Livin Your Best Life

First topic message reminder :

“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”

—Robert Frost - “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

I want one of these drums!

One of my favs, welcome all of it.

This also is a theme in my recent Greek study.

There is meaning in all emotions, shun none, including rage.

I personify the emotions now and speak to them.

They talk back

Reading up on rational hedonism....

Good stuff.

The "hedonism" in Rational Hedonism is not to be confused with narcissism. Narcissism is self-destructive, personally deceiving and goes beyond "self-esteem". Narcissism promotes undeserved self-admiration, materialism, entitlement, the inability to accept the blame for personal failure, the inability to accept criticism and other viewpoints without an invalidating or aggressive response. Narcissism is an ugly result of the "self-esteem" movement.

Hedonism, as understood in Rational Hedonism, is based on hedonistic philosophies, beginning with Democritus, followed by Epicurus. Compared to narcissism, these refreshing views include moderation, pleasure and happiness found through virtuous living - valuing family, personal close friends, personal integrity and passion for what you do.

Rational Hedonism advocates taking care of your body, the temple which houses the essence of you. It supports size acceptance, but with the recognition that excessive over-indulgence of the pleasures of life are actually counterproductive, and that physical and mental activity are essential to a longer, more active, happier and healthier life.

As I clean out the superstitions, I am challenged to let any concept of my soul continuing a journey go. I feel also we just become our constituent parts. Whatever spark in me though has its own destiny.

I can not attach to it.

Perhaps it drives my breath and awareness.

Perhaps we speak to one another.

But it’s job may be just to keep us calm and relatively stable.

I feel more and more my ego is just an echo, a shadow of the eternal.

What happens to it or my body after death, isn’t my concern, so I’m not waiting to retire.

Lots of opinions on birth and death from history, which I trust more than our present, but here is all I have.

I don’t know before birth, I don’t know after death.

We can tell each other stories and share sad and joyful words, be angry and kind, loud and quiet, we all rest in the silence.

Change is the nature of being though. Trying to force oneself into a behavior is a waste of energy, as is resistance. So we let it all be felt and flow into and over us and then it passes. If you let your heart and mind walk together, you will always do the best thing.

I maximize the fun all I can.

Amor Fati

Interesting you should post that as I am reading this....



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

The basic premise proceeds from the assumption that the probability of a world coming into existence exactly like our own is nonzero. If space and time are infinite, then it follows logically that our existence must recur an infinite number of times.

This is one of those many opinions on birth and death from history...

It's a comforting thought to believe in the opinion of reincarnation, but it is nothing more than an opinion.

The only thing that is real is the here and now.

In truth, what could really be more comforting than the here and now?

When the great work is complete, it doesn't matter if there is or isn't something after physical death that continues on.

Even if the great work is not fully realized in this life it still doesn't matter.

All that we have is the here and now.

All the thoughtful honest muppets have to end their journey in the eternal now.

Then you just make the best of it.

Live on a mountain.

Make things.

Tell stories.

Raise a family.

Live in committed love.

Then you quiet down and walk the long long road.

smelly wrote:All the thoughtful honest muppets have to end their journey in the eternal now.

Yes, so it is.

I was listening to some Groucho Marx, Jack Kérouac, LBJ and Nixon tapes.

It was quite the spectrum.

We have Marx and Kérouac almost divine in their raw talent.

Then you have the dark hand the runs our world seen.

They think we are suckers.

They don’t think all equal, but feel entitled by genetics to take what they like.

**Breathing**

Nothing exists without interaction.

Our reality is relational, things exist through interaction.

That is more fundamental maybe then observation.

Something has to be observable.

If you shut your eyes, the moon isn’t there.

In Plato’s Dialogues he has a character called the Foreigner, the unnamed one, argues against him.

Relationships between objects become the only definitional features of the entities connected.

Relationships are symmetrical.

If there is a thing that can’t interact with anything then, it doesn’t exist.

My awareness of the world is the world.

I am the world I am aware of.

My world is defined by relationships between my body and all else.

Without the network, I don’t exist at all.

So the world in consciousness is one that is all connected.

The world is perfectly proportional to our bodies for us to exist.

The world is a negative projection of the ratios found within the human body.

Following Leonardo here.

If an alien came here, they couldn’t see our world nor you theirs.

Different ratios, different worlds.

We think the world is what it is independent of us.

This is a biological theory from the 1920s.

A biologist wondered how other things see the world.

The world is particular to the receiver.

Animals and Men.

...

So turn your back on nothing, accept what is effective to live your best life.

Be messy, be tidy, be who you are...the world.

Only each knows what their best life is.

...

So what does it mean for multiple observers to share the same world?

How can we consistently interact then with objects?

There can be two different objects in the same space, one defined by you, and one by me we can share with each other.

The world then is filled with meaningless information until it’s decoded by your cipher or my cipher.

Following the interaction model, true communication is not found in our private worlds, but when we overlap others’ world.

This is why we need to be engaged if we want to make our worlds overlap.

So true communication must be social and physical.

This is why we use symbols in ceremonial Magick, we need to work with physical objects.

How do you define the reference frames shared between observers?

Plato said we need innate patterns already embedded in us, shared, before we can communicate.

A rainbow’s stripes are not there, but we see them.

We aren’t good at perceiving relationships, so we cut things up in pieces. We can’t deal with large processes very well.

Fuck. Yes. All that.

I love how many ways the deepest truths can be said:
“A rainbow’s stripes are not there, but we see them.“

Reach out and grab your space.
Pull it inside where it belongs.
A seamless entity that knows outside is in and inside is out.
Seeing others doing the same reveals that you are both each other’s insides.
Guts and fear and love and heart.
Projecting our awareness at whatever level it is.
Seeing we are one and none are not all.

Why does he keep calling me back?

“I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.”

-Frost

Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!

Let us examine in succession the three parts of this formula, in order to penetrate the Arcanum of “active relaxation” or “effort without effort”. Firstly—learn at first concentration without effort—

Now, concentration is only possible in a condition of calm and silence, at the expense of the automatism of thought and imagination. The “to be silent” therefore preceeds the “to know”, the “to will” and the “to dare”. This is why the Pythagorean school prescribed five years silence to beginners or “hearers”.

One dared to speak there only when one “knew” and “was able to”, after having mastered the art of being silent—that is to say, the art of concentration. The prerogative “to speak” belonged to those who no longer spoke automatically, driven by the game of the intellect and imagination, but who were able to suppress it owing to the practice of interior and exterior silence.

True concentration is a free act in light and in peace. It presupposes a disinterested and detached will.

It is the silenced will which effects the silence of thought and imagination in concentration. This is why the great ascetics are also the great masters of concentration. All this is obvious and stands to reason. However, what occupies us here is not just concentration in general but particularly and especially concentration without effort.

The Magician therefore represents the state of concentration without effort, i.e. the state of consciousness where the centre directing the will has “descended” (in reality it is elevated) from the brain to the rhythmic system, where the “oscillations of the mental substance” are reduced to silence and to rest, no longer hindering concentration.

Concentration without effort—that is to say where there is nothing to suppress and where contemplation becomes as natural as breathing and the beating of the heart—is the state of consciousness (i.e. thought, imagination, feeling and will) of perfect calm, accompanied by the complete relaxation of the nerves and the muscles of the body. It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought. One may say that the entire being becomes like the surface of calm water, reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its indescribable harmony. And the waters are deep, they are so deep! And the silence grows, ever increasing… what silence! Its growth takes place through regular waves which pass, one after the other, through your being; one wave of silence followed by another wave of more profound silence, then again a wave of still more profound silence… Have you ever drunk silence? If in the affirmative, you know what concentration without effort is.

The changing of work, which is duty, into play, is effected as a consequence of the presence of the “zone of perpetual silence”, where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play.

All practical esotericism is founded on the following rule: it is necessary to be one in oneself (concentration without effort) and one with the spiritual world (to have a zone of silence in the soul) in order for a revelatory or actual spiritual experience to be able to take place. In other words, if one wants to practise some form of authentic esotericism—be it mysticism, gnosis, or magic—it is necessary to be the Magician, i.e. concentrated without effort, operating with ease as if one were playing, and acting with perfect calm.

-Meditations on the Tarot, The Magician

Politics is a bargain between beggars.

...

Hero: How can I do it?! I have not the experience or know how to guide my hand. I have never touched the stone.

Master Builder: You can guide your own hand now. With one hand hold the chiesel to the stone and raise the hammer high with the other, then with no thought, bring the hammer down and let what is in the stone come forth!

What gains will you make in the nether world’s games?
Will you lay prostrate and watch as the footsteps above pass
Or will you stand upright and proud and look at their ass

Can you see their exhaustion and terrible laughs?
Do you know it is funny or care that it’s not
Why suffer the boredom of control you forgot

How else to talk from truth’s home before now?
Am I truly stuck with this language or can I use my mind instead
By mind I mean my heart and soul, as all three agreed be said

If I speak to you in this different way from time to time as a dessert to taste
Will it still matter that your other self contends its merely a treat and should be treated with haste

And If I don’t speak to you that will leave me in a wallow;
To meagerly standby until I remember I’m hollow.
Just like the moon, I come out more clearly at night;
But between day and dawn clouds can still wield their might.
The might they exert is not a hiding of truth;
But a magnifying glass of all the uncouth.
Back to the choice of how to speak out about now;
There is only one way, which is to always allow.

I think CW just splashed on me and got me all sopping wet.

Nice cannonball there.

I was enjoying sitting on the edge just dipping my toes in, thank you very much....

JK...

kind of...

smelly wrote:Politics is a bargain between beggars.

...

Hero: How can I do it?! I have not the experience or know how to guide my hand. I have never touched the stone.

Master Builder: You can guide your own hand now. With one hand hold the chiesel to the stone and raise the hammer high with the other, then with no thought, bring the hammer down and let what is in the stone come forth!

Wow!

That’s what I thought...wow indeed. It Inspired me to post that poem.
Which I think you were complimenting on? Haha. Thanks if so.

I had read Aaron’s post from Meditations on the Tarot and I instantly saw myself in a block of stone, feeling stuck. Then I was handed a hammer and chisel and I wrote what I heard.

Then I found the image.

That’s a pretty fun way to be spoken to by the Master Builder.

Imagine the way this women describes her descent into the caves physically as almost exactly what a psychic descent into the Underworld is like.

It’s like some crazy shit down there dudes.



Again, this Willy Wonka scene applies to most of life.



We live in a world where we are confronted with graphic symbols that shape our minds.

Through our descents into the Underworld we are shown what symbol is and means to us.

We can so easily make idols of the symbols, but that’s a muppet mistake we all make.

As a matter of fact, one who has idolized a symbol can learn a lot about themselves if they can get a little perspective in the cave.

How much time does one need to spend in silence in the cave?

Shrug.

This all to me is quite profound.

Play it out as far as you can.

Kind of amazing what opens to you.

“Never repress anything, be clear-cut about your situation. And if you are confused, remember that you are confused. This will be the first clear-cut thing about you: that you are confused. You have started on the journey.”

—OSHO

Notes from the Dark Places...rehashing a few points.

Philosophy has come to mean discussion, trying to use the mind to reach meaning with the help of words. Repetition of word can be used to induce a state of mind conducive to inner journeying.

My words are words of power.

NOW
NOW
NOW

Philosophers used to speak words of power in the time of Parmenides. They were not words seeking meaning, they had meaning embedded. How can this be? If you find the Philosophers Stone you will find out.

Otherwise, your words are like ashes, death.

These words are like seeds that grow under the right conditions. Just a few of these words can change your life. This is the power of a poem.

It is the attempt to rationalize sometimes where the power of word is lost in translation.

It needs to sit as a riddle inside us, seemingly contradictory.

The ancient philosophers were magicians of course.

And their words are incantations.

One who knows is an intiate and holds the key to death. The wisdom to be found in life, can only be had from the journey by walking out life above and below the ground.

This is dying before dying.

The knowledge you always have is what allows the journey.

Ours is a language that achieves what it says effectively.

In Greek the name for road and song is very similar.

Poems provide a road through song.

You can work, live or do anything poetically.

Speech and sense connect to current events.

In the times when poets were shamans, your song was your journey.

There are a lot of powerless words replaying in the air today, a few real songs though can be found.

Jack Kerouac is unrivaled in his purity of his song about his journey On The Road.

He knew Parmenides.

I can see it and taste it and connect his words and voice to my self and my journey.

They are different and the same.

He was a true Shaman.

They create and warp reality and bring healing with their songs and dances and potions.

Healing is found by going to the underworld within the context of your time.

And finding there is no time but how we act upon one another.

The words create the journey, not just document it.

I search for the One
To whom I can express
My dying gratitude
Love feels the way
The wind curls red and orange
Round that blazing God
In the eternal sky
This is the joy of living
Born from much pain

"words create the journey"... love that


I can't stop writing about our shadow and how finding that reveals such feelings of truth:


Listen all callers and seekers of light
Walk down to your dungeons and prepare for a fight;
Lower the sails and let anchors full speed
Wait for the jerk of momentum’s last need;
Waves crashing and washing on two ancient ways
A ground that can fracture
And some dirt to be raised

Shadow work. Consider Death. Imagine never waking up.



What you find in others is in yourself.

I've listened to the 2nd one. It was life changing. Will listen to the first... not sure if I've heard that one.

Thank you Smelly.

That second video struck something deep inside.

That Junq quote he quotes...very deeply felt, and just what was needed at this time.