure out if I should be more confident and assertive, missing the point entirely that the flexibility and strength I want in my life is outside of thought or identification or self image. It's a stupid cliche analogy I suppose, that steel must both be strong and also flexible to build a skyscraper, and like a bike or a car it depends on having parts that give and move and are soft, and the strong frame of the vehicle to function. Sitting during meditation, I realized that's how the body is designed, and that's how perfect posture is supposed to be. 

 

[mandyjw]

"In this stage of initiation, a woman is harassed by the petty demands of her psyche which exhort her to comply with the whatever anyone wishes. Compliance causes a shocking realization that must be registered by all women. That is, to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what other's want causes us to be exiled from ourselves. It is a tormenting tension and it must be borne, but the choice is clear. " -Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Edited April 4, 2020 by mandyjw

[tsuki]

I just picked that book and "randomly" opened it at chapter 12. Spot on.

 

[mandyjw]

@tsuki Hope you are well. How are things with the pandemic there?

 

My daughter found her pink stuffed poodle and demanded that I find the leash that came with her. I did, and she demanded that I put the leash on her, which I also did. Now she is playing with her and the leash is not a leash to my daughter but is how her dog manages to have the magical power to fly. 

The bell is calling.
Our feet kiss the Earth.
Our eyes embrace the Sky.
We walk in mindfulness.
Ten thousand lives can be seen in a single instant.
This is still Springtime,
when everything is manifesting itself so rapidly.
The snow is green.
And the sunshine is falling like the rain. -Thich Nhat Hanh

Saw this poem on facebook this morning and it fits into the metaphor that came to me while running yesterday, then again at night. Yesterday during meditation I had a couple intentions come to me for the day, one was the read a Berenstein Bear book to my kids and the other to go for a run in a specific place.  

On the run I felt the big realization that the book helped me realize, was that I had been open to and become conscious of an effect of no time, and no death, which is that your ancestor's deepest wisdom and love is in you, in your bones so to speak and stays in their bones. The effect the cemetery had on me, the connection with my Grandmother the night she died and then discovering that my great grandmother was buried feet from Dr.P and the feelings I got from certain parts of town like this kind of energy and love was leftover there, inviting me, counseling me, all came together and made sense. 

I saw a sign in an old building last year. It's gone now but it said "Peace One With Another". It's a pointer, a step to take, yet simultaneously, a truth that exists no matter what. 

Edit: I just realized as I looked at my post the start of the poem, that a bell rang at a strange time while I was running yesterday. I asked myself, as I looked at the beautiful things I hadn't been conscious of before last year, the spruce trees, the moon in the daylight, "Have I really ever SEEN before? Did I really ever see? And then the bell rang, and I thought "Have I ever really heard?" 

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by mandyjw

[tsuki]

5 hours ago, mandyjw said:

@tsuki Hope you are well. How are things with the pandemic there?

I'm better than ever, but still going through a lot of pain. At least I know where it's coming from and decided to take good care of myself.

Me and my wife are mostly spared from the pandemic related panic because we were never into TV. My mother is getting on my nerves though, this situation is driving her nuts and she's crossing people's boundaries "for their own good". I'd say "fuck her", but I've been through my own childhood and I wouldn't wish it upon my potential sibling.

The government decided to limit the amount of people allowed in shops, so getting food is a pain in the ass. They also forbid us from using public bikes so I had to give up on that in favor of my car. I really enjoyed riding to my new workplace. I love programming and I'm really happy when I'm not criticizing myself for being impractical and too abstract with my approach. The office is half empty and I'm pretty lonely, with nobody to talk to. I do like my new colleagues and one of them is a potential friend.

How are you guys doing? Does it get more difficult in smaller towns?

[mandyjw]

@tsuki Really glad to hear it. The new job sounds like it was a much needed breath of fresh air. We're under lock down orders, I permanently lost my daycare spot (she starts school in the fall anyway though) and am homeschooling my son, but being in a rural area is a big plus. I went two weeks without grocery shopping, which I'm used to because in the winter we often get bad enough weather and it's far enough to travel that I choose to do that anyway. Went this morning and it wasn't bad at all. One store was counting customers and prepared for lines but I made it in without waiting and the other wasn't even doing it. My concern is that the population here is old and the hospitals under served, but hopefully the lock downs came in time. 

[mandyjw]

"I DREAMED my animals had wings!" -My daughter holding her stuffed husky dog first thing after waking up. 

 

Biggest disappointment ever just struck me, or rather my sneakery snuck around and got me again, or rather I'm slowly becoming conscious that...

enlightenment does not = not being an asshole.  

 

 

[mandyjw]

Last night I dreamed that I was in my friend's house, and it was sort of like we were kids living with our parents. She asked or intuited that I really wanted to see a puppy or a dog (first symbolic clue) in her room (more on rooms in a house theme) and when I saw her room it was enormous and empty. I realized that the dreaming of someone else living in a mansion that was too big to be furnished or useful to them was another dream theme I've been having. 

I'm not sure if it points to her potential, or my potential or our underutilized potential. I do know that intentions are something I'm not doing. I want to create this spaciousness, but I'm still shy or lazy about making intentions. 

What's the reason behind this? Lack of self love. Jesus' "Don't call me good." does not just mean morally good. it means any kind of good, successful or otherwise. That's why I find the Tao Te Ching so soothing. But it doesn't mean not to strive. Can I make bold intentions, without identifying with the result, without feeling the self sabotaging responsibility of it. A goal is implies a new standard to hold oneself to. And intention without in-tension. Side note, I have become obsessed with tea lately, mostly herbal teas that aren't caffeinated and yesterday I had an intuition to buy tension tamer tea which has eleuthero, which is like ginseng but not. Interested to see how it affects me. 

I planted ginseng once but I don't think it ever grew. I was trying to help my parents with their money problems and she had thought about planting ginseng. Then I had this dream when I was going through the woods and came upon this random sunny spot that was a field of something planted. The feeling behind the discovery in the dream really gripped me. I thought I was meant to take action on it so I bought some seeds and we planted them. And I've been remembering it, feeling silly for going through that trouble for something that never grew. I mean, there's a small chance they did, because we planted them all throughout the woods, but it was too late in the year. 

Yesterday I didn't get to read at all which I was sad about. The grocery shopping for two weeks in a pandemic was a huge opportunity to be harsh on myself. I got home and realized that I didn't have anything for the kids for Easter, nor did I plan for Easter. I expect my planning to be flawless, and there's fear as the motivation. It's not that I'm afraid of  being without something so much as the self judgmental thoughts about being without it. 

I've been doing a lot of yard work recently. A couple years ago I had what I thought was blackberries grow in part of my yard but it wasn't. It turned out to be a type of invasive rose bush but so beautiful. It started spreading everywhere. The birds drop the seeds and spread them. They are a nightmare to get rid of. They grow so fast, and the thorns are awful so you can only carry away a few shoots at a time.  

Yesterday it struck me that these must be metaphorical... attracted into my experience for a reason. I thought they were beautiful at first, thought they would bear fruit. Then I realized that they were taking over all the other things that had been intentionally planted and cared for. 

I can't get at the roots of the invasive rose bushes in my yard, that grow back so fast, which requires constant painful labor to manage but can I get at the root of my self judgmental thoughts? At the time I made this video this had come forefront into my awareness in an amazing way. The entire journey can be summed up in living up to the meaning of my name, "worthy of love." When it's seen that the love is only one's own, and owned by no one, that task seems both an impossible challenge and already accomplished. 

How do you get at the roots? By digging through the dirt. 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

I've been digging through some dirt, metaphorically. Feeling as if rather than digging memories up like the past year has been off and on, it's energetic. Dealt with an episode of rage over a week or so, then another and threw a can of green beans across the room. I went outside a moment and came back in and resumed destructive lack of control. My husband shouted at me to leave and go for a walk, so I did. I went to the cemetery and sat on Dr.P's grave. A small fly came and sat on my hand and stayed there. It reminded me of the poem I shared here weeks ago. 

“Trust your wound to a teacher’s (God) surgery.
Flies collect on a wound.
They cover it, those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.
Let a Teacher wave away the flies and put a plaster on the wound.
Don’t turn your head.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That’s where
the Light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment that you’re healing yourself.”  Rumi—

I knew what to do and sent a message to Nahm and he helped me understand it.

Muninn dug a hole randomly in the middle of the yard yesterday like he was possessed. I got my nightmare of alders and invasive roses cut and cleaned our of my neglected shade flower garden.

Last year at this time I was riding the wave of bliss from the awakening. I'm so glad this year at this time that my reality was broken. 

Yesterday I went for a hike somewhere that had been written on a my dreamboard, I haven't been there for months. When I got there the tide was just right and it was spectacular. I've been thinking about (as you know) pyramids a lot lately. I cut off through the woods and went to a shore. There were rocks shaped like pyramids, I hopped down to the beach and looked out a while. Instead of being happy or at peace I felt a kind of anxious energy along with other feelings moving through. I saw a seal pop up for a moment and then I thought of the symbolism on the dollar bill, the eye of providence, the pyramid, the seal ( seal). I want to see an eagle I told myself. At first I judged myself for making the intention. Then my desire grew stronger. I went out and sat on a rock that overlooks the water, and closed my eyes and tried to connect with the power of it, feeling the fear of the water and the impulse to push through and join it and knowing that it was metaphorical currents within I wanted to allow and join. Then I glimpsed an eagle, impossibly high in the sky, I recognized him for a moment until he flew even higher out of sight and recognition. The sunset last night was a spectacular pink pyramid. 

“The day of resurrection is determined in this manner. The first Sunday after the full moon in Aries is celebrated as Easter. Aries begins on the 21st day of March and ends approximately on the 19th day of April. The sun’s entry into Aries marks the beginning of Spring The moon in its monthly transit around the earth will form sometime between March 21st and April 25th an opposition to the sun, which opposition is called a full moon, The first Sunday after this phenomenon of the heavens occurs Is celebrated as Easter; the Friday preceding this day is observed as Good Friday. This movable date should tell the observant one to look for some interpretation other than the one commonly accepted. These days do not mark the anniversaries of the death and resurrection of an individual who lived on earth.”
― Neville Goddard

Say Yes Quickly

Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray.
You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hands out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says How aren’t you?

Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and torn tonight,
thrashing in the dark. Inside you
there’s an artist you don’t know about.
He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know
and have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, if you’ve known it
from before the beginning of the universe. - Rumi

 

Don’t let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night. Before death
closes your mouth.

There’s no love in me without your being,
no breath without that. I once thought
I could give up this longing, then though again,
But I couldn’t continue being human. -Rumi

 

You are the only faithful student you have.
All the others leave eventually.

Have you been making yourself shallow
with making other eminent?

Just remember, when you’re in union,
you don’t have to fear
that you’ll be drained.

The command comes to speak,
and you feel the ocean
moving through you.
Then comes, Be silent,
as when the rain stops,
and the trees in the orchard
begin to draw moisture
up into themselves. -Rumi

 

Edited April 8, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

"Back to those of us who are able to disengage from thoughts. There's a TRAP here  Cause when MIND says that a THOUGHT is NOT REAL, it also tends to brush away the FEELING associated with the thought. That feeling right there, is what KEEPS the thought coming back. 

Actually, most of the time, the same thought comes back over and over again (sometimes about different people and situations), because it is somehow FUELED by a feeling. Body has stored some type of information by constricting or expanding some cells. When that energetical information is triggered, it will communicate to the neurons a way to "fire up" so that it has the same (type of) thought. 

So once you've dismissed a THOUGHT as NOT REAL and / or BAD, all you did was to DISSOCIATE mind from body. No further understanding/integration comes with this, only more frustration and more searching. 

So once you have found your way through dismissing thoughts, there's a "part two" that is CRUCIAL: feeling the emotion "underneath". Now I won't lie to you. Even though you are aware of it, even if you know and see it for what it is and are able to put a name on it, it WILL feel like what you ASSOCIATED IT WITH: fear, anger, sadness, jealousy, discontentment, etc. You will see that those LABELS will still try to stick to your actual experience, but if you just give attention to the PHYSICAL SENSATION and not to the THOUGHT, the "discomfort" will pas - or better said, what you will discover is that there is no discomfort. That physical sensation will reveal the thoughts you associated with it throughout your life. 

Once you truly are able to see thoughts are not true THROUGH feeling the sensations that bring them on, you're free "

[SilentTears]

On 3/31/2020 at 10:15 AM, mandyjw said:

The human body looks and feels like a pyramid shape in meditation.

Oh hoho, and the legs make a heart. 

[mandyjw]

@SilentTears  I hadn't thought of that.

 

It seems like I'm becoming more and more conscious of how sneaky thought can be, but how could I trust that thought or judgement itself? Should I trust a self review from a corrupt politician? Yet, the corrupt politician has become conscious that he's only hurting himself, and his desire is to change his patterns. This is not a story of impeachment but redemption, change of heart. Thought itself is in service of the whole. It tries to serve itself thinking it is above rather than connecting with feeling and serving/governing the whole. To serve is to rule. To rule is to serve. 

[mandyjw]

This was a "hit you where you live" moment. Which reminded me of this old favorite 80's Christian song.

"Hit you where you live, you can't hold back
When you're struck by his love you will know
Hit you where you live, it's so close to home
When you're all sold out the mark will show
Let him hit you where you live

The evidence leads to conviction
When we don't live everything we say
There's got to be a crucifixion
We can live dying everyday"

How fitting, the flaming sword? 

The unsafe, afraid feeling in my belly that I've been "working" with. The description from Rupert Spira to the tantric path and the symbolism of the apple. 

"Juicy apple, pear, and banana,
Gooseberry ... They all speak of
Death and life in the mouth ... I have a presentiment ...
Read it from a child’s expression

If she savours them. It comes from far, from far ...
Aren’t you slowly becoming aware of something inexpressible in your mouth?
Where a moment ago were words, a flowing discovery
Is released, startling, from the fruit’s flesh.

Venture to say what your apple is called.
This sweetness, which originally condensed itself,
Spreading out, slowly in being tasted rose up
To achieve a clarity, awake and of transparency,
Resonant of opposites, sunny, earthy, of the here and now -:
Oh the experience of it, the feeling, the joy -, immense!" -sonnet to orpheus

While listening a memory bubbled up of probably the first instance that I felt completely not ok, and had that horrible anxiety feeling in my stomach. 

My sister and I were playing in the woods by our parents house. It's funny because that woods only exists in my memory and now that section was cut and grew in again and it's like that old part never existed. I was really young and was playing with my t-shirt pulling it up and down showing my belly and covering it up again. My sister, a kid confused about nudity said that uncovering yourself like that was illegal and I shouldn't do it. For whatever reason I took this to mean that I was going to jail and I waited for them to come for me... the rest of the day, living in this feeling of horrible guilt/anxiety. Eventually it got bad enough that I told my mother and she set me straight that I was horribly mislead and confused and I felt great relief.

A minute or two later, my daughter brought me my phone that she was watching a show on and the show had a couple of dachshunds dressed up as prisoners and was titled  "Prison Break".

 

Edited April 10, 2020 by mandyjw

[mandyjw]

“One of the marvels of the world is the sight of a soul sitting in prison with the key in its hand!” ― Rumi,

Is guilt/shame and anxiety/fear the same feeling? Well yes... I suppose it has to be in feeling, because nonduality, but holy cow, I never really saw how tied together they are, how one feeds the other. 

Last night I had a dream that I was throwing a dinner party but I didn't really prepare but this wasn't obvious to me until no one showed up anyway. I was sitting alone and looked up and I was sitting by the woods and it was windy and all these rotting, dead trees were hanging over my head waiting to fall and I realized I probably shouldn't be sitting there. I also had a really symbolic dream about clothing, the symbolism of which I've been becoming more conscious of lately over the past few days. 

I feel very stuck right now. Maybe the gentle practice I learned of following pointers, signs and feelings through shadow work, waiting, being patient, works with feeling as well. I'm dogmatically trying to force myself into allowing, which is a ridiculous strange loop. 

I'm opening to those disgusting feelings that come up so often during the day, feeling like I should be doing something else, or that I'm wasting my time, or just awful resistance to what's at hand. I'm feeling the sensations, the feeling in my body, the knot in my stomach. 

Am I, or am I thinking about them more?

THINK MANDY, THINK! You're stupid, you never did think the right way. It's ok, you can avoid that shortcoming by demonizing thinking. Thought demonizes itself. 

The day before yesterday I told my husband that I felt bad for 8th graders and high school students missing their graduations this year. He said something like college graduations were more important, a bigger deal. I sat with it a moment and recognized that I was triggered, that he had had a college graduation and I hadn't. I wanted to react but then I came back with an answer that I told myself was only half reaction of what I wanted to say, half trying to one-up him. "Well, a very small percentage of people get to experience a college graduation. So high school graduations are a bigger deal for more people." That night I dreamed that I went back to high school, not college but high school to take three classes, and it felt really strange. Then the dream shifted and I had bought my Grandmother's house and committed to fix it up and make it mine. 

Life in general can go take a flying fuck right now. What the fuck did I do to deserve this existence? What the fuck did I do to deserve this existence? Same question, same words are asked following great appreciation or great suffering. I didn't do anything? I don't own any of it. 

What if I'm imagining all the pain in my body, all the blockages, the powerlessness? Isn't that what I've been taught here? It's imagination? Then how is it not my fucking fault? How am I not to blame? Or how am I not a victim? How do I forgive a self that doesn't exist, how do I love a self that doesn't exist? The depths of nihilism itself. I won't deny love. But I would deny myself. I would kill it. I would wish it was never born. Just fucking die already. I've seen behind the curtain, there's nothing to kill. The desire to kill it persists. 

Sometimes you have to let some punches out in thought. 

This was all pretend to me. All play. I saw how it unfolded, I saw the mind blowing connections, I felt them, I've seen through the charade. But I still pretend, doubt and live and feel as if it's real, life and death. 

 

"I've been knocking and no one answers. And I've been knocking most of the day."

Why is Self Love, utter alignment? It is existence without existence. 

I just binge ate an entire dark chocolate bar and some other things. It's getting ridiculous. Getting fat is what every woman fears the most and yet wants the most. Maybe if I make myself completely undesirable to others, I'd actually love me.

Oh Jesus Mandy you're so dramatic. Creed, now?  You can try, but you know none of this even sticks anymore. 

My newly found carefreeness terrifies me. Just read that again, oh God, that's funny.