How to Create Emotional Freedom by Setting Healthy Boundaries

I am 35 and I want a marriage. The worst part is that I know I won’t find anyone ever as I am “too old” now.

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”  ― Chuck Palahniuk

“Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.” ― Rick Riordan

The word marriage, what does it mean?  Why does a word hold so much power? Do we mistake the map for the territory and miss the experience?

It is to easy to create what we fear so difficult to create what we hope for… though the process is the same.

Neil wrote a great short story – October about a woman who finds the magic lamp and gets three wishes only she refuses to make any. She’s good she tells the genie. At first the genie can’t understand but as time goes by a relationship forms with the genie doing things for the woman and the woman doing things for the genie all without wishes or the like. Later the woman asks the genie what his three wishes would be. He’s good he tells her.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Peter.

There’s a Zen story about an eager young monk who checks into a monastery and is rearing to go get this thing called enlightenment. “How long will it take?” he asks the abbot.

“Ten years,” replies the abbot.

“That long! Why so long?” exclaims the horrified young monk.

“Did I say ten? I meant twenty.”

“Twenty?”

“So sorry, I think it will take you thirty years.

Asking “How long?” will get you ten. Three strikes will get you thirty. As soon as the expectation or imagery of awakening or inner peace pops up, you get thirty years.

When we measure experiences, the experience starts to disappear and become something else.

It is not calmness or inner peace we have when nothing is going on around us. It is when one’s actions and thoughts are calm, detached from outcomes and judgments (not indifference or stoicism), while engaged in the chaotic world around us that inner peace is “realized“.

It is a paradox of enlightenment (inner peace) that to become… we work to get to a place where  we  stop giving a darn about it… this, I suspect, is why the Buddha is seen so often laughing…  we work for that which no work is required.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Peter.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Peter.

Hi Mathew

What is ugly? Do we feel our thoughts? Become our thoughts?  How does our consciousness become fixated on a thought that  only exists because we are fixated on it. It makes no sense… yet I fully relate we feel what we feel and there is a time for everything.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you? The two are so, so different. One is an infinite consciousness capable of being and creating whatever it chooses, the other is an illusion imprisoned by its own perceived and programmed limitations. – David Icke

What the mirror can’t show you is who you really are; a devoted parent, sibling, a hilarious friend, an adventurous soul.  Sometimes when we get overly caught up in appearances it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to be present in our lives.  And then we miss things, big things, little things, … everything. – Marla Chicky

When Negative Thoughts Keep You Down: How to Break the Addiction

Hi Unicornmeadows

Love and understanding….  Sometimes I wonder if love and understanding can exist together in the same moment of time. Perhaps not.

After a painful breakup the question that reverberated within my head – What’s love got to do with it?  Everything? Nothing? Both?

It seems to me that some relationships without Love often lasted longer then they should while relationships where Love was present and real ended to soon.  Love its seems did not always guarantee that a relationship would last and in some cases, Love may have required that relationship end.  Then from a different perspective, if one cared to travel that path, the realisation that All of it is Love…. So, we have thousand and thousand of books, songs, moves, poems… all trying to understand This thing called Love.

I know that none of the above is likely to help… I do not believe your ex-boyfriend is lying when he said he loves you but that life is pulling him away.  Life demands growth and it’s a bitter/sweet truth that sometimes its the end of a relationship that is the push we receive.

Time does not heal though it allows our attachment to the memory to fade so that we might move forward with what we have learned.  Bitter/Sweet.

How to Love More and Hurt Less in Relationships

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Peter.

Hi Luckyfox

… perhaps not feeling so lucky today but the fox is a trickster and Life pushes for growth even if we do not notice.

A student went to visit a Zen master. As the master gracefully served tea, the student talked about his problems and asked his question. The master remained quiet as the student spoke, continuing to pour.

When the tea reached the brim of the cup, the Zen master kept pouring. The tea overflowed, spilling onto the tray, the table, and the carpet, until the student could no longer stand it.

“Stop!” he said. “Can’t you see the cup is full?”

“This is you,” said the master, positing to the cup. “How can I show you Zen, until you first empty your cup?”

Although it may not feel like it, being in a place of done and emptiness can be the best place to discover the self.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

Great work! Love to hear your thoughts as you progress.

I found that a turning point with my work on the ego came with the realization of the role ‘ego’ has in experience.

Following literal practices, I attempted to kill the ego. I wanted to live with total detachment from the ego/self… only that tended to lead to indifference and depression.  I was unintentionally creating a resistance to the flow of Life.

Instead of seeking an literal ego death the practice adapted to one of symbolic ego death and its transformation. This lead to accepting the ‘ego’ place within experience.

Today I feel the ‘ego sense of I’, to which all communication of experiences relies on, is just that. The ego is the part of us that relays information about experiences, particularly when we verbalize the experience. (Try talking about experience without thinking I) It is through the ego communication that the opportunity arises allowing the unconscious to become conscious – awakening. The trap is to mistake the ego sense of ‘small s self I’ experiences as the SELF.

Instead of killing the ego the ego was befriended similarly to the befriending of the mind and body. The befriending removing resistance to the flow of Life as it is.

I do not ‘know’ what the self is, even if it exists. I do ‘know’ what it is not. The ‘I am’ is not the ego or the body, or the mind… perhaps it is the still point that observes experience of ego, body and mind… When ‘I’ sense the still point, trying to observe the observer, it just laughs at me ?