manitou

This is exactly how I was brought up as a kid to believe.

Personally, I find the challenge is to get along with everybody, regardless of their actions toward me. One of the four agreements of Don Miguel Ruiz is Don't Take Anything Personally. If I don't take things personally, nothing bothers me. It seems to be a choice. There is a way to embrace the Is-ness of a person's bad behavior without buying into it.

I think it's important to remember that if you can identify those qualities within another person, it's because you either have, or have had, those same qualities. Maybe not at this particular point in time, but at some point. The most helpful way (for my own progression) to walk the minefield is to remember that we're all the same entity. That will bring more love into the equation and less dissention.

No Soup for U today.

You've chosen to look at it this way. There are many here who understand that once the egoic overload is removed, that the Real is found. Please consider that there is no 'thing' out there in the Duality that is going to save us. In fact, we are the Thing. The incredible intelligence that created all this is that which formed our bodies, tells the trees how many branches to have, and whispers to turtles when to go down to the beach and lay their eggs. We are It. It's not a theory. It's what you find after you've removed all the dross from your inner being. The blueprint for everything. There are many here that understand that there is no such thing as ills or evils. That is a value judgment set up by either our collective or personal agreement. Things just Is. What appears horrible at one moment turns out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. The trick, I guess, is to keep our minds open, realize that all other beings are You. If you punch a guy in the face, you're punching yourself.

And even TDBs has conditioned us with Likes. I Like the Likes. Yes, it's like it scratches an itch sometimes. Conditioned by Likes. That's good, Lerner.

I was thinking very closely along these lines this morning. We apparently believe what we want to believe, and then subconsciously find the evidence that aligns with what we already believe to be true. Proof of this is the 180 degree difference between the right wing talking heads and the left wing talking heads. It is all so predictable, what their response will be, because they wear their precious beliefs on their chests for all to see. I guess that's how us human animals are. I think perhaps another definition of enlightenment would be, to have no beliefs or opinions at all. Those people who happen to be sitting in key positions, those who cover the human affairs and selectively decide what news is and isn't - that's exactly what you're saying too, lerner. Your handle says it all. 'thelerner'. The beginner's mind, the mind that knows nothing, the mind that is open to learning at each and every moment. Maybe that's why in the DDJ there is that mention of how the people on the terraces in the springtime are witty and merry making, and he alone feels like a dullard? (Paraphrased, obviously ) The merrymakers in this analogy are sharp, clever; the one who knows the Real feels muddled and nebulous. Because one with opinions has closed themselves off to an alternate view So, I'm with you. Whatever we see come across on a screen is merely someone's idea of what news is. And the incredible thing is that these Deciders of What News Is sets humanity down various paths where everyone buys into everything, because it's all become so condensed and confusing. We need simplicity sometimes, we crave it. But within the problem lies the answer, as I see it. We all have the capacity now, economics allowing, to determine the truth, to the best of our ability. We have access to the information at our fingertips. Surely somebody can come up with a way to still get and disseminate the truth, whatever that is, without spin. Or maybe not. Anything observed is going to contain the internal spin of the observer's conditioning, so every report is going to be skewed, like the old telephone game. But this is when it's fun to jump back and forth from what is reported as reality, and then going up to the mezzanine and, out of realization that we're all the same being, see how ridiculous it is for one leg of a centipede to kick another leg. Thanks, lerner. Misery Porn. That's it exactly.

What's an instance of this? That has such a peaceful, easy feeling....I know you won't let me down.

But now that you're in Awareness that you are actually the manifester of all things in your life, life will bring to you at a comfortable pace those dynamics which have been in your way for years. Use any moment of strife or anger or impatience as the very moment to turn your focus inward and see where it's coming from. There's usually a tiny childhood memory lurking; some particular little moment. If you are in Awareness that the very memory of childhood that comes back is most likely where the dynamic started, that's often enough - the awareness alone - to modify your reactions to future occurrences. Sometimes the memory is a very strong imprint; if that's the case, there's always a way to 'change the imprint' to the opposite, by performing some ceremonial ritual that emphasizes the opposite dynamic. Sometimes this takes a couple rituals. Example - a friend of mine had a horrible memory of his father, a mean man that wouldn't hug his kids. His memory is of his dad turning his back on him when he was real young as he was running up to him. Apparently it was a very painful moment for the little boy. This has affected his relationships throughout his lifetimes. And at key moments in his adult life, when things weren't going well, this little memory would pop in. When we did a reverse imprint on him, I had him run up to me (in the mindset of a little kid) and I would warmly hug him, pretending to be the father. We did this several times. It sounds odd, but if the dynamic can be rehearsed in the opposite direction, the reaction starts to change. He lost the constant vibration of fear of rejection or abandonment (resulting in a lot of co-dependency) in his chest.

i was driving down a freeway a couple weeks ago, and although I was driving maybe 60 mph, there was an awareness of something in my chest that wasn't moving at all. Once felt, it repeats and can be felt at will. It was/is a comforting feeling. Warm, friendly, familiar.

I was beginning to suspect that. \

I read a book that talked about an enlightened woman who couldn't stop laughing at all phenomena, be it positive or negative. I do understand the laughing thing. When you are in Awareness, you realize that everything unfolding before us is not real - that the only 'real' thing is this warmth inside us, this consciousness we are. When you look at the world in that fashion, things can get pretty ridiculous.

If this is truly the case, my hat is off to you. That is an incredible achievement. The other alternative is that you have not sufficiently conquered excessive ego within, and it is getting in the way of your clarity.

detergent

only you can prevent forest fires

These are truly astounding, CT!

Uncomplicated

Now decimated, Hopes for a brighter future Sink into rubble

It's like a jar with a lid or no lid. Take the lid off, the air in the jar and the sky are one. That's when the answers come too; all we have to do is get ourselves out of the way.

My understanding of the natural mind is the mind without words. When a person has been meditating for a long period of time and has been able to successfully meditate with no object - just spaciousness - this is the state of wu-wei, in a sense. One is totally open and receptive to whatever comes along, prior attitudes are ignored and ultimately discarded. Each situation is handled with no prior conditioning interfering, if we're in awareness. Our conditioning has caused us to become opinionated people, coloring everything we see with our prior attitudes. For clarity, these must be abandoned.

circumlocution

Uh, that's gonna hurt

It's pretty easy, IMO. When I ask myself What should I do here?' in regard to the appropriate situation, the answer is always Do Nothing from that point. It's a certain type of dynamic that it works well on. Strife, within the household. for example. It doesn't mean Don't take out the trash when she asks you to and use that moment to rebel against teenage phantoms. Rather, it means acknowledging that nature, the natural, will happen on its own. This is when we take our hands off the steering wheel. Life is suddenly seen as the whole living entity that it is. A type of surrender to realism happens; we rise up out of the stream and observe it from a higher point. We stop running interference for them, and we stop the co-dependence of doing for him what he was capable of doing for himself. Folks stuck in this cycle understand what I'm saying. Like my car. I love her, her name is Rosie and she has pretty rose floor mats. She's a Prius and I hope I have her until the wheels fall off; although I'll probably replace them too. Since my own personal Shift, I see her differently. I feel a feeling when I get in and put my hands on the steering wheel. I caress the airbag holder in front of me. I actually feel a loving energy going out to her and the strange feeling is that it feels like it was connecting into the One Energy. And I feel something like love or gratitude maybe glowing in my heart. Like it's being received by me from Rosie.

Too late. That would have been 65 years ago. Me and a girl named Melanie used to ride broomsticks for hours and whinny. We got priiiity priiiity good at the equine utterances.

(global effing warming)