Greetings: dyed-in-the-wool atheist, complete 180 in less than 6 months

[highpriestess]

Hello DuncanIdahoTPF,
I think one of the most troubling feelings can be that overwhelming sense of loneliness that we all suffer from at one point or other. It's easy for me to say to you right now, you are not alone. Because you aren't. No one is alone. Yet, there are many times I too forget and allow myself to become inundated with those feelings I seem at a loss to control, and seem to be weighted down by that sense of loneliness. (Funny paradox isn't it?)

There are times that I too feel that sense of overbearing silence, of doubting yourself and what to say, but wanting so desperately to reach out with words and feel connected with someone you care about. I've consoled myself by trying to remember--every challenge you find yourself facing is a wonderful opportunity to be thankful for, to be looked on with light and love.

Since I have stumbled upon my inner truths reflected in the Ra material and L/L website, I've felt like I finally found the wonderful secret of everything and I really want to share it with those I love. But this is a tricky thing. I read this last night from the L/L Newsletter #114, Respecting the Free Will of Others:

The distinction between bending someone’s ear, as this instrument would say, and the dropping of thoughts is that in the dropping of thoughts, the one for whom the thought is dropped has no awareness that his ear is being bent. That subject which you feel is a beautiful opening for something that you would like to share has come up in conversation, and so you share it and you move on.

The line that is drawn here is between taking advantage of a conversation that happens to go in a direction in which you have something to share and in creating a conversation that gives you the opportunity to share. On the one hand, you are simply communicating back and forth and in a spontaneous way you have found a nugget that you’d like to share and so you do.
If you create the conversation by bringing up the topic you wish to discuss, then in a subtle way you are herding or bullying this entity and hoping to have a certain effect upon him. Do not create the opportunity to share spiritual truths but only respond to openings in which such a truth is relevant and apt.

~Sending you love & light.

p.s. I love Tool!! I think there's a forum post somewhere about Law of One music & bands, it specifically mentions the Lateralus album. Funny, I've heard the songs so many times (and I love memorizing the lines of songs) but never actually knew the lyrics. Very very insightful!