manitou

I think there's a sex addict Anonymous, or something close. Working the steps of recovery will do it. If you check into this, do get a sponsor, as an outside pair of eyes is crucial at the beginning. You seem really self-honest, and if you've got that going for you, you're going to have a wonderful experience all the way around. For the rest of your life, actually. (the AA program worked for me and has kept me sober for 39 years. The program has expanded now to include every addictive behavior imaginable!) Best wishes to you -

This is the dichotomy of enlightened thought, lol. The enlightened mind makes no evaluation of goodness or badness, but it is so easy to do so! It amuses me (as I wrote above) that we are actually warring and arguing with ourselves. I'm guessing that "it" knows what it's doing, although not obviously. Realizing I was an alcoholic 39 years ago was the worst day of my life. But later I realized that it was the best day of my life.

Have you ever gotten to that place in meditation that can truly be described as absolute nothingness? It's a rather scary place. It put me into a bit of a panic and I had to come home real fast.

I think it boils down to Thought. Who's thought? The intelligence within everything. I think the fact that time is an illusion plays into this as well. It's really all happening Now. That may explain the interaction you speak of. I too wonder how it is that objects maintain their shape. Why don't the atoms and components fly apart? (Okay, I know....electromagnetics). But that's just a definition, a word. Does the 'idea' of a lamp keep it intact throughout time? Or is it the space outside of the lamp that defines and maintains its shape? We should have this figured out by tomorrow.

Even in a physical sense, we are ghosts. The dimension of an atom is 99.99999999999% space. That means that ratio applies to us as well.

The sleep eternal In an eternal night may well be consciousness in a different light

Kind of fun periodically to transcend all of it and realize that all us world citizens are one beast, and it's like the tentacles of a giant squid are all fighting with each other. Not realizing it's all the same thing.

I've found another mental trick that seems to work. I'm normally a bit socially timid. Evasive, almost. But when I am in a place of Self-Realization and I know who I really am, it's such a simple thing to mentally say "I've got enough love for you too" when involved with people. Even if it's a total stranger - it just takes any sort of imaginary wall that's there and removes it. I feel connected to that person, because we are all the same entity. And it's also a nice reminder that the 'I' in that sentence isn't the wall of ego identity inside me, it's the true Being. It seems to be a shortcut to staying in Consciousness.

@liminal_luke @Yang I can't imagine going through the suicide of one close to me. i can only imagine the residual guilt associated with the 'what if's'. It has to be horribly painful. I am so sorry. It surprised me that I had to go through the same thing when my husband died in 2017. Although he died from a medical condition relating to bad circulation, in the hospital - I still found that I was asking myself the same question. Should I have taken him to the hospital earlier? Should I have noticed that his limp was a bit worse? Come to think of it, wasn't his speech just a little slurred a few days before he died? Had he had a TIA? It's like there's a strange need of some sort in me to pile guilt on myself. As though I've had to inspect the circumstances of his death and look at from every possible angle. It's actually kind of morbid, really. Apparently a human condition. I guess we'll always find the guilt if we have a need to feel it.

That reminds me of an instance in my youth. When I was maybe 7, we had some people coming over for dinner. I had to set up the fancy water glasses and stuff, that was my job. I looked for the good napkins to set out and couldn't find them. But I did remember that there was a box that said 'sanitary napkins' under the sink in the bathroom. Need I say more? Hey, it made perfect sense to me at the time. Gave the folks a bit of a chuckle

I'm reading a little book that someone gave me. It's Against The Stream by Noah Levine. It describes itself as a Buddhist manual for spiritual revolutionaries. I'm reading in a place where he's discussing attachments. "The Dalai Lama is rumored to have said that being able to have sex without any attachment would take the level of attainment of being able to eat either chocolate cake or dog shit without any preference between the two. The Dalai Lama also said that he didn't know anyone alive who had attained this level of non attachment."

I like the way this discussion has evolved to 'allowing'. I too think this is crucial. Like the wise monk who would answer 'Maybe' when someone else would say 'it's good that this happened', or 'it's bad that this happened'. I don't think we really have a clue as to which situation is Good or Bad, as situations have a way of changing in the light. What appears bad at first, may be the very best thing that happened to you, down the road. Absolute relativity in everything. We continually manifest what the I Am within brings to the fore; and that depends on the needs of our individual development towards realization of the true Self. It's all good, in that linear time is an illusion, and in essence the situation has already happened and we're just catching up, (in our perspective) with what already Is. There is no need for Fear, that is needless when we realize that the condition already Is. Fear is needless because there is an underlying template which aligns with the law of attraction - or as some would say, love. This is why wei wu wei is a very real thing. Doing by not-doing. If we eliminate the need to 'control' everything around us and handle it by Not-Doing, we keep our hands off the dynamic and let it untangle of its own accord. It always does, although maybe not in the manner we thought best. It'll resolve in ways we couldn't have imagined. A quick example? The lady I was doing Reiki on (she has Stage 4 cancer throughout her body, but her condition is stable at the moment) is in a horrible relationship with her husband; much arguing and degrading each other. he doesn't like me at all because he doesn't like any hocus-pocus stuff like Reiki. I was going to do a reverse imprint ceremony on her, something that would reverse or modify the dynamic with her spouse so she would stop re-manifesting the same conditions - the cancer. But before I could do that, something odd happened. We were sitting around her fire pit and she was a little drunk and spewing out so much hate for her husband, I just couldn't stand it any more. It was very unlike me, but I firmly told her that her negativity was more than I could take at the moment, and I got up and left and went home. I was convinced that there was no way I could see to penetrate that thick shell of ego identity around her. So I just set my intent for the very best to happen to her. I don't know how the heck her cancer is, but what I do know is that she and her husband are now both aligned against me, in sync with each other at last on something. So.....from my perspective, the wei wu wei did its magic thing, and hopefully her manifestations will be modified. I apologize if I've told this story before. I am turning into my mother.

Omigod, darling! That is the most beautiful expression of that which cannot be expressed I've ever seen here. You are a moth and are very close to the flame indeed. Your channel is beautiful and transparent.

That is one great watch. And I love the inscription on the back. Certainly getting comfortable with the idea of death lessens fears of everything else. How could it not?

Probably Geronimo watched the movie first

Certainly there is no celestial office. They're floating around on clouds.

must be about time to wrap it up and go home, the food is all gone

To rest is to know the magnificence within our eternal selves

I took my dogs for a walk this morning, as I do every morning. But this morning in particular, for some reason, struck me. As I was leashing them up by the door, they were so alert, their tails were wagging, their anticipation of GOING OUTSIDE was so joyful. I mean, to me it was like Okay, there's a carport out there on the other side of the door. But to my dogs, it was like being at the entrance of Disneyland. And they're so joyous on the walk. So here and now. Under every bush is a new discovery, every meeting with another dog a cause for huge celebration. My goal is to be more like my dogs.

Evermore here and now. That particularly rings with me because I am losing my memory. My mom is in an Alzheimer's facility and lives in a constant state of confusion and not knowing where she is. In some respects, I'm following right behind her. But....I have been a meditator for maybe 30 years. This is saving me in a sense. I have no memory of yesterday. But I am just fine in the here and now. I think if I hadn't been a meditator, that my thoughts would be equally confused and disjointed as hers. Meditation gives us the power to choose how we want to think and what we want to think about. And when the here-and-now thinking is calm and settled, it doesn't matter whether I remember what I did yesterday. It can just be a little embarrassing, that's all. The monkey mind is at peace; I can almost instantly remember Who I Am at any given time, and I utilize that a lot. Because I have to. It seems to be working. I can see maybe having someone come in once in a while to help with things, but all in all I think I can avoid the dementia facility thing. I'm hoping. But I can't say enough about the benefits of meditation. I'm really realizing it now at this point in my life, 72 years. Stick with it, folks - you will not be sorry.

What an excellent post, Everything. I so fully appreciate the fact that joy is indeed a choice, especially after losing my husband and being in grief for a long time. It was like one day I just decided to feel better and engage in life again. It took a little doing, but I finally got there. Interesting what you say about the emotions and feeling good. Both Joe and I did healing ceremonies wherein the trick is to get the feelings of the person you're working on to become joyous - prior to the ceremony. This seems to be the key. Maybe you remember when we did a ceremony on a teenage boy with quadriplegia. I did discuss it on the forum. I had the boy's aunt stare at a picture of him until she felt love welling up in her heart. I told her to turn on a lamp (which symbolized his nervous system) at the moment she felt the love. Incredibly enough, the boy started moving his arms a week later. Then, a few weeks after that, his legs energized. But the key is in the feelings. Wow. Things like this seem to back up in real time what you say in your post.

In the sense of the spirit of one-upmanship.

LOL. This has turned into the most egoic thread I've ever seen here.

In spring, some go to the park and climb the terrace, but I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am. I alone don’t care, I alone am expressionless, like a newborn baby before it has learned to smile. Other people have more than they need, I alone possess nothing. Mine is indeed the mind of an ignoramus in its unadulterated simplicity. I am but a guest in this world. While others rush about to get things done, I accept what is offered. I alone seem foolish, earning little, spending less.

LOL. Of course I'm guessing. Do you not use words in your thoughts? And I think twins probably see themselves as 'one' until they realize their separateness. that is an adorable video. These kids have probably heard plenty of words from their parents already. They are not the same as the original picture of the infant. They've received conditioning already.