Livin Your Best Life

“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

Someone dialed my number.

I picked up and had a conversation.

Why have all these questions, if there are no answers, I asked.

This is all of it, was the answer.

My spiritual journey ended, as my life will, I’m ok with it now.

Helping others, couldn’t hurt.

That's why I do what I do and how I do it.

I have no questions or answers.

Have fun!

My house is at the foot of the green cliff,

My garden, a jumble of weeds I no longer bother

    to mow.

New vines dangle in twisted strands

Over old rocks rising steep and high.

Monkeys make off with the Mountain fruits,

The white Heron crams his bill with fish

    from the pond,

While I, with a book or two of the Immortals,

Read under the trees--mumble, mumble.

--Cold Mountain

69.

In conflict it is better to be receptive
than aggressive, better to retreat a foot
than advance an inch.

This is called moving ahead without advancing,
capturing the enemy without attacking him.

There is no greater misfortune than
underestimating your opponent.
To underestimate your opponent is to
forsake your three treasures.

When your forces are engaged in conflict,
the one who fights with sorrow will triumph.

--Tao Te Ching, Translation by Brian Browne Walker

Stoicism vs. Christianity

“No person is free who is not a master of himself.”

This quote is usually attributed to Epictetus, but found in works attributed to Pythagoras, and stated as: “None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions.”

—As quoted in Florilegium, XVIII, 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p.368

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.61

I often see Christians projecting their beliefs on Stoicism, let us compare them and be clear how these world views differ and overlap. I practice Stoicism and like to associate with others doing so, ancient and modern. There seems to be a tendency toward atheism these days among Stoics. Ancient Stoicism had the concept of Logos which represented a God figure, Zeus, but this concept was not defined by a personal relationship, as it is in Christianity. Zeus represented nature. I am not debating those differences between Stoics in this little essay. Disclaimer, I have no interest in Jesus or Christianity, beyond studying their historical impacts. I grew up as an evangelical Christian. I find the Stoic spiritual practices of ethics and virtue to live the best life, far superior to belief and faith in things unseen. Stoics help themselves using their reason and will.

Stoicism and Christianity are both concerned with how best to live, but Christians feel this life is a shadow of a life to come. The Stoics didn’t talk much about an afterlife and were agnostic about what, if anything lies beyond death. For the Stoics, what matters isn’t so much what may or may not happen after death, but how we make best use of the time we have now. This is one of the main reasons I practice Stoicism and not a religion idolizing people or worshipping a god beyond nature or the life we know now.

I do not agree with the Christian world view on original sin and death, which is why I practice Stoicism and not the Christian or any other religion. Stoics are focused on the life we have, not one to come. The Stoics viewed death as natural, a return to Nature. The Stoics believed that life should be lead through actions rather than words. I concur. What we do matters to us. The Stoics provide practices to help you control your reactions to thinking and difficult physical circumstances now, which is the only thing in your control.

Discourses Book 1.1 “About things that are within our power and those that are not.”

Epictetus speaks for Zeus/Nature, from Discourses,

“…I’ve given you a certain portion of myself, this faculty of motivation to act and not to act…the power to make proper use of impressions.”

—Epictetus Discourses, Fragments, Handbook, translated by Robin Hard, Book 1.1.12

Stoicism is an Ancient Greek philosophy formed in Athens while the Greek world was in chaos after the death of Alexander the Great. Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school of philosophy, which he taught in Athens from about 300 BC. Stoicism is based on the moral ideas of the Cynics. Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of virtue in accordance with nature.

“Now, If virtue promises to enable us to achieve happiness, freedom from passion, and serenity, then progress towards virtue is surely also progress towards each of the states.”

—Epictetus Discourses, Fragments, Handbook, translated by Robin Hard, Book 1.4.3

(Epictetus does seem to often have a personal view of the divine as related by Arrian in Discourses.)

The Greek term for word is Logos. Five hundred years before Jesus was born, Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, used Logos (the word) to explain what he saw as the universal force of reason that governed everything. He said all things happen according to the Logos. This belief became the foundation of Stoicism. Greek speaking Jews came to view the Logos as a force sent by God. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is referred to as the Word, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; he is the driving force sent by God.

Modern day Christianity has a splintered past and is practiced differently between the Protestants and Catholic Church. Eastern Christianity is often thought closer to the original church that formed after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. I would argue that the Pauline Gospel is the foundation for the modern Western church more than other competing strains of early Christianity. This form of Christianity developed from the beliefs and doctrines espoused by the Hellenistic-Jewish Apostle Paul through his writings in the New Testament. These are muddy waters.

According to Christianity, it is only through Jesus of Nazareth that people can achieve eternal salvation. Humans save themselves through grace instead works, while the forgiveness of sins comes by faith alone.

I do not concur due to my experience. I take no one’s word as final on life and death. I am living this life now. Christian belief to me is a tyranny and not well reasoned or aligned with natural life and death. There are no similar concepts in Stoicism, where what you do is its own reward or punishment now, in the moment. We practice to be ready to act with reason and not be overwhelmed by emotions or fear.

Stoicism and Christianity are both monotheistic. Stoicism follows Heraclitus and believes in one Logos; Christianity follows Jesus, and requires followers to believe in the one true God and have no other gods before him [her]. Additionally, both Stoicism and Christianity serve the will of the Logos/God. They teach we can liberate ourselves from fear and anxiety by submitting to the will of the Divine.

In Christianity, the Word (Logos) was made flesh and dwelt among us. In Christianity, a relationship with the Logos is much more personal.

“The Stoics also referred to the seminal logos ("logos spermatikos"), or the law of generation in the Universe, which was the principle of the active reason working in inanimate matter. Humans, too, each possess a portion of the divine logos. The Stoics took all activity to imply a logos or spiritual principle.” — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos#Stoics

“The Stoics often identified the universe and God with Zeus, as the ruler and upholder, and at the same time the law, of the universe. The Stoic God is not a transcendent omniscient being standing outside nature, but rather it is immanent—the divine element is immersed in nature itself.”

— https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoic_physics#God

“The Stoics [defined] free will as a voluntary accommodation to what is in any case inevitable. According to this theory, man is like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged. In the same way, humans are responsible for their choices and actions, even though these have been anticipated by the logos and form part of its plan.”

—(xix-xx) Gregory Hays

Another big difference between the two worldviews is Christians ask God for help, while the Stoics seek help from within. Through prayer, Christians ask to be released from suffering, healed when sick, and comforted in sorrow. By contrast, Stoicism tells us that if we want any good, we need to get it from ourselves. No spirit will relieve us from our pains.

Stoicism and Christianity have competing views about human nature as well. For the Stoics, nature has instilled people with the capacity to reason, which we can exercise to live out virtuous, dutiful lives. Christians, on the other hand, believe people are born with original sin, which has corrupted our internal moral compass. While it is possible to better ourselves by using reason, it is only by the grace of God that people are improved and saved.

This was just a high level survey of some of the differences between Stoicism and Christianity. I have nothing against Christians or anyone practicing Stoicism. The historical Jesus was not a Stoic as far as we know. We practice Stoicism here to live the best we can in a chaotic world beyond our control, bounded by birth and death. I’d argue Stoicism is about being the best Human Being we can be here now. We should not hold dogmatically to the ancient Stoics or cultural beliefs in my personal view. Epictetus said roughly the same. I think discussing these and other worldviews is beneficial if you can keep an open mind. But the words are just pointers to how to choose the best action any given moment.

“Such is the law that God has laid down, saying, ‘If you want anything good, you must get it from yourself.’”

—Epictetus Discourses, Fragments, Handbook, translated by Robin Hard, Book 1.29.4

The Daimon/Daemon is a shapeshifter.

Part of your mind you can’t pin down.

A lot of people can’t talk to themselves or see inside themselves.

Poor muppets.

You have to feel and think what it feels and thinks.

It’s like a storm.

We have erected hedges against it.

It is like a volcanic eruption.

Not rational.

The Daimon feels what nature wants to do through you.

It is nature in you.

It is not your ego.

It told Socrates what not to do, not what to do.

I listen to my daimon.

I have seen and communicated with it in a way.

It is will.

Fate.

An impersonal force for some.

Some can integrate it.

You have to negotiate.

It can punish you and doesn’t care to keep you safe.

You can give it too much.

You can surrender to it.

Hitler followed his nonstop.

Trump follows his Daimon without question.

They are idiots.

It is not a force of good, it is a force of nature.

It is immoral, neutral.

If you don’t think you have one, you are a fool and a muppet.

A blind robot.

The ego negotiates with it, mediates it.

You don’t delete your ego!

God no!

Daimon does what it does.

It is what it is.

Your effectiveness depends on your own quality and strength.

I am constantly negotiating with it.

I have let my Daimon run all over OMF.

Don’t surrender to it.

Don’t ignore it.

You make yourself irrelevant to deny this force.

You have to dance and wrestle with it.

Use your ego moral discernment.

Only you can mediate it.

Honor it.

You have to eat and work and get along.

It doesn’t want your best.

It wants to move through you.

I have listened often to my Daimon and jumped when it pushed.

It creates psychic disease and physical.

It makes you into a ufo nutcase.

Or a conspiracy nutcase.

Or a trump zombie.

That is a group consciousness.

You become mindless.

Doing the bidding of pure will.

Pretty crazy move to go all in with it.

But I did.

You can reason with it but it is not reasonable.

You can create a space the Daimon sees when one is open to it.

You have to acknowledge it and give it space.

This is part of you, but not you.

Nature doesn’t change if you don’t understand.

The storm will always be there.

It has tremendous power.

Tremendous!

It loves to be acknowledged and given space.

It can be negotiated with.

The trickster.

You have to sharpen your inner hearing.

I was quite amazed to meet it.

In every psychedelic  trip, it is there.

In your dreams you are always meeting it.

I write with my Daimon and make art with it.

It is life.

It flows in everything.

Once you see it, wow.

It is guiding us, even into a wall.

Schopenhauer knew it well, when he said the Will is blind.

You do have choice to go along with the guessed plan.

You can flow with it or fight it every minute.

Doesn’t matter.

I’d flow.

Dan is deleting anything I post on his thread.

Bahahahahaha

I love it!

I got to him good.

I win!

My Daimon destroyed him.

97

My mind is like the autumn moon
Shining clean and clear in the green pool.
No, that’s not a good comparison.
Tell me, how shall I explain?

—Cold Mountain



“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other.”

—Epictetus

This is not the best possible world at all, accept that it allows you to rise to your best, you make the best of the the worst.

Do not believe your slave training.

You are not selfless, nor should be, or you will be possessed.

Love your will.

When the fear is gone, only I remain.

Nietzsche tore stoicism a new one because he felt they saw order in things that were not there.

All philosophies and systems really.

A man possessed.

He felt the universe was meaningless chaos.

You make your own meaning from inside yourself.

It’s a powerful voice.

He was a skeptic and cynic.

He felt, as Wittgenstein, our philosophical problems are due to language.

If you believe in ultimate order in the cosmos, you will find virtue and even happiness in the source code of existence.

If you believe in ultimate chaos, then you will look inwards to find meaning within yourself.

I think it’s both.

Our reason reflects a rational force in the cosmos, mixed with chaos inside us.

Nature has order to it I feel and is brutal and indifferent and beautiful and sublime.

Nietzsche would say any laws and order were accidental.

Epictetus would say nothing is good or bad, our thinking makes it so.

I think we use the inner Will to make meaning in the world, out of ourselves.

It is not the best world.

We make it so or not.

I don’t see the glass half full or empty.

It’s a palate to paint on.

I’m looking for the face I had before the world was made. –Yeats

To all those reading me out there.

I am connected to my being.

I am this and that, which is not.

I can do and go anywhere, which is nowhere.

But here I am, no I’m not.

They say the cosmos always is and isn’t.

Well…

Bite my smelly goat ass!



On with the show…

—

93

Here is a tree older than the forest itself;

The years of its life defy reckoning.

Its roots have seen the upheavals of hill and valley,

Its leaves have known the changes of

                           wind and frost.

The world laughs at its shoddy exterior

And cares nothing for the fine grain

                           of the wood inside.

Stripped free of flesh and hide,

All that remains is the core of truth.

—Cold Mountain

No one is your problem.

I write to myself.

I sing the body electric.

I am thankful and can now sing the hymn of Zeus with my stoic friends.

One of the reasons I love the stoics is their strong anti-authoritarian stance.

Master thyself.

And yah, fuck tyrants.

Tyrants cannot do anything to you but break your body.

The stoics held not even Zeus could break your volition.

Trump is more like Domitian, the evil Roman emperor who banished all the pesky Philosophers who would create stoic sages that would confound his tyranny.

Trump is as close to an antichrist as I can see in modern life and the foolish Christians and conservatives have raised up their false god Trump, who represents materialism.

He is the perfect god in a material world, totally transactional and amoral, nonstop liar.

Unlike Nazi Germany, the liberals are strong and well funded in our system.

Authoritarianism will never ever succeed imo.

It may cause terrible fires but it will be overcome and we will be better for the fight.

It doesn’t matter what aliens or the archons or deep state do to your body or mind, from a stoic perspective.

A human can be easily corrupted by selfish living, seeking fame and power and control or pleasure.

Life is like a cylinder rolling down a hill, can’t change that, but you can go with the flow the stoics taught.

In the stoic focus on self mastery, they do have correlations to Nietzsche’s thought, though later in life Nietzsche criticized the stoics intensely.

They were a little too hopeful for him

The Christians were influenced by these stoic preachers like Epictetus it is thought.

Modern stoics skip over the deistic roots of stoicism.

But not so fast.

I have been intensely studying the stoic writings and practicing stoicism and focused action and have seen what Walt Whitman saw, our reason gives way to mystery.

I’m living my best life.

Just being practical and pragmatic isn’t the whole story or lasting.

Zeus to the stoics, was the active agent in us.

The stoics were vitalists but they acknowledge a spiritual higharchy.

From we came and to fire we would return and the elements in us would return to the earth.

Stoic practice can uncover a strength in you, that most barely become aware of in life.

Under the greatest pressure and pain, the stoic thrives.

This is not the best possible world.

It is filled with rude ignorant muppets mostly.

But we, being our best, don’t care or need be bothered by the ignorant.

But a true stoic first makes himself great and then their city and country follow.

A lot of wisdom I feel in stoic practice.

Be content to be thought of as a fool and dummy Epictetus says and be your best anyway.

The proof is in your choices and the good life comes working with god in us, which is our reason, the logos, the ally Zeus has given us.

Saying grace before a meal was actually a stoic tradition first.

Personally, my practice has led to mystery.

I am not trying to resurrect stoic deism, but interestingly I have been studying Rousseau as well, who was also a deist.

I will repeat what I have said often, I’m the only god I know.

Whatever consciousness is, we think we are that, when we are this.

It is a very personal experience coming to know this.

I have gotten into some good wrestling matches with other stoics who have ignored the part of stoicism that gave it so much power, our divine nature.

From working consciousness one can be led to pure consciousness, a true mystery.

It is real.

It surpasses all understanding.

It is interesting how the perennial wisdom has often acknowledged that we are never alone.

In a dark quiet room, we are never alone.

I suppose in a way, I have come to know and experience this.

One can start a conversation within that can yield some beautiful joyful luscious fruit.

It makes you unshakeable, incorruptible, self aware and empathetic to earth and others, as you are connected to all around you.

No tyrant can touch you.

A curious passage from Epictetus’ recorded discourses by a Roman general follows from “Discourses.”

I love Epictetus as a trusted teacher.

I have spent a lot of time with him and I am better for practicing stoic virtue.

Thankfully, nature has made a way for one to settle things and accept life on their own and one should take up the work of being a human being if they want any peace in life.

It is ironic how the Christians appropriated stoic thought and twisted it into a form that made them very easy to manipulate.

I do not think this was an accident.

To idolize a personality and not be aware of your consciousness, is an ignorant act.

It’s dumb.

To deny your shadow and chaos in the world is also a mistake.

To try to delete your ego is another foolish mistake.

To not accept all of this, is the biggest mistake.

To see a battle is ignorant.

To deny the power you have and to see yourself as a sinner is a mistake.

To deny the invisible help within and around us is also stupid.

To take material life as final is a misunderstanding.

I do not look to some life to come.

My body will return to its elements.

What is elemental will return to the elements.

What is conscious must also return to its source.

We are rational animals.

The logos I feel must be timeless and always.

To forget this connection in stoicism is to deny its real power.

Stoicism I think is one of our best attempts to flow with life, accepting all we are and what happens and not judging things.

This has been the only way I have silenced my fear.

We are never alone.

To kill oneself is to misunderstand your purpose.

Do flowers commit suicide?

What is in us that wishes to die, is our ignorance about pain.

This ignorance can cause unbearable suffering.

But you can bear anything when you are aware.

The harder it gets, the better you are.

One must cut their head off to know this, die before they die.

And yes, the words of the Bible in essence seem true, you are born again, connected to your Will, your Daimon, your reason, your essence.

We have problems with words.

We aren’t that smart really.

But something in us always is.

Stay close to that.

“Zeus has presented to each person a daimon as guardian and committed his safekeeping to this trustee, who does not sleep and cannot be misled. To what better and more careful guardian could he have committed us? So when you have shut your doors and darkened your room, remember never to say that you are alone, because you are not. God is within and your own daimon is within.”

—Epictetus, Discourses 1.14.11-14

Several commentators have cataloged the various types of daimon that occur in ancient philosophy.'

Adolf Bonhöffer, for example, offers the following typology:

(1) the use of daimones to mean the intermediates and messengers between humans and the gods,
(2) the use of daimones to mean tutelary spirits of individual human beings,
(3) the impersonal use of daimon to mean an individual's lot in life as decreed by Providence or Fate,
(4) the impersonal use of daimon to mean the divine part of a human being, usually reason, conceived of as a part of God or as an internal divinity.

R. B. Rutherford adds to this:

(5) the use of daimones to mean evil spirits or demons in the modern sense.
(6) the impersonal use of daimón agathos to mean simply "good luck”

Taking the self as a focal point, these six types can be summarized as external and internal daimones. The external daimones are the spiritual beings gathered together in types.

It is interesting atheism rose from deism.

We are just one big dysfunctional family, aren’t we?

It always seems darkest before the dawn.

It’s funny, as soon as my family stopped shunning me, Dan began to shun me.

Like almost to the day.

I take that as a sign of great love moving.

As one door opens, another closes.

We don’t know how much time we have.

So make the most of it I say.

Be sincere and open and hide nothing.

Walk naked in Eden.

Disclosure and conspiracy seekers and eschatology and apocalypse hunters are distracted muppets to me.

Because I learned the secret, do not seek for answers outside yourself.

One smelly goat is enough to shame the wisdom of all muppets who came before.

Dan has been shunned and thought insane.

Dan turned out to be a disloyal interlocutor.

It happens, all have their own pain and suffering and agendas.

We can’t judge others, as we don’t know what is happening inside them.

It takes the most courage to stand on your own, no doubt.

It awakens something in you.

He would rather talk to muppets, to each his own.

But it took a great act of courage to soften my family towards me.

An act of agape.

The cosmos has shown me a profound love.

Circumstances are easy to become enraptured by.

But the sun in us is all of it really.

No study group or book or eschatologist can show you this.

That’s what muppets do when they are totally confused about life.

Only living your life in accord with nature can bring you to peace.

Straight on.

I feel deep stirrings in my heart.

What we experience is always truer than abstract theories and thinking.

There is nothing to study.

But I know, people need to study and pretend until they make peace with life and death, tis true.

When you become intimate with your Daimon, your will, your true genius emerges.

The ego mediates it.

My ego is here and also my deep connection to all things is felt.

I came to OMF and met Dan through an act of love and courage.

I took a step into the unknown.

But no, I was stepping deeper into myself.

I was invited to Jack Sarfatti's mystical email group Dan mentions.

But I stepped out of it when I saw the fools there.

The muppets and posers.

No one there has any answers, not one.

I was rash perhaps, but it worked out fine.

I’m a wrestler, but I found, I was only wrestling with myself.

We battle against invisible forces, not flesh and blood.

Well, nature/Zeus and I came to a draw.

I was granted access to the inner sanctum.

The garden of Eden was opened to me.

I seek no longer.

I am at play in the mind of god.

I washed myself clean in the river of love.

I saw through all illusion and delusion in me and around me.

Children/Muppets don’t like it when you take their candy away.

They hate you for it.

They will kill you for their candy.

But taking it away gives them a chance to see what they were doing.

In that split second they may become aware how tightly they hold to their self ignorance.

It doesn’t matter who sees me or not.

I AM

It only mattered I saw myself and embraced not knowing what it all means.

In that moment, it all became meaningful.

Every breath.

Every word.

Every interaction.

Every thought.

Every moment.

And I fell in love.

I became enthralled by this.

I had thought I had lost my faith forever.

But god gave me back a healed whole heart.

Love took this muppet and made me into a human being, a real boy.

When I was ready.

So I have nothing to prove or anyone to speak to or know.

For I know the secret.

And it has lifted me into the sky and taken me into the depths.

I certainly wish this for all.

I am not special.

I just gave up fighting love.

They will hate you for this.

I do not go onto boards and just share my theories.

I share my heart, because I can.

And it is a mighty force love.

I am humbled and broken open by it.

Trump is not our problem.

Tyranny and muppets aren’t our problem.

The greed and social and natural collapse is not even really our problem.

No, those are all outward things.

We have no problems.

This is the revelation you can have.

They will call you stupid and fat and ugly.

Take those insults by rude muppets as badges of courage.

They will shun you and hurl rocks at you.

Take it all with a smile.

In fact, smile like you mean it.

Mmm mmm good, may I have some more.

Dan has changed, not opened up, closed off.

He has hardened his heart to love.

I wish him a good death.

Dan, nor I, have anything for anyone.

We only are seeking the face we had before we were born.

And unless you do that too, you will miss this.

Don’t miss this.

You are invited.

All who can see or feel this are invited.

To truly see is actually to become blind.

Remember neo in the matrix?

To truly know is to forget who you think you are through true real embrace.

When you embrace and see anything in this backward way, nothing false can fool you.

There is something unseen behind things as Plato hinted.

Things are seen and unseen.

You only have less than half of it observing outward appearances.

You have to improve yourself to perceive it.

No person can learn what they are not prepared to learn.

But true learning is forgetting.

Our Will is regulated and meditated.

Bringing chaos into the world happens.

But that way lies insanity.

Love under Will.

Love is the foundation of Will to manifest here and now.

If you have not love for all, you are not in the circle.

You aren’t even close.

Kindness, empathy, humility.

Nietzsche said these are slave values.

No, they are the gold.

No one can really be right or wrong completely.

This just is happening.

Don’t judge it.

Flow with it.

It will go much better for you.

Why kick and scream and fight against life and death?

Why be angry and bitter and shun?

Smash your idols.

Clear your head.

Love makes the grass grow.

Love brings bounty and health.

Love brings joy.

It brings breath.

So live honoring and respecting this.

All of it.

Even the muppets.

Shrug.

Straight on.

We may not have a problem, but a new religion has risen.

The religion of America.

It, like all others, is a false religion.

It’s ok, things will ebb and flow, go up and down.

But what each does matters to them.

I say, smash your idols.

Resist tyranny, by subverting it through self awareness.

Don’t believe the liars and wolves and prophets of doom.

They only foresee their own doom.

No one can not see this but you.

—

I just watched Dan’s NYT video.

Welcome the new American Religion!

This has been a long time coming. RAW pointed to this. Unlike Germany before the Nazi wave crashed, our opposition to fascism is strong and well funded.

A new religion has risen, the American Religion.

It’s organized and it’s here on the rise and it’s angry.

They do not wish you well.

They do not love their neighbor.

These are not Christians, they are Americans!

They worship their orange frog god Trump.

How anyone could be so stupid to follow that idiot, is beyond me.

People are literally, that stupid.

So stupid they would not take a vaccine against a really nasty virus.

They are the virus 🦠 don’t hate them, they don’t know any better as the good stoics of old will tell you.

That’s ok, I practice stoicism, I take the good with the bad, I don’t judge.

Tyranny is a reaction to fear.

Fear is the mind killer.

I can’t control the world, only what I do.

Control your fear, to be a human being.

It’s easy to rise with a mob.

It’s hard to be a human being and maybe stand alone at times in darkness.

But we aren’t alone, ever.

Go along with the mob and lose your mind.

That may be the best thing for one to do.

Before you can rise, you have to fall.

I wish them a good death

I’ll be watching from the garden…of Eden.

Though they can break your body and mind, not even Zeus can break your will.

Love is under Will.

That is the law of nature.

Chaos is here too, but it is shaped by love.

Not hatred of the other.

Hatred is the virus 🦠 metastasized in mind and heart.

Trump is the face of the virus.

Look deeply into chaos.

But don’t lose your mind and soul to it.

This anger is part of you too.

Embrace it.

Love the mob.

Don’t fear it.

7

You have seen the blossoms among the leaves;
tell me, how long will they stay?

Today they tremble before the hand that

picks them;

tomorrow they wait someone's garden broom.

Wonderful is the bright heart of youth,
but with the years it grows old.

Is the world not like these flowers?

Ruddy faces, how can they last?

—Cold Mountain

There is no such thing as a privileged perspective.

Where there is risk, there is hope.

Been studying perspectivism via Nietzsche, Ortega and Karl Jaspers cause it came up researching counterpoints to the stoics.

“Let us be on guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posited a 'pure, will-less, painless, timeless knowing subject'; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as 'pure reason', 'absolute spirituality', 'knowledge in itself': these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity' be.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (1887; III:12), transl. Walter Kaufmann

Plato and Leibniz seem to be perspectivists even.

“Everything is subjective," you say; but even this is interpretation. The "subject" is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is.—Finally, is it necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis.

In so far as the word "knowledge" has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.—"Perspectivism."

It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, (1883–1888)

“The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures: the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth.”

— Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (1951)

Beginning with modern science and empiricism, Jaspers points out that as we question reality, we confront borders that an empirical (or scientific) method simply cannot transcend. At this point, the individual faces a choice: sink into despair and resignation, or take a leap of faith toward what Jaspers calls Transcendence. In making this leap, individuals confront their own limitless freedom, which Jaspers calls Existenz, and can finally experience authentic existence.

For Jaspers philosophy was not a science, but rather existential enlightenment, which deals with being as a whole. Every utterance about philosophy is itself philosophy. Philosophy occurs where people wake up. Philosophy is the awareness of one’s own powerlessness and weakness. Jaspers thus distinguished scientific truth from existential truth. While the one is intersubjectively comprehensible, one cannot speak of knowledge with the other, since it is directed towards transcendent objects (God, freedom). Science knows progress, philosophy in his opinion does not.

“From different positions two people see the same surroundings. However, they do not see the same thing. Their different positions mean that the surroundings are organized in a different way: what is in the foreground for one maybe in the background for another. Furthermore, as things are hidden one behind another, each person will see something that the other may not.”

—Jose Ortega

Nietzsche warned about relativism. There can be some objective truths, the sum of perspectives. No intrinsic values in the knowledge of things in itself. This causes most to reject his view. Value is relational. Society changes because relations change between masters and slaves. Liberals feel values are just a given. Nietzsche felt we cannot understand history until we see that groups have very different modes of valuation.

We are the slaves if you didn’t know

What I have endeavored to do on OMF was share a perspective on Disclosure and how best to live with what is and isn’t knowable.

One can find freedom.

Oh dear, the fake left feet are quoting Infowars.

Could you be any stupider and unthoughtful?

Don’t think so.

—

I am not an eschatologist, I’m a Human Being. My focus is how best to live here now.

The Buddhists and Taoists have interesting eschatologies.

Everyone loves to predict the end of the world.

The Buddhists have a very detailed eschatology.

6 suns come and go and the earth ends up a baked dirt clod.

Science predicts as much.

One must not take these all literally.

Given different perspectives, no one individual can know what will happen.

You must look across all religion and secular systems to better understand what we think about eschatology.

As I am spending a lot of time with Nietzsche these days, let’s look at what kind of eschatology lies buried in his anti-philosophy.

Heidegger said “Univocal rejection of all philosophy is an attitude that always deserves respect, for it contains more of philosophy than it realizes.”

Real philosophy happens when one wakes up.

If you have no interest in it, you just don’t know what’s happening.

No one really understands what is ultimately happening imho.

Nietzsche recommended when looking into a philosophy, which is not a truth, but seeking into the world and oneself, you should ask what morality do they aim at.

So let’s look into his philosophy and ask the same question.

For him, every word is a mask.

Some have suggested his philosophy is a secular version of Joachimite eschatology.

Let’s look at the Joachimite eschatology.

“Augustinian eschatology governed the self-understanding of the Catholic Church until it was heavily shaken by the theology of an Italian abbot, Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135?–1202) and the numberless movements that referred to him. Joachim was convinced that God had revealed to him a new understanding of the Bible. He predicted the beginning of a third age (tertius status) of the Holy Spirit that would follow the first age of the Father, as described in the Old Testament, and the second age, which ran from the incarnation of Christ to Joachim's present. The abbot taught that the Trinity reveals itself in three progressive stages. The revelation of the Father had formed the patriarchal society of Israel; the revelation of the Son had formed the church of the clerics. And soon the revelation of the Holy Ghost would create the new spiritual church (ecclesia spiritualis), a church dominated by monks. In Joachim's view, the third age appears as an anticipated realization of the perfect order of the Beyond.

Several scholars of the twentieth century, such as Karl Löwith (1897–1973), Eric Voegelin (1901–1985), Norman Cohn (1915–), and Jacob Taubes (1923–1987), claimed that Joachim of Fiore started a process in which Christian eschatology was "immanentized" (Voegelin) or "secularized" (Löwith). The four authors recognized the transformation of Christian eschatology into ideologies of inner-worldly progress as the decisive formative power of modernity. The third stadium of Auguste Comte's positivism was to be seen as a modern transformation of Joachim's third age, as well as the Third Reich of the National Socialists and the Marxist realm of freedom.”

Read more: Eschatology - The Joachimite Turn - Press, University, Third, and Age - JRank Articles https://science.jrank.org/pages/9212/Eschatology-Joachimite-Turn.html#ixzz79gDdrmlU

So eschatology is about maybe what is happening inside each of us as well.

Oh these muppets and their visions.

I would say visions are for an individual and must be highly suspect.

Anyone convinced god showed them what is going to happen I think is wrong.

Consciousness allows us to see what is happening now.

You cannot take another muppet’s word on such things.

For myself, it is all happening now.

“In a word, Christianity — including and especially forms of esoteric Christianity — is deeply concerned with eschatology. Eschatology is the study of the Last Things — not just the “Apocalypse” in a popular or literalist sense (as in, Jesus coming down from heaven on a cloud and instigating a literal war with Satan, a la the Left Behind series), but also human and cosmic destiny. Eschatology is the area of theology that deals with ultimate value and macrocosmic possibility — the created universe, and the human being, transfigured into the form God finally intends for them. Non-Christian, secular forms of eschatology also exist — the full communism of Marxism, for example, or the transcendence of the human in transhumanism.”

Thelema doesn’t really have an eschatology.

“The Thelemic writer IAO131 explains, drawing especially on Crowley’s entry for Atu XX: The Aeon in The Book of Thoth,

There is certainly no Last Judgment in the philosophy of Thelema. In a sense, one can view the attainment of the Crossing of the Abyss, the destruction of the personality or ego, as the end-times of the ‘self’ and the waking to the Self. Another interpretation of eschatology is the “destruction of the world by fire” (which can also be interpreted in the former sense of the destruction of the self), which Crowley gives symbolically in Atu XX: Aeon of the Tarot. In this other interpretation, the world was ‘destroyed by fire’ with the reception of Liber AL vel Legis in 1904. Crowley writes in The Book of Thoth, “The old card was called The Angel: or, The Last Judgment. It represented an Angel or Messenger blowing a trumpet, attached to which was a flag, bearing the symbol of the Aeon of Osiris… The card therefore represented the destruction of the world by Fire. This was accomplished in the year of the vulgar era 1904, when the fiery god Horus took the place of the airy god Osiris in the East as Hierophant.”

Even the stoics had an eschatology.

“Ekpyrosis (/ˌɛkpɪˈroʊsɪs/; Ancient Greek: ἐκπύρωσις ekpýrōsis, "conflagration") is a Stoic belief in the periodic destruction of the cosmos by a great conflagration every Great Year. The cosmos is then recreated (palingenesis) only to be destroyed again at the end of the new cycle. This form of catastrophe is the opposite of kataklysmos (κατακλυσμός, "inundation"), the destruction of the earth by water. The destruction of the universe was in the form of fire. The time frame of destruction was never defined or given by any of the Stoics. The fire destruction was to cleanse the universe. The cleansing of the universe was to help create a pure universe. The flames would destroy everything in the universe. Then, everything would be rebuilt in the exact same way in every detail before the fire. After so long, the process by fire would happen again and again. This cleansing of the universe is infinite.”

What comes from fire returns to

Recent scientific theory posits that the Big Bang wasn’t triggered from a singularity.

The cosmos is timeless.

“There are three reasons why this belief was taught by the Greeks. The reasons come from the theories of Zeno and Cleanthes. The first cause is that the god of the universe keeps increasing in size making himself have to absorb himself when he gets too big. The second is that the sun and stars burn so hot and bright that they dry out the universe. With everything so dry, it causes the universe to catch fire burning everything up. Zeno states that the fire that destroys the universe will not destroy the very thing that gives itself life, which is the seas. Zeno's thought was to fix the issue caused by the theory of elemental anathymiasis. So the fire would not destroy the sea. The third is that when the planets all return to their position from when the universe was first created, it would also start the process of Ekpyrosis.”

How the cosmos recycles isn’t so important to us, if we are keeping things pragmatic.

The inner awakening is what we should focus on.

But to what end?

I think it’s impossible for human beings to know.

To exist is to be thrown into the world and time.

Two dimensions, transcendence and immanence and the divorce between such, is the foundation of the secular.

An interesting summary of eschatology.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/154470069.pdf

How does all this apply to how to live best now?

Coming messiahs are not our problem.

They can’t help you or die for you or live for you.

I have to keep it simple.

I reject Christian eschatology as we have understood it.

“Realized eschatology is a Christian eschatological theory popularized by J.A.T. Robinson, Joachim Jeremias, Ethelbert Stauffer (1902- 1979),[1] and C. H. Dodd (1884–1973) that holds that the eschatological passages in the New Testament do not refer to the future, but instead refer to the ministry of Jesus and his lasting legacy. Eschatology is therefore not the end of the world but its rebirth instituted by Jesus and continued by his disciples, a historical (rather than transhistorical) phenomenon. Those holding this view generally dismiss end times theories, believing them to be irrelevant; they hold that what Jesus said and did, and told his disciples to do likewise, are of greater significance than any messianic expectations.“

This theory above is closer to reality I feel, but still, a whole lot of words.

“Instead, eschatology should be about being engaged in the process of becoming, rather than waiting for external and unknown forces to bring about destruction. Realized eschatology is contrasted with consistent eschatology. The two concepts have been combined in inaugurated eschatology.”

This is all I have ever said to Dan.

The process of becoming.

Let’s stop there for now.

Muppets have so many eschatologies!

This is why I parted with Dan.

He is distracted in my view and has closed himself to any other interpretation other than his own.

My philosophy must be lived and practical.

I have given more context  to eschatology in my short survey.

I didn’t even get into The Hindus.

Is it worth even discussing such stuff?

I don’t think so.

Through the inner awareness, one has what they need.

The mind will seek answers it can’t find.

Chinese have tested a hypersonic missle.

We continue to plan our own destruction.

In light of likely nuclear apocalypse, which is more likely than visions of messiahs, living your best life as long as you can under love seems most relevant to me.

I have no doubt, if a small group of humans calculated the destruction of most of the world to ensure their continued existence was survivable, they would pull the trigger if they could.

I think we are generally insane, not rational.

In an insane world, becoming is even more urgent to hedge against the insane ones.

My life ends in death, the rest will happen as it happens.

Fuck dude did I really miss infowars?

U wrote:Fuck dude did I really miss infowars?

I love ya, you lunatic!

We long for our parents to care for us. To forgive us our errors. To save us from our childish mistakes. —Carl Sagan

What a man desires he also imagines to be true. —Demosthenes

smelly da goat wrote:

U wrote:Fuck dude did I really miss infowars?

I love ya, you lunatic!

You too boo!