Infinite variety

There are as many kinds of loves as there are flowers: everlastings that never wither; speedwells that wait for the wind to fan them out of life; blood-red mountain-lillies that put their voluptuous sweetness out for one day, and lie in the dust at night. There is no one flower has the charm of all.

-- Ralph Iron

Allegory

I think this Hamster Story puts some perspective on Self-improvement. It's pretty funny too.

The author sent it to me because, as he said, I am "a thinking man".
Yes, I guess I am. But more and more it looks to be that being a "thinking man" is like being The World's Fastest Rock.

Sartre and freedom

Whatever the circle of hell in which we live, I think we are free to break out of it. And if people do not break out, they stay there of their own free will. 

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Where magic happens

Go past limits

All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.

Blind belief

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. 

-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

And others?

"Tis not all to be happy, you also need to know that the others are unhappy."
-- Jules Renard


A good insight into the Ego (Self).

Not friction

I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
- Frances Willard


This is one of my favorite quotes. If one tends to avoid conflicts, it is easy to think that it's because one is a coward. Because, particularly for males, one is measured by ego-minded minds by how strong and courageous one is, or even measured "by one's enemies", as if having enemies is some sort of badge of honor!

In short, conflict is not only at the core of what holds us down spiritually, it is simply a waste of valuable energy and time.
I would say that areas of life where a lot of conflict is inevitable, like politics, are areas where the advanced mind is probably wasting his time.

Year of the Snake

This is the year of the Snake. (Comes every 12 years in the Chinese calendar.)
Like a deep river, Snake people are usually placid on the surface, but their thoughts and emotions run very deep.

A row of piggy banks

[This is a continuation of the Iron Piggy Bank post.]

One can sometimes forget things which are important, just because they are not visible to the eye or to others.
So I think it might help to view one's investments of time an energy as being divided into different piggy banks:

1. Money
2. Family
3. Status
4. Health

And so on. Make as many as you like, and then later evaluate importance of each, more than once. Importance may shift a lot.
I think a very overlooked piggy bank is the one with the little brass label with says:
Spirit.

One of the problems, apart from invisibility, of this one is that there are no solid instructions on how to deposit into it! Or even what one is depositing.
Everybody has different instructions. Some believe if you go to church regularly, you'll be saved. Some believe that if you meditate regularly, that's it. Some believe that harmony with nature is essential for spirit.

I guess I can't make definite recommendations, I think that what is important will vary, not only from person to person, but from time to time. For example, at some time Art was the most central aspect of my spiritual development, and I do believe it moved me far. Later, a certain religious philosophy was hugely important to me, and though I've now left it, I think that probably it was just what I needed at that point, I think it gave me a lot of strength I needed, strength which I started using later when beginning to venture beyond the needs of Self and humanity.

Probably the important part is to never stop looking. Observe and search. If you are open to your intuition, guidance from above will slip in and you will feel what is important right now for your spiritual path.

This can take a lot of courage. As a prime example of that, it can be very difficult to step beyond one's earlier training, whether religious or otherwise, particularly when that training was gained in a strong group or family setting where one felt much support. It may feel like treason to move on, or one may simply be blind to the mere possibility of it.

But it is essential to keep moving forward, keep being willing to question one's beliefs, even the deepest ones, and to keep investing in the spirit piggy every day, even if it's just a penny sometimes.

Cosmic Consciousness

I recommend the book Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Bucke.
(Public domain versions of the book, files on the left.)

It is over 110 years old, published in 1901! And yet it is clearly talking about awakening/enlightenment.
It is written in pretty academic language, and perhaps not the easiest book in the world to read, but it does have some wonderful insights which I have not come across before. One of them is the delineation of the great stages of the growing consciousness of the Universe, something like:

1. Pure matter/energy, no consciousness, only existence. 
2. Organic life at low level. Hardly any consciousness, but living matter. 
3. Life with consciousness, bigger animals. 
4. Life with consciousness and intelligence, and self-consciousness. Man. 
5. Cosmic consciousness. The next step. 

The roots of the tree of life being deep sunk in the organic world, its trunk is made up as follows: Beginning at the earth level we have first of all the lowest forms of life unconscious and insensate. These in their turn give birth to forms endowed with sensation and later to forms endowed with Simple Consciousness. From the last, when the right time comes, springs self consciousness and (as already said) in direct ascent from that Cosmic Consciousness.

I love high perspectives like this. It is so rarely attempted.
Bucke also tells about his own Cosmic Light experience, and goes through an interesting list of famous people who awakened, and gives his best evidence as to what points to them being enlightened.

Stirring up guilt

Why does sexuality everywhere create such extreme, irrational reactions, often hostile?

I think that sexuality is a very powerful act of communication and communion, and that the strongest joinings/communications are also those which most powerfully stirs up the primeval guilt.

Blog as ebook

You can now get a collection of post from this blog as an ebook.
(Choose .mobi for Kindles and ePub for other readers.)
Tell me how you like it. I find the formatting nice and clean. (And the links still work.)

End of Sacrifice

If you like A Course In Miracles, go buy Gene Bogart's CD The End of Sacrifice, a pro production of a part of the Text. Gene is perfect for it.

A petty god

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. 

-- Sir Richard Francis Burton

I think that may well be so. Or, the ego worshipping The Ego. It seems most gods are described as being jealous, petty, vindictive, cruel, vain... 

This just in...

This morning I got this:

I'm as free as I've ever been.

The Disappearance Of The Universe TV show

Gary Renard has been talking for a while about making a TV show of his success book (and one of my favorite non-fiction books ever), The Disappearance Of The Universe. To my positive surprise, not only do they seem to make very good progress on such a difficult project, but with the results shown so far, it actually seem really nice and attractive, and like it could really work.

Faith vs. blind faith

[Thanks to The Monks And Me*]

The most commonly used definition for Faith is: "belief without proof". Which of course to many people hints that people who have faith are mentally broken.

But this is actually only the second definition of faith, and is actually more a definition of "blind faith". The first definition of Faith is "confidence or trust in a person or thing", and is an entirely different thing.

If one has only ever experienced a crass, material world and selfish people, belief in a benevolent god is practically impossible. And I actually don't think anybody ever does it, hardly.
But if one has some evidence of goodness, a great kindness from a stranger, a great save in a desperate situation, or even a vision of a divine kind, like a great light and a deep feeling of eternal and unlimited Goodness, then faith has a basis, and faith is often a help on the path, to keep one's head over water.

-----

By the way, some people say almost proudly that they don't believe in anything. This is nonsense. Everybody who has consciousness believes in something. One may only "believe in what you can touch with your hands", but it's still a belief. It's a belief that the body is real and that what one experiences through the senses is real. And if you look at what the smartest people say in Quantum Mechanics, this is even quite the belief, for there is really no way to know what, if anything, our senses are connected to.


*Excellent book. Ironically she does not go all the way in her buddhism, she claims that the world is *not* a dream. But apart from that "detail", it's a very wise and warm book.

Judgements and condemnations

This is written shortly after one more of what increasing seems like an epidemic of school shootings in the US.
A good friend of mine wrote on his site:

...happened to come across President Obama's Newtown address on the radio. It was a moving speech, and I was duly touched. He's a gifted speaker.
But one thing is blatantly missing from the reactions to this latest massacre of innocents: judgements and condemnations of the perpetrator.

I'm a bit astounded that my friend, who is a highly intelligent, educated, and normally kind man, will find "judgements and condemnations" to be not only acceptable, not only desirable, but necessary, and condemn their absence in a speech.

Judgements and condemnations are simply more water from the same poisoned well from which such insane violence stem.

Judgements and condemnations are exactly what's wrong with humanity. They are the very things which create the continued wars and violence which plague us, and they are the things standing in the way of the human brotherhood which could give us real civilization and a road to higher things.

Even on a practical level, I have a hard time imagining a person in the state of mind to go out and shoot children thinking: "Oh, I better not, people will judge me for it".

On the contrary, judgment begets judgement, hate begets hate, and love and forgiveness beget their like.

The first one to break the chain of hate is the first one to reap the peace which comes from that.

My idea of Source

My perception of Source is very synonymous with Warmth, see this I just posted on my mainstream blog.

Un-contracting strikes back

I have expanded the important post The Secret Of Un-straining.

10 December 2012: I have expanded it again.

Thinking an idea

I’ve come to view using quotes, and perhaps even writing in general, as being more valuable in simply stimulating the reader’s own thinking than in disseminating precise truths, if those even exist. 

If everything in the Universe is just based on beliefs, there is little value in convincing others of one's own current belief, but always value in stimulating thought and observation, since these are what leads us towards higher states and freedom.