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| Intention-Manifestation Manifesting intentions, law of attraction, vibrational harmony, synchronicities, luck, share your intentions, practice group manifesting |
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| | #31 (permalink) | ||||
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England
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Even when you are consciously choosing not to think, thoughts will still arise. A person may occasionally feel spaced out during meditation (consciousness splattered across the landscape), but it is only temporary. It would be impossible to live a normal life if one was continuously in that state. | ||||
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| | #33 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Northern, VA
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| | #34 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008
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When you are truly present, every moment becomes beautiful. It is the revealing of that inherent beauty in all things that every artist strives for in their work. And whatever life brings you becomes your art. I work in a machine shop. A co-worker and I both make music on the side and we were discussing how the various sounds of the different machines inspired us. I can see some great artist washing dishes at a restaurant and suddenly being inspired by the way clam chowder sticks to the side of a bowl. Or the water spots on a glass. Most stories are about regular people doing regular jobs. How can anyone know what it's like to be those people unless they are one of them? I think you know all of this. | |
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| | #35 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008
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I personally prefer Ram Das or Thich Nhat Han, but my girlfriend who read the entire "Left Behind" series needs to hear it from Oprah. That's cool. When it comes from me, it's something weird. From Oprah, it's palatable. I realized a long time ago that most of the human population is not like me and I don't hold it against them any more. | |
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| | #36 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England
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Artists have often used sufferings of the past as subject material for their work. Picasso painted an incredible, abstract painting of the bombing of the Spanish town, Guernica, by the Nazis in 1936. He was expressing the pain and suffering which he and others had felt at that time. So, no, being happy, happy, happy in the present moment, is not a prerequisite for producing great works of art. | |
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| | #37 (permalink) | ||
| Family Member Join Date: Nov 2006
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| agree, trying to control the mind is what makes it hard to "control" it. the more one tries to control it the more it seems like we can't control it. if one doesn't approach the mind's thoughts as something to control, we ironically have the upper hand in a way - we become a supervisor that can direct or push the mind in a direction or select thoughts and even suggest thoughts. Quote:
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| | #38 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England
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I believe there is a two way flow. Concepts and images often arise from our subconscious without our conscious control (especially in dreams). As they filter through to the conscious mind, we try to make sense of them, by putting them in a context we understand, which may be linguistic, or it could be pictorial, auditory, or just a certain feeling. We can also directly ask for information from the subconscious. Again, concepts and images will be yielded up to the conscious mind. If we interpret them correctly, they can be very useful. But, yes, there is a lot of random noise as well. We can also consciously create strong, positive thoughts, which sink down into the subconscious, which have an effect there, and again, yield a response (programming the subconscious?). This is especially useful when trying to break unwanted habits and behaviour patterns. | |
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| | #39 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007
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So it isn't about NOT thinking it is about "Right Thinking" which is to say that the mind is a tool for consciousness to unfurl itself, evolve, and/or expand (however you want to think of it). | |
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| | #40 (permalink) | |
| Banned Join Date: Nov 2006
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The closest I've come into it is doing a very deep meditation, and having the effects last two or three days (as you say, the effect is temporary). This has happened to me maybe on five, six times in my life. What you may not be seeing, Cantando, is that it is absolutely possible to live an outwardly "normal" life in that state, and in fact live it better than before. Let me describe how it was for me, Cantando - this is my personal experience. You DON'T become a zombie, when you're in that state, Cantando. Instead you become calm, peaceful, happy ..... and extremely, extremely intelligent, brilliant, productive & efficient. An example - I go to work, in that state. I sit down at my desk. There is a highly technical, difficult piece of work that needs to be done. In my "normal" state, I might procrastinate .... worry .... feel anxious ... do some of the work ... get stuck .... get distracted .... wonder if I should ask for help... and risk looking stupid ..... struggle to find the next step .... get random thoughts about whether I'd locked the front door at home, before leaving .... go for a coffee break .... work some more .... make mistakes ... think angry thoughts about why my boss assigned this piece of work to me ... work some more .... struggle to find the solution. In the "no-thought" state, it is very different. There is no fear, no anxiety, no worry. Instead there is a formidable degree of control over my thoughts. I would decide, "Now I shall focus on getting this piece of work done." The concentration that follows is very impressive. The focus on my thought sits squarely on the subject matter - the work itself. There is full attention to what needs to be done. There is full presence in the moment. There is no fear, worry or anxiety that I can't do the job. There is absolutely no ROOM for fear, worry or anxiety, because full mental concentration is placed on the work itself. All the ideas, solutions and correct next steps come effortlessly. Around me, colleagues are talking, people come in and out, but my concentration is unbroken, full and ... effortless. And suddenly the entire piece of work is done, in record time. And you even enjoyed it. There was great happiness in the work. This is what I think you don't understand, Cantando. You have to experience it, to really know what it is. If you knew what it is, you would not say, "It would be impossible to live a normal life if one was continuously in that state." | |
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| | #41 (permalink) |
| Banned Join Date: Nov 2006
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All of us have experienced, from time to time, what it is like to be fully in the now. For some of us, it would have happened: 1. in the midst of passionate sex; 2. while riding on a wild, crazy roller coaster ride; 3. playing a sport, eg a competitive soccer match, when you're doing your best and fully engaged 4. deep absorption in an activity you enjoy a lot (it could be, say, playing the piano; painting a picture; singing a song onstage live on 'American Idol') 5. performing some activity that demanded your full attention - eg giving a public speech; performing heart surgery; taking a penalty kick in a soccer game; Somewhere in his book, Tolle gives the example of a cat waiting near a mousehole, with rapt attention, waiting for a mouse to emerge, waiting to pounce on it. What Tolle is talking about is taking that kind of mental state and making it our default mental state. To be like that, fully present in the moment, whatever you are doing and wherever you are. |
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| | #42 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007
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Everyone - HOLD ON!!! The context of Tolle mentioning the washing dishes: he and Oprah were discussing this one guy, Nick, who had given Tolle a question 2 weeks earlier. Nick is a young guy in L.A., who was frustrated because he had bills to pay, and had to hold a day job. But Nick wants to be a rock star. |
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| | #43 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007
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Oops, I posted too early. Anyways, it's too complicated to totally get into everything now...but there is a difference between "great artist" as an ego role...and "great artist" as a way of Being. So far Cantando, you're talking about great artist the ego role. Tolle is talking great artist as a way of Being. They are TOTALLY different. |
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| | #44 (permalink) | ||
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008
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Have you ever been experienced? Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful..." Quote:
About Guernica: From the beginning, Picasso chooses not to represent the horror of Guernica in realist or romantic terms. Key figures — a woman with outstretched arms, a bull, an agonized horse — are refined in sketch after sketch, then transferred to the capacious canvas, which he also reworks several times. "A painting is not thought out and settled in advance," said Picasso. "While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it." | ||
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| | #45 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England
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It is a wonderful experience, though to be honest, I remember very little of it upon returning to mundane reality. However, you can't go about your everyday life continuously in this state. Every time you turn a corner, you are hit with something new, which generates new thoughts. If they are arising from your subconscious, you can observe them, but you cannot stop them. If something knocks you on the head, can you avoid thinking about it? Can you say, 'I'm not going to permit any thought about this'. That in itself is a thought. You can't control all your thoughts all the time. You seem to have shifted from your original position of: "Control your mind completely; Think nothing except what you consciously choose to think about; Do not ever permit any irrelevant, random or stray thoughts to arise" to "Instead there is a formidable degree of control over my thoughts." | |
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| | #46 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England
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The point is - great artists have a spark of genius in them. If you don't already have that in you, no amount of visualizing or trying to be one, is going to make you great. You talk about a great artist as a way of Being. What exactly do you mean? Can you 'be' a great artist without producing any works? If a famous guru is broadcasting to the world and is supposedly telling the truth, then anything he says should hold up under scrutiny. Do you believe every word he says is the truth? | |
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| | #47 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England
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I spent the summer of 1976 living on a campsite in Amsterdam where there was an abundance of various organic and inorganic compounds. I supported myself playing guitar outside the bars and cafes on Damrak. What were you doing? | |
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| | #50 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008
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Is that what that line means to you? Your credentials? Some drug? Where you were in 76? Is this supposed to prove something? Enlighten me. Last edited by mercuryrising; 05-10-2008 at 12:09 PM. | |
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| | #51 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Minnesota
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Everyone has the potential to be "great." Everyone IS "great." Everyone IS "genius." If they don't express it, it is because of a whole bunch of limiting beliefs. Their negativity is so thick they don't even have a clue as to what it is they could be great doing or being... they don't see the genius within. I haven't read Power of Now, so I can't comment on that. But, I have read many other books from Deepak and Chopra to Neale Donald Walsch and others. They ALL point to how we have greatness IN us.. EVERYONE. It is IN you, are you tapping into it? Are you allowing it to be? It is a limiting belief to say "some have it and some don't and if you don't show it by age X you obviously don't have it." I know this limiting belief well because my husband has it. He is not happy in life. He also tells me everyday, "There is nothing I can do now, It's too late." Okay. Then it is. Not for ME though. I am finding new "genius" within me on a steady basis! I have new inspirations and new drive like never before. I am choosing to tap into it now. Last edited by jawillie; 05-10-2008 at 02:19 PM. | |
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| | #52 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England
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It's a bit like a few years ago - only a few people had an MA, and it was a very desirable qualification to have when applying for a managerial position. Now, everyone sems to have one! Yes, let's encourage people to improve their skills, let's work at it. But, please don't say you can go from stacking shelves to painting The Last Supper, just by visualizing it, twenty minutes a day. Let's be realistic here. If your dreams help you get through the day or night, that's fine. I often dream about scoring the winning goal for England in the World Cup final, but is it going to happen? | |
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| | #53 (permalink) | |||
| Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Minnesota
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There is always room for growth. Didn't they close the patent office once because there couldn't possibly be any new ideas left? (yes they did) Quote:
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See, I disagree with you here. I see it as possible. IF you *really* want something, you WILL do it. If it is an idle daydream, no you won't. It's not "just" visualizing. It's about looking deep within yourself. Putting a spot light on those fears, lies, limiting beliefs you have held on to as "truth" for all your life. Then, letting them go and replacing them. In doing that you may just find, "No, I really DON'T want to win the World Cup Final." But, you may find other "great" things (to you) that you will accomplish. So, living in the NOW?? I am starting to feel it. I still do the dishes. I still do my jobs. But I dont' have this constant worry about tomorrow. I am not "worried" about it. Do I have visions for tomorrow? Oh yea!!! But, I am not fretting about tomorrow. I am not saying this is how it is for everyone. It is important that people not turn this into some sort of a religion. So much gets lost when man takes hold of something and try to give it labels, rules and descriptions. This is probably why I don't look forward to reading the book. Oprah endorses it. I run away from mass-mentality as fast as I can. But, maybe if mass mentality starts down a more compassionate route I can join in? It will take some major "getting used to." | |||
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| | #54 (permalink) |
| Family Member Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 6,852
| My observation on the miserable artist discussion: I don't think the great artists have to create because they need to express misery and pain. Of course, being one of these "great artists" myself (lol) I can be in a positive mood, I'll start creating some music and what will come out is very melancholy. I've really struggled with this. I am learning to live a more joyful life, the music is all I want to do, yet when I write, it is usually not this upbeat joyful stuff coming out of me. Yeah, most of my life has been in some sort of mental anguish. Creativity is a good way to channel that energy. What I'm focusing on now is, just going with it. If that's what comes out of me, I can't fight it. See, my ego is attached to the idea that (get this) in order to write great music, I can't have a happy life. I can't have good things in my life, good relationships, because if I weren't depressed, where's the creativity going to come from? Yet, when I'm feeling down, I do not have the energy to write. It's the last thing I can make myself do. I can force myself, but it's better when I'm amped up THEN sit at the keyboard and start playing. It's kind of a paradox isn't it. Can't get too intellectual about it though. When you create it just happens, you have to honor it, you have to go with it---because it's happening through you. It's not your ego. It's your real self expressing itself. And perhaps your real self is mourning something, in order to move past it. Don't know. But when I try to make sense of it, I come to a standstill. My observations on eckhart/oprah/ALG describing real life: Tolle/Oprah. Dancer turned me onto this webcast series, and I had already read both of his books. Have watched all 10 webcasts, and am now listening to each chapter's audio, repeatedly. Finally clicking. Why do we BELIEVE that if we were totally present all the time, we would be zombies, ineffective, not able to function? Because that's the ego saying "don't kill me--I'm a parastite that has taken over the host and I will not go away". In essence, when we work on this, we are throwing our identities out the window. Years and years of identity, gone. Now... THAT'S SCARY. Hell it's all I know. You're asking me to burn down my own house? ALG is describing real life. How life is truly lived from our true nature, separate from completely uneccessary thinking and worrying. It's real. Things flow. Confusion goes away. Things make sense without thinking about them. You're more efficient and relaxed at the same time. And the weird thing is instead of struggling...stuff comes to you. "Damn I hope that guy is there so I can call him--" he calls you. "Gee I want to learn more about XYZ" someone comes over and gives you a book on XYZ. It's F'D UP. More paradoxes--the less effort, the greater the result. Of course, it takes practice. Soon the ego comes back and it's business as normal. But--the more you do this-- the more frequent it happens, and you start to have a sense of who you really are. The real you. Behind the thought, just pure awarness. And that's when things get freaky. Still riding the waves. Looking forward to ego lessening more and more. Last edited by cylon; 05-10-2008 at 06:31 PM. |
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| | #55 (permalink) |
| Family Member Join Date: Dec 2006
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BTW, watching Tolle on those oprah webcasts, he actually starts talking about LOA, and if you've read Abraham you will see him kind of talking about it. It's not what he focuses on necessarily, but he gets into the result of presence--that you send out a different vibration and those same vibrations come to you, and things just start to happen. LOA. They appear to not go together, but that's ego saying "I can't achieve if I'm not always worrying and planning for tomorrow".
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| | #56 (permalink) |
| Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Brazil/USA
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I've read parts of this thread, but I haven't read everything. I just want to say that I did extract some value from The Power of Now, but from a certain point on it felt like something was slightly off for me. LoA and Tolle's ideas overlap here and there, but that's as far as it goes. There's a lot of contradiction between the two. I personally incorporated the parts that had value for me, but no matter how hard I tried, some parts of Tolle's teachings just didn't seem to resonate well with me on a deeper level. And I don't think it was my ego trying to protect itself, I fully understand the message and I certainly can put myself in a state of ego dissociation and keep it for long periods of time if I really want to and be really present (I eventually lose that, but I have been able to do that for 3 days in a row). But, unless I'm totally losing the point (which I don't think I am), I still feel like there's something off. When Steve posted the article "The War on Ego" that made a lot of sense to me and shed some serious light on what was off for me. So I'm with Steve in this one. With that being said, I think that lots of people might have a different experience, so I think each person should embrace what feels right for them. But LoA and Tolle's teachings are not 100% compatible. Like I said, I did find some overlapping, but there are contradictions and this is where each person needs to figure out by themselves what makes more sense for them. |
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| | #57 (permalink) |
| Family Member Join Date: Dec 2006
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Well at first they do seem incompatible. But at least as far as the Abraham stuff, what does it say? Feel good, now (be present). I think the war on ego may be misperceived. People associate ego with identity. So to say you're destroying the ego to some (and I thought this as well) means to destroy your identity. But you can't destroy the real self that is behind the thinking. You're not destroying your real self... you're destroying the pattern of habitual thinking and worrying, and the constant focus on tomorrow or yesterday. Creation is in the present moment. Even if your intention will most likely manifest tomorrow, next week, next year, whatever... it has to be real to you RIGHT NOW, and you have to believe it's real, right now. And you can't feel it's real, now, if your thoughts are on tomorrow. So you may enjoy watching those webcasts on oprah, the interesting thing is that they have callers who ask these same questions so it's much more of a "real world" type discussion. |
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| | #58 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Brazil/USA
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All of this got me thinking about a line from "Before Sunset" in which Celine says: "Not wanting anything, isn't that a symptom of depression?" So, being present is fine and wonderful. When working with the LoA it's essential, both in terms of visualizing and feeling it in the present and being completely focused on whatever manifestation method we're using (and that's where I found part of the value in Tolle's book). However, "killing" the ego as Tolle suggests (and even says that himself in the webcasts, that he killed his ego) means that you're killing the "wanting" behind your intentions. What's the purpose of the physical existence and experience if you kill that? To me this gets way too close to apathy and misses the point of a physical experience. So, there IS some overlapping, like I said, but the contradictions are still there for me. I did watch half of them and his answer to one of the callers who asked something among these lines didn't convince me, unfortunately. | |
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| | #59 (permalink) | |
| Family Member Join Date: Dec 2006
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Interesting stuff Patricia. Quote:
Even Abraham says, if you are wanting something, you are not experiencing having something. You're experiencing wanting it--manifesting more thoughts and more experiences of wanting--not having. To want is to not have. Detachment--yeah a lot of us are perplexed by this. Slowly, it's becoming clear to me. I believe it's not so much that you are apathetic, or free of desire, you are simply not FIGHTING the reality of the moment. You spilled the milk on the floor. Clearly, that was not what you would have desired, but it happened. It's real. You can't undo it by saying "milk! Unspill yourself! You did NOT just spill!" Then extrapolate that, now you can't sleep at night because the milk was spilled on the floor. The horror. I can't believe this happened. I HATE spilled milk. Oh god I'm so mad. Am I ALWAYS going to spill milk? Am I destined to a life of spilled milk? Lol. The whole time a life of unspilled milk is waiting for you, yet you can't experience it--because you're pre-occupied with the experience of the spilt milk and all the wanting and drama it caused. Hopefully this isn't too silly of an analogy. I believe that to detach is to create your desire. It's real. You believe it, you know it... so there is no attachment. You already have it. You have total faith it's yours, and real. So there's nothing to cling to, no doubt you could lose it, it's in your reality. And I think the pleasant feelings that come from this, are where the action comes in---you're one with the desire and it starts happening, through you. Just like you have no attachment to blinking your eyes. You almost take it for granted. I think it's the same thing. It's taken me quite a bit of searching and struggling with the whole "is detachment the same as not having the desire in the first place" and even now I lose the perspective sometimes. I believe it's a subtle shift in awareness that comes from the abundance mentality, where you naturally KNOW all is provided for. And once that desire manifests, you have a new desire, etc. Last edited by cylon; 05-10-2008 at 10:44 PM. | |
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| | #60 (permalink) | |
| Banned Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Minnesota
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