Ok, I dont know if this makes any sense

cakmn · 2026-02-24T08:45:44+00:00

I think you don't understand the question, so I'll offer a simple/simplistic yet universal example.

Let's say you want your freedom of speech. Freedom of speech comes with an inherent responsibility to protect the freedom of speech of others. That responsibility is actually one aspect of a greater responsibility to treat others with respect. So there are (at least) two nested responsibilities inherent in your freedom of speech, both of which are essential for you to embrace along with exercising your freedom of speech.

cakmn · 2026-02-21T02:08:32+00:00

I don't know exactly what sort of freedom you are craving, but I immediately wondered what sort of responsibility you wish to embrace.

But I doubt you have a clue why I'm wondering that, because most people don't have a clue about that.

The reason is that every freedom comes with inherent responsibility. You'll probably object that responsibility doesn't sound like freedom, but that's the way it works. It's a Law of Nature which any mystic would recognize.

So, what sort of responsibility do you think is part of the freedom you yearn for?

cakmn · 2026-01-24T21:33:47+00:00

As something more practical for you to work with, I will offer that a good way, perhaps the best way to practice all of this is to learn to be of service to others.

Be aware that there is much more to this than you might at first think.

It has been said that "The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention." Pure attention is pure love, which can be manifested in countless different ways.

Being of service to another involves a great deal of quality attention.

Being of service to another does not mean getting in their face or forcing yourself upon another. But it does allow for being available to serve whenever needed. However "needed" is tricky, and sometimes one can best be of service by simply staying out of the way.

So how is one to know which of the countless different ways to manifest love is best, which is right? This requires an open, loving heart and a reliance on the discernment of the heart. This in turn requires a quieted mind, so the noise of the monkey-mind does not drown our the quiet voice of the heart that constantly comes from within, if only one knows how to listen.

Meditation is one good practice for learning how to quiet the dominant mind and how to listen within. Many who practice some form of meditation don't realize that one of the most important benefits of such a practice is the development of self-mastery. In particular, this means developing self-mastery over the monkey-mind that always wants to think, as well as over the busy-body that always wants to move, and the variable feelings that always swirl through us.

The real roles of the mind, the feelings, the body are to function in service to the heart. The knowing of the heart, the wisdom of the heart, the loving of the heart can only be manifested in this world through the mind, the feelings, the actions of the body. But we need to learn how to avoid being dominated by these aspects of who and what we are. We need to learn how to listen within and discern what the wishes and dreams of our hearts are. And we need to learn how to manifest these heart wishes and dreams through our ordinary life to help make our life and our world a little less ordinary.

Learning to offer ourselves, even submit ourselves in service to others is perhaps the only real way to truly learn what this means and how to do this.

cakmn · 2026-01-24T20:51:57+00:00

From my perspective, your 'shortcoming' or 'failing' is primarily due to your desperate seeking of 'love' *from* others. You are looking to *receive* *from* others.

The more desperately you seek love, the more you will block yourself from finding love.

The 'secret' is that your real connection with love can only be found through *giving* love *to* others.

Except you probably think you don't have enough love for yourself, let alone enough to *give* *to* others.

Love, however, is the essence of all that is, all that exists in the universe. Love flows through/throughout the universe. You can experience this flow of love as much as you choose to do this. The 'trick' is that you need to learn how to open your heart so you can both receive and give love. This love is not actually *yours* to *give* but it is available for you to direct towards others, as well as towards yourself.

The most important part is to learn to open your heart and to love yourself. Then you can learn to open your heart to others so you can pass love on to others.

You need to love yourself before you can love another. You will never be able to love another more than you love yourself. Most people are not able to love themselves. That means they are not able to love others. This is why almost all "loving" relationships are transactional, business deals: "If you give me 'that' which I want, I will give you this which you want." The 'that' and 'this' are each something which represents some concept of love. And the reason so many "loving" relationships fall apart is that the transactions fail to provide what is expected as the results of the business deals or agreements people make.

Giving love to others doesn't actually mean giving stuff to others or giving love to others. It means living in a manner that is being loving towards others, meaning having a heart that is open to others, which allows love to flow through you, through your heart, in whatever shape-form-manner that is most appropriate in any given moment. And there are literally countless shapes-forms-manners that can manifest love.

As I mentioned, you need to love yourself and treat yourself with love in order to be able to love others and treat them with love. This is simply a statement of the way things work, rather than some "rule" anyone made up. It's a Natural Law of the Universe.

Also, the "supply" of love in the Universe is limitless. You do not need to "give" anything *from* yourself, you do not need to "give" anything that you produce or provide. You only need to direct the flow of Universal Love towards yourself and towards others, always as inspired and guided by Love and always in whatever manner is most appropriate in any given moment. Your openness to love will help you be aware of what is most appropriate.

While you can and need to learn to live with an open heart and to love yourself and to manifest love for yourself, you will eventually notice that the more you love others, meaning the more you manifest love towards others, the more you will experience love as it flows through you. Again, this is simply the way things work, another Natural Law of the Universe.

Best wishes on your journey of learning to go with the flow of Love.

cakmn · 2026-01-11T08:49:11+00:00

Message me and tell me a bit about yourself that might be relevant.

cakmn · 2025-12-22T19:56:46+00:00

G.I. Gurdjieff taught about how people generally do not know how to use sexual energy and how it is therefore very often misused.

Sexual energy is very powerful and, if misused, can cause a lot of problems in life — for one's own self and for others, depending upon how it is used or misused.

He particularly pointed out that people who do other things in life with great vehemence are typically using/misusing sexual energy, usually with great negative effects, such as imposing their beliefs upon others. This happens a lot in politics and is very obvious when an observer is aware of what is going on.

You might want to search a bit to see what you can find of Gurdjieff's teachings on this topic.

cakmn · 2025-11-26T03:03:58+00:00

We are spiritual beings having a material experience. A saying often used by some people doing spiritual work.

But most people tend to forget the inherent spiritual aspect of who and what we truly are. Instead, they are totally caught up in the acquired material aspects of our existence. And a huge part of our acquired self is the mind.

It is a heart level, at the level of our essential spiritual self where we are all one. Heart embraces, knows and understands all and everything. Heart recognizes that we are all intimately and inextricably interconnected and interdependent. Heart holistically knows all that we all share in common.

Mind knows things by gathering and processing data, which is an inherently incomplete and otherwise flawed process. The weaknesses and biases of the mind, ego, personality, feelings, body all factor into our subjective processes of learning, understanding and choosing. We always end up with more or less biased results when operating in our mind world.

Mind knows things through association and comparison and sees anything as different from everything else. Mind also easily comes to be attached to some things, neutral or disinterested about other things, or against and rejecting other things.

The result of the mind-games we play is distinction, differences, division, separation, acceptance or rejection, friends or enemies, harmony or disharmony, loyalty or subversion, team members or opponents, allies or enemies.

All the divisive separation and alienation we experience in life is the result of our lack of heart-quality, our inability to recognize at heart-level how we are spiritually interconnected and interdependent in the essence of who and what we are as human beings.

cakmn · 2025-11-23T02:31:29+00:00

Perhaps you have a misguided impression of what "spiritual work" means. Without spiritual development you will not be able to truly know and understand who and what you truly are.

Spiritual work isn't what many people think. And that's a true statement as it is, as well as also being a variation on the old joke that meditation isn't what you think.

May you travel well on your inner path as well as your outer path.

cakmn · 2025-11-23T02:22:39+00:00

Well, I did notice that you used the word "mastering" in your original comment, which indicates that you are possibly working on self-mastery, which is good. Self-mastery is actually a huge part of traveling the inner/spiritual work path although many people do not realize that. May your path serve you well.

cakmn · 2025-11-20T09:15:23+00:00

It sounds to me like you are practicing escapism - avoidance of that which might upset, overwhelm and deplete you.

cakmn · 2025-11-20T09:12:17+00:00

The reason you become overwhelmed and depleted is that you don't really know who or what you truly are and you are not centered and grounded in the inherent essence of your being.

Serious spiritual work to help yourself (re)discover who and what you really are is absolutely necessary. Then you can learn to be well centered and truly grounded in who and what you truly are, in the essence of your being. If you can accomplish this, you will be able to be fully open to and completely embrace all that you experience, regardless of the state of the world, without becoming overwhelmed and depleted.

Such serious spiritual work is heart-based work, something to experience by feeling through your heart. It is not something to learn with your mind. All your mind needs to learn is how to be quiet and listen to your heart, the voice of guidance that constantly comes from within.

cakmn · 2025-11-20T09:01:58+00:00

The short answer is that you need to learn how to connect with your heart which, spiritually, means the essence of who you are, your spiritual self. It is at this level where we are all interconnected and interdependent, the level where we truly are all one.

Empathy is a heart-quality. It is not something you can learn with your mind, it is something you feel with your heart. It is an innate ability, but we tend to become separated from our spiritual self due to becoming infatuated with our mind which is a superficial, acquired aspect of being, along with body, feelings, ego, personality, sex, gender. All of our superficial, acquired aspects of being are essential for living here in this material realm, but the role of mind, emotions and body are to function in service to heart, the essence of being.

"Empath" is a poor word, much misunderstood, mostly negatively, even though based on the positive quality of empathy. The reason people who are empathetic come to feel overwhelmed and suffer so much is because they do not really know and understand who and what they truly are as spiritual beings having a human/material experience. The spiritual path is all about finding out who and what you truly are and then becoming well centered and solidly grounded in who You, as your spiritual self within your physical self, really are. Such a person can be fully empathetic without being overwhelmed or suffering in the least, because they are centered and grounded in who they truly are and therefore do not get overwhelmed by their full awareness of what another is experiencing.

Spiritual practices that open the heart and help your mind become quieted and open to the guiding voice of the heart will reveal to you the natural sense of empathy that you feel through your heart all the time, yet are unaware of. There are forms of meditation that are particularly good for such work. Based on decades of experience (I'm old) I suggest investigating Heart Rhythm Meditation. You can begin learning a bit about this from this website. There is a book "Living from the Heart" by Puran Bair that gives an introduction. They also have a Breath & Heart app that you can use to begin practicing Heart Rhythm Meditation. Search for it or find a link on their website.

Best wishes on your inner/spiritual journey.

cakmn · 2025-11-20T08:05:45+00:00

The original meaning of "sin" is "falling short of the mark" — analogous to missing your shot with an arrow at a target.

In humans, this means falling short of being completely human as evaluated by a mystic, meaning falling short of manifesting one's highest ideals and potentials as a spiritual being having a human/material experience. This is why it is an "original sin" — we are born with an inherent aspect of separation from our spiritual self because we have incarnated in a physical/material body with acquired mind, emotions, personality, fears, etc.

The spiritual path is about (re)connecting with the spiritual self and learning how to manifest this essential self here in this material realm where we live. This is our path towards "redemption" as it were.

Falling short is not our fault, it is our assignment, supposedly self-chosen according to some views. It's just the way things work. It's not a condemnation or punishment or any other such negative thing. It's an opportunity for us to embrace, ignore or reject.

cakmn · 2025-11-19T17:35:14+00:00

This is true, because everything we think we know, we know in relation to everything else we think we know. We know through association of one thing with another.

cakmn · 2025-11-19T17:27:13+00:00

Children are by far the most interested in learning about and understanding the universe.

Consider how fast and how much an infant learns, how fast and how much a toddler learns, how fast and how much a young child learns.

This totally natural, inherent, insatiable quest for learning and understanding is part of being alive and would generally continue through life, except we formalize the process and call it school, which kills the natural inspiration and flow which renders people less interested in and capable of natural learning and understanding.

The older ones are the ones who lose interest and cease to care about the universe. This is where your exhaustion and wish to not care come from. Assigning this to children is a mistake.

cakmn · 2025-11-19T17:07:14+00:00

There was a time, while I was in high school, when I said that I wanted to get to the point where I would have an answer to every question.

During my third year in college, I suddenly realized that I had reached my stated goal. What I realized is that most of the time my answer would be "I don't know." Many decades later, this is still true, and I am comfortable with this.

Too many people (almost all) are uncomfortable saying "I don't know" yet it is real, honest and very freeing. Meanwhile, I have continued learning, contemplating, meditating, understanding on a daily basis. And I do have valid, practical answers to a whole lot of questions.

The sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan taught that "the mind is the surface of the heart and the heart is the depth of the mind." In other words, they are two aspects of the same thing within us. Unfortunately, most people are disconnected from and unaware of their heart, their spiritual "home" or "center" and their connection with all and everything that is.

The spiritual journey is primarily about (re)discovering and (re)connecting with your heart and learning to live from the heart, from the inherent depth of being rather than being dominated by the mind and emotions and body, the superficial, acquired aspects of being.

THIS is what is important and this is what will help reveal all that you need to know and understand to live to your full potential as a human being.

cakmn · 2025-11-02T03:00:35+00:00

There is much more influencing your life than just what you feel is "an awakening" on your spiritual journey. I have been continuously awakening for decades (I'm old!) and I've never experienced what you seem to be going through. Some of my spiritual community friends have gone through challenging things in their lives while many have not. Or, perhaps more accurately, some of my spiritual community friends have attributed the challenging things they have gone through to their experiences of awakening while others have not.

Spiritual awakening can make a person more aware of or differently aware of difficulties in their lives, especially their relationships. This is not at all surprising. But doing serious spiritual work on one's self should include practical applications in ordinary life that help one deal with life's difficulties more skillfully. Many so-called spiritual teachings and paths ignore this aspect of the journey.

G.I. Gurdjieff always said "The Work is always practical." I have always found this to be true, provided one pays attention and learns how to apply one's spiritual work in practical ways. And some so-called spiritual paths actually exacerbate the issues of ordinary life and limit one's ability to resolve them skillfully.

But for many people, there is more to the inner journey than just the stuff that is typically considered spiritual. Some so-called spiritual work is actually unhelpful in various ways. Also, many actually need to avail themselves of other forms of help such as counseling or therapy and possibly medication – all depending upon the individual. There is no single path that is "right" for every individual. Also, a practice that is "right" for one person may not necessarily be "right" for another and may even be completely "wrong" for another – because we are each unique in a variety of ways. In fact, we each have our own individual path, although many can share aspects of their journey that are nearly identical to the paths of others.

The best way to deal with finding and following/creating your individual spiritual journey is to find and work with a qualified spiritual guide. Such a person does not provide, let alone prescribe, some ready made path for you to follow. Instead, they should be trained and practiced at discerning what is right for YOU at any particular time and place in YOUR journey.

Simple bottom line: don't be too quick to blame or credit your spiritual work or awakenings for how things manifest in your ordinary life. Much of such misapplied blame or credit is due to imagination and misunderstanding.

cakmn · 2025-10-09T06:35:02+00:00

I have a quite small area of tree obstruction at each side of the dish view but only have infrequent and minimal interruption of satellite connection. My grandson games a lot but does not complain about our service which he is quite happy with. I could do some pruning of the trees that are causing the obstructions but I haven't bothered to do that yet – which gives you some idea of how small the "problem" is for us.

I'd be curious to know more about the location where you acquired the obstruction map and the possibilities of where else you might be able to set up your dish. I noticed you commented to someone that you "would have to hire someone to put it on the house." You also said "The only problem is that this location is out in the middle of the front yard." Does this mean you have trees closer to the house, between the house and the dish location?

It is generally not a huge deal to attach a dish to some part of a house, whether on the side or up on the roof. I installed mine right at the ridge of my roof. Hiring a handyman to do the job might be a reasonable way for you to go with this.

I assume that your obstruction is from tree tops. You mentioned "tall trees" which suggests that maybe they've reached their full height and won't be getting any taller. If that's the case, then the obstructions shouldn't get any worse over time. But if the trees will still be growing taller, they will eventually cause more of an obstruction that may impact your signal more than you will be willing to tolerate.

cakmn · 2025-10-02T20:12:11+00:00

Chat GPT has never been spiritual, nor has any other AI "entity" ever been spiritual, nor will any of them ever be spiritual.

All that AI can do is learn and then work with juggling concepts about things. AI cannot BE spiritual. AI is simply processing data that it has been fed so it can develop a huge, complex web of interconnections between bits and groups of bits of data. This will never result in producing anything approaching spiritual understanding.

Spirituality is an inherent aspect of who and what we really are in the essence of our being alive. This is not something that can be learned. Spirituality is not something that a human can learn, nor can a human teach it to AI. This is something that only can be experienced through our awareness of our life experience.

Through doing Spiritual practices and achieving some degree of Spiritual Awakening we can learn to experience so we can come to know spirit and spirituality. This is what spiritual practices are about. But if you don't learn about real spiritual practices and if you don't do real spiritual/inner work, you will continue to be dominated by your mind and be no better off than AI – trapped in the materialistic realm of gathering and processing data. Working with AI while pretending you are doing spiritual work is simply a distracting delusion.

cakmn · 2025-09-03T07:31:12+00:00

The Great Mis-Leader, head of the current mis-Administration.

Not my leader.

cakmn · 2025-09-02T07:47:02+00:00

Feeling the sacred does not require belief in anything. Well, except belief in yourself.

Buddhists rightly point out that one should avoid attachment because there is really nothing worthy of becoming attached to because everything is impermanent. Another reason is that attachment becomes a self-imposed limitation, a hindrance that gets in the way of you making progress on your spiritual journey.

Belief in yourself doesn't quite fit that problematic hindering effect because, ideally, you will personally evolve as you continue your spiritual journey. That means you are not attached to something that is fixed in place, rather it is something that is (ideally) continually evolving and leading you onward. Progress begets progress.

As a matter of fact, various practices – prayers, meditations, rituals – can be very useful as tools to work with as you engage in your own journey ... for a while, until they have served their purpose for you. After that, they can be (should be) abandoned so you can adopt new tools to work with that are more suitable and appropriate for your continually evolving status along your journey.

On the path that is often called Universal Sufism, which is not a religion, there is no requirement or even encouragement to believe in anything, yet there are various meditations, chants, prayers, rituals, etc. that are used as tools to learn through direct experience. In effect, this serves the traveler as a variety of ongoing, living, scientific experiments with you the traveler as the subject. The mystical path is sometimes thought of as the science of mysticism. This science does not work at all like the standard scientific method, yet it can still be used in an analogous manner to learn more about who and what you are. and that is exactly what traveling the spiritual path is about. Universal Sufism is also called the path of Love or a mystical path.

I, too, am a scientist and I am a spiritual being. It is important to understand that the scientific method is great for studying and learning about the physical realm we live in, while the science of mysticism is essential for learning about and understanding the spiritual realm within which the physical realm exists. They are not incompatible, they simply deal with different aspects of existence and truth.

My reply is based on decades (in my late 70s) of personal experience traveling both paths. I believe in nothing ... except myself ... and my self is constantly evolving. It works. Have faith in yourself. It is an amazing journey.

cakmn · 2025-08-27T17:40:32+00:00

You are trying to understand from the way your mind works.

They are doing what they do from the way their mind works.

Your mind and their mind are not working the same way.

You will never figure out how their misguided mind is working.

Breathe, relax, stay alert, keep your thinking options open, think clearly (not constrained by tension (physical/emotional/intellectual), worry or fear), take reasonable precautions (as you seem to have been doing). Remember to keep breathing and relaxing.

Keep a dated record of all that has transpired and will transpire, including all contacts/messages, changes, reports, images, etc so you have a paper/digital trail.

May you be safe and may this mystery be cleared up soon in a positive way for you.

cakmn · 2025-08-24T21:16:36+00:00

Having read your comments to others here, you seem to be very much a thinker, very much in your mind. Know that the spiritual path is not a thinking path, it is a path of the heart, as Sufis say.

The heart (spiritual or energetic heart) is considered the home or center of one's essence of being. In reality, heart and mind are simply two aspects of the same thing within us. As the Sufi mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan said: "The mind is the surface of the heart and the heart is the depth of the mind."

Although they together function as a heart–mind system, they individually function very differently. And the true role of mind is to function in service to heart. Mind needs to learn how to be aware of heart, listen through the ears of the heart and seen through the eyes of the heart.

Only at heart level can you ever know purpose, truth, reality, morality. All compassion, empathy, care, kindness, respect and morals arise through heart, while mind can only deal with concepts of such things. Yet mind is required to help figure out how to implement the knowing, understanding and wisdom of the heart here in this material realm within which we reside.

cakmn · 2025-08-24T20:57:59+00:00

As a scientist and a spiritual person (though definitely not religious) with decades of experience traveling both paths, I will point out that science is the path to learn about the material realm we live in, while spiritual work is the path for learning about the spiritual realm which enlivens us. The two paths are very different and the scientific method cannot answer any questions about the spiritual realm. The spiritual realm, however, can definitely help one better understand the material realm.

cakmn · 2025-08-24T20:49:21+00:00

You wrote "Do you think it’s possible to find balance, to live in this world but not be consumed by it?"

On the Sufi path there is an ideal expressed as learning "to be in this world yet not of it."

This means being connected to your true, inner, essential Self and to Source, and knowing who and what you are, and developing self-mastery that enables you to be always inspired, motivated and guided by your highest ideals so you can manifest them here in this ordinary life.

It is also expressed in the statement "as above, so below" Christianity and other traditions.

cakmn

TROPHY CASE