[davidsun]

Originally Posted by slash112

Thanks David for your response.

When I first discovered this, I did fully embrace it. It is an incredible way to live, it really did feel like I was living in heaven, even though I was at an all-time low in my life.

So, there I was sitting in heaven, then suddenly some part of me creeped up and started to nag at me. It suddenly felt like I was sitting up in heaven, watching a bunch of suffering people down on earth. I suddenly felt selfish to stay. I felt this urge to pull myself back down into duality just so I could be with those who are suffering and take them by the hand and lead them into "heaven". Speaking highly metaphorically here, but these words represent exactly what it felt like.

When I first made the decision to come back into duality, it was really weird. Cause I was basically deliberately making myself insane. I decided to live in insanity. The insanity fully took over a few times, and I struggled to stay close to nonduality sometimes.

Now however, I have become stable in this middle ground, I freely jump back and forwards from perspective to perspective, heaven to hell and back. I keep nonduality very close so that coming home to myself is easy. But I delve into all the different perspectives and feelings a human can go through so I can better relate to people when I talk to them. I now explore these comfortably and without affecting my life.

I've basically been building my empath's nonduality toolkit.

Also, that's a really cool quote from the Bhagavad Gita.

Hello, Soul-Mate!

The book I keep mentioning was my attempt as 'working out' (for myself) and presenting a view of how one might most 'sanely' face and make 'the best' of the exponentially escalating 'crisis' that all of humanity, hence ourselves as well, are now in. Here is my 'coaching' (from Ch 6) in said regard:

"Ultimately, because of the inescapable fact of our interconnectedness, everyone will be salutarily integrated as resonant aspects of the ‘body’ of Life. However, all things are not immediately possible, because evolutionary development pertinent to such ‘homecoming’ takes place in stages and depends on the level of people’s readiness and motivation to learn. Though, because of overlapping considerations, matters won’t always be clear cut in this regard, we must be as judicious as possible when deciding how best to assist and educate various others if we are to make the most of what we’re given. Here are some pointers and recommendations on this score.

Since the less dependent we are on physical and ego gratification to maintain functional homeostasis, the freer we will be from ‘worldly’ addictions and the saner we will be in the way we relate to our natural environment and others in it, we should avail ourselves of every opportunity to inspire, encourage and enable those who are open to developing a holistic orientation and learning to creatively deploy Life’s dynamics to become psychospiritually self-sustaining, mutually reinforcing and co-generative. Because Mind and Spirit are eternally available, inexhaustible resources, those who creatively fulfill themselves in such fashion are no longer dominated and driven by the kinds of ‘carnal’ security, comfort, pleasure and derivative power and status ‘hungers’ and ‘needs’ which, because we are all “partakers of…one bread” (I Corinthians 10:17), otherwise tend to make us competitive and ‘cannibalistic’ in relation to one another. As a result of being given such inspiration, encouragement and education, besides benefiting themselves, they will be more beneficent in relation to everyone around them.

Those who’ve gotten so enmeshed in selfishness and biased by partiality that they don’t heed conscience and deny the truth, on the other hand, just merit being clearly told and warned about what lies ahead for them and why, so they’ll learn the right lesson when they spiral into a black hole in consequence as nature takes its course. As anyone who personally deals with various kinds of addicts sooner or later comes to realize, once they have been warned, till they hit bottom and suffer enough to ‘surrender’ to and ‘embrace’ the truth about Life,a trying to ‘help’ them in the normal sense is generally counterproductive because it just postpones such happening and causes additional complications in the process. More likely than not, they’ll misuse whatever inspiration, encouragement and education they’re given to make their and others’ situation worse than it would be otherwise. Savants who ‘sell’ their services and pander to such individuals or groups commit the worst kind of prostitution. They too should be confronted and reminded, in no uncertain terms, not only about what they thereby do to others, but what therefore lies in store for them as well.

Those who suffer misfortune and adversity, even if they’ve been the worst kinds of ‘sinners’,a deserve especially sensitive consideration and personally caring response. But Jesus’ unqualified advocacy that we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison, and take strangers in (which, by the way, should be interpreted in psychospiritual, not just physical, terms), as well as Paul’s superlative endorsement of ‘charity’ (I Corinthians Ch.13), should be understood in context of the fact that, in their times and places, awareness of the importance of and inclination to engage in such behavior was in most cases minimal, if not non-existent. In the context of societies where a great deal of ‘charity’ has been cursorily dispensed pro forma, it has become clear that we do little, and may even contribute the ballooning of greater problems, if we just alleviate immediate pain and suffering without ferreting out and constructively addressing the underlying causes, be they personal, social, or both, of dysfunction and distress. And it has also become clear that the manner in which we relate to a person in trouble while addressing his or her condition is most crucial.

Many suffer a loss of dignity and sense of personal worth because of the helplessness and uselessness they feel when they are down and out, and whatever self-respect and sense of purpose they have left may be eroded if they aren’t conscientiously respected and treated as sentient and, therefore, potentially at least, response-able, self-determining individuals. When and as you deal with people in such predicaments, it is especially important that they realize, because you really take the time and trouble to know and intelligently respond to their personal thoughts and feelings, that, regardless of any faults and shortcomings which may have contributed to their being in their present condition, they are as much a Member of Life as you are, and that their experience and how they handle themselves and respond in face of it is important and consequential. How much or how little you are actually able to do in terms of solving their ‘presenting problem’ pales in significance compared to this.

Don’t be unduly concerned with the immediacy of the effect you may (or may not) have in any of the foregoing regards. In particular, that a person may be close to death or unlikely to yield much of a ‘return’ as a result of your efforts in the framework of his or her present life-time for some other reason should not deter you from engaging in beneficent undertaking in relation to him or her. Because of reincarnational dynamics, nothing is ‘too little’ to be worth doing, and no one should simply be considered ‘expendable’. Whatever contribution to Creativity you make will bear fruit in due season. Always do the best you can think of doing in any given relational situation. Don’t be half-hearted or hold back because ‘grand’ personal accomplishment seems impossible.

Even so, Wisdom will dictate that you most energetically concentrate on doing what you are most capable of doing, not try to do everything that is ‘called for’ in relation to everyone you encounter. We each have different talents, so it is fitting that we respond to particular callings, some-times to the exclusion of others. There is one ‘calling’ that pertains to everyone, however. We must all collectively attend to the developmental requirements of children, because they are both the most vulnerable and educable and Life’s avenue to the future."