(10-05-2021, 08:55 PM)Asolsutsesvyl Wrote: @Nikki, you bring up the biggest-picture questions, briefly, and I'll more generally try to write a bit on how I relate this whole topic to them, in experience.
The more a person thinks about possible consequences of actions, and the more it matters, the more it becomes important to be accurate. After all, inaccuracy so often leads to consequences other than those intended. That's why I can't settle for simply feeling that I have positive intent as being good enough a way to be positive. I know very well that people who feel they intend good can hurt and harm. I think that positive spirituality needs to balance a striving for pure intent with a competent striving for accuracy. Otherwise it becomes shallow and ineffective.
Self-acceptance has been a very tricky issue for me in the long term, since childhood and on. I've been torn on a deeper emotional level and only begun healing that after the past period of years with a cult.
When looking within for answers, often I get one answer, then the opposite, and what amounts to a kind of reminder from the self to the self that I need to do further work to develop the understanding. If you think of life as being in a game of sorts, then I suppose the player-part of the self is saying, "no, that's not how it works at this point", in response to expecting anything else at such times.
I can't embed myself fully in any cultural camp, such as e.g. a skeptical one or one such as what you may call this community. A part of the self may fit, but not the rest. So far I haven't found any place genuinely an exception. (A more unified worldview is building in my mind, over time, in large part not formulated in words, and however incomplete it may be, it's still at odds with everything too simplified in some way. In part culture consists of what people make and copy from one another, and it part it's all sloppiness and oversimplification and clinging to mostly unformulated divisions and contortions in attitude and ways of relating.)
Dearest @Asolsutsesvyl: As I read your reply, do see many things that you have accepted about yourself, some are world reality truth, some spiritual truth. To not embed yourself in any cultural camp is a positive way, the way it should be as you develop and realize your path and discover who and what you are. From my perspective, this is called a Truth Seeker and see this in your posts and I can only give you respect for this seeking. If you are getting messages from within, your awareness is expanding which is truly a gift. When you learned about others in the cult, you were actually learning about yourself and within you knew this was not your truth. When you accepted others as they are, you realized that you are not bound by their thoughts, it was free will at at work. Everything that is outside of self, is self, within and without. This may help that you look at all that you think you are and examine it in yourself through others who reflect your desires. I certainly did not have any easy time getting to where I am today, but all the pain, confusion and getting lost in thoughts, endless searching, it is all worth it.
You will come to see yourself, a wondrous being of love and light, because you are.
You may find this video helpful in learning how to realize all that you are in acceptance and love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUC34Z0SfKY