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PeterParticipantHi Anita
What a lovely breakdown. We seem to have come to a question which I will ask near the end of this post.
In my old journal writings, I also noted that I would try to do no harm. Next to it was a thought that if wisdom teaching werenāt leading a person towards compassion they were on the wrong track. I feel we are on the good track.
Over the last week Iāve falling into the shadows feeling stuck. Going over the post in this thread I wrote the following.
Iām tired of retelling myself my stories.
Iām tired of the emotions the retelling trigger,
Iām tired of the shame and sense of failure and hopelessness the retelling trigger,
Iām tired of trying to grasp at some inspired hope that the stories seem to call for…A part of me still attached to the original shame that Iām badā¦ A shame reinforced by the retelling of old stories….
One might wonder if Iām out to punish myself and so deserve even seek out the shadows… ohUnskillful reasons I retell and hold onto my stories of hurt?
I re-tell my stories in the hopes that by retelling them I can change them.
I re-tell my stories with a thought that I need to hold onto the hurt to maintain boundaries.
I re-tell my stories as away to imagine Iām hurting those that hurt me.
I re-tell my stories to punish myself.As we have explored we have noticed, if only peripherally, the Eternal. Realizing the relationship between the temporal and eternal is the sense of life. This realization itself isnāt hope but that the realization is possible maybeā¦
So, the question is. How do we go from āknowingā to living and resting in what we have learned?
How do we go from knowledge to wisdom, to making what we ‘know’ to be true to How we are?
When does the seeker get to be also the one who has found?I think I’m asking why do I continue to fall into shadow?
As the words of Tolle, Seneca and Watts indicate this wisdom is known… just not KNOWN. How is it we see but do not see?
āWhat could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say āyesā to life ā and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.ā ā Eckhart Tolle
āTrue happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.ā ā Seneca
āTo offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them – while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.ā – Eckhart Tolle
āTo have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax, and float.āā Alan Watts
PeterParticipantI was reminded of this quote Life of Pi while working though some past stories. I find it inspirational as it reminds me of our humanness, how hard we try, maybe sometimes try to hard… That it may be enough to speak our fear out load and doings so find ourselves surprised that were not alone.
I must say a word about fear. It is lifeās only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, youāve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you donāt, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
Life of Pi ā Yann MartelPeterParticipantHi Helcat
I’m see that its been a tough week.
Its seems you, Anita and I struggle with a similar deep wound of having been told who we where and believing it. Even with all the positive work we have done to return to that ‘stillness where no work is required’ we can still slip into depression. Wounds can heal but forgetting and transforming memory is another thing. Even the transformed memory remembers its source. Memory is a trickster indeed.
Sandhguru argues that Karma is memory or intimately connected to memory, as it is memory that we tend to filter though and base our actions on and view the world. A beginners mind would then be a mind free of Karma, free of attachment to memory. Easier said then done. I am reminded of that quote – that we see the world not as it is but as we are – now we have the other hurtle that how we see ourselves is so tied to how others defined us and how they saw the world…
Hope it seems is not for wimps… something we also share is that we care and see that their is goodness in ourselves and others even when we sometimes doubt…
“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” Tolkien (I cannot grasp the creativity of a mind such as Tolkien’s)
Pinkie and the Brain… Rocky and Bullwinkle… we have I think given clues to our ages š
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I think you defined Skillful hope best in the previous post “My Hope now is to say YES to me being meā. This is close to what ‘Like Stories of Old’ said in their break down of Lord of the Rings. The hero’s Hope was that when times were hard and victory unlikely, they would stand and press forward remaining true to themselves and their friends.
Outside there was a starless blackness as Gandalf, with Pippin beside him bearing a small torch, made his way to their lodging. They did not speak until they were behind closed doors.
Then at last Pippin took Gandalf’s hand. ‘Tell me, āHe said, ‘is there any hope? For Frodo, I mean; or at least mostly for Frodo.’
Gandalf put his hand on Pippin’s head. ‘There never was much hope,’ he answered. ‘Just a fool’s hope, as I have been toldIn the movie Pippin, a fool of a Took, will take the small torch and use it to light the signal fires that calls and brings forth aid to the cause.
I think, if I dare to hope, it is the foolās hope. The hope that sparks and maybe brings forth aid, if only the aid of inner resources.
In mythology and fairy tale I note its often the fool that is the Hero, as the fool isn’t encumbered by teaching of how things ought to be and all the rest that get in the way. The fool in these cases having a kind of ābeginners mindā and āWu weiā.PeterParticipantGlad your feeling better Anita
I read a book way back ‘Surprised by Joy’ and thought their should be a book ‘Surprised by depression’ as it tends so sneak up on me. I’m never quite sure why but their is is.
PeterParticipantHi Helcat
The reference was from ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’. Bullwinkle was always asking Rocky to watch as he pull a rabbit out of his hat. To which Rocky would say ‘but that trick never works’. Bullwinkle would then say ‘this time for sure’ and fail, usually pulling out a lion or some such.
These characters have become part of my psych. For example when I go into my over analytical mode a inner voice whisperers, “but that trick never works” and then another voice.. “but this time for sure”. The trick of course never works as the ‘universes’ appreciates a good old joke.
Yesterday I noted we could, and maybe even should end the dialogue hope ref your thoughts to “pause and notice the small things that reconnected you to your true self, and how that help you though the chaotic times“. But I was heck bent on trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Latter Anita said something similar – “My Hope now is to say YES to me being me” even then I still wanted to pull a rabbit out of a hat. And… that trick never work as I found myself falling in to the trap Krishnamurti talked about – I found I had actually reinforced old issues as I tossed and turned all night.
I recently came a cross a YouTube channel –
- Like Stories of Old
and watched their – ‘A Mythology of Hope ā The Lord of the Rings’. (Worth watching as is After Life ā An Answer to Nihilism (it will make you cry’) Tolkien was intentional in his story telling where it was the hobbit, the small ones, at the center of the story. I was about to try to explain the video but the voice spoke and for those who are interested the video should be easy to find.
I think I’ll let ‘Like Stories of Old have the last words on skillful hope.
PeterParticipantKim a great reminder…
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
Imagine a multidimensional spiderweb covered in dew in the morning, and every single drop of dew on this web contains in it the reflections of all the other drops of dew. And, of course, in turn, in every drop of dew that one drop reflects, there is the reflection of all the others again.
ā Alan Wilson WattsA web of connection for those with eyes that see.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
That was a very thoughtful reply. I noticed how the word āfixā has for me been revealed as having āarisenā from an unskillful (I was going to label bad) past association. I understand better now why in the orignal post I wrote I wasn’t looking to fix something.
– the root cause of our ongoing anxiety has always been the devastating belief that I was a bad person waiting to be goodā¦ the tragedy that hit me and stayed persistently for decades, is the accusation that I was a bad person, and that I was a bad person from a time before I had a chance to have a say about it – we both arrive at the same place if by different paths.
I suspect a notion that most children have of being wrong is behind most of our struggles. Mine came from religion. I see in my journal quite a few attempts at trying to come to terms with the notion of āoriginal as my understanding of āoriginal sinā was and is firmly connected to disobedience. (As I write that I notice anger ā all the times I was told I could fix by obeying and didnāt question so much. FYI telling a type 5 not to question is telling them not to be.)
Today I reject that theology of āoriginal sinā. If I were to think in terms of original sin, defining sin as in missing the mark, I will argue its āshameā. The undeserved shame of believing our ānakedā True self is āwrongā even ābadā and needing to be covered up. If you think about it were born naked and then will spend most of our lives trying to get back to being ānakedā.
āIn childhood, time has a different quality, a timeless quality, and when tragedy hits, thereās a forever feel to itā ā Were so impatient to grow up time seems to stand still yet because everything is felt so intensely meaningfully new time flies by. As I get older, I experience the opposite. Each day feels as if time has stopped and a struggle… than perhaps because of the space between intensely meaningfully moments time flies – it often feels like the montage scene in the movie āGroundhog Dayā…
What is a skillful hope that does not try to change, become or fix what isnāt ours to change, what cannot be changed, that isnāt a wish or a desire that Life be other then what it is?
I think we are coming closer to a skillful notion of hope as you identified the destination where such hope leads ā A YES
And perhaps this YES is the Skillful Hope and nothing more needs to be said?—————————————————————————–
“If I know that I am good, I no longer desire to be good. What other desire may take the place of the-desire-to-be-good?”
The first thought that came to my mind, was if I really believed āI am goodāā¦ and if I could not just believe it but know it, that who we are, as we are, even as we work to grow… is OK and is āgoodā. Notice if we remove the label all were left with is āI amā
The second thought was, do we need another desire to fill the void, is ‘I Am’ enough? I know the correct answer yet can’t give it.āThe desire for the experience of life beyond the trap of waiting-to-be-good. A sigh of relief. Running through an imaginary field of green grass, the gentle sun above, a child running, falling, lying on the ground frozen in time for decades, then getting up, an older woman resuming the run across field of green grass. Perhaps briskly walking across, donāt think I can run, not like a child can run. Too hard for my aging knees.ā
This resonates and pierces the heart! ….
I think once wounded, even in the hope of YES, we donāt forget. Bitterā¦ Sweet is all that comes to mindā¦ and if honest its sometimes wondrous but also tiring.
Iām sorry to hear your feeling tired and depressed… my first impulse is a wish/hope to āfixā it…
Instead Iāll sit quietly as it pierces the heart…PeterParticipantHi Helcat
Reading your comments I didnāt feel you were trying to fix me. I see this kind of dialog as an exploration. Both you and Anita have shared thoughts that brought me back to earth š and push back. (we need tension to become conscious)
I like how your meditation helped you pause and notice the small things that reconnected you to your true self, and how that help you though the chaotic times. (I suspect that in a dialog on hope we could, and maybe even should, end hereā¦. But Iām going to type 5 it and confuse things. š)
āI donāt necessarily agree that hope comes from despairrā ā I wrote that badly. In the present moment of the experience I agree while in detached hindsight I think there is a connection.
The connection to hope and despair is the idea that in times of discomfort or despair, when where ready and able, we turn to hope to help us pull through. In the exercise of looking back I think we can trace a hope to the experience that called it forward. (Language is going to get in the wayā¦. I view hope as a something exercised in the temporal realm of experience which means it has a opposite from which it is intimately connected. Sadly the āneedleā between opposites can be one sided. As you mentioned balance is a key. Happily, if skillful, this tension of opposites creates greater self awareness and consciousness. )
This had me asking the question:
At a sub-conscious level is it possible that an unskillful hope unintentionally reinforced the experience I was seeking relief from? Iām leaning towards a yes.You may recall the number of times Iāve written the question ā ā
- How will you respond to Life as it is?
ā, only to get lost in a secondary question ā Am I seeing life as it is?
I agree that we can choose to accept or reject reality… though at the same time Iām not sure we always see/know reality as it is. My own experiences shows how I fill the space between the observed and the observer with my expectations, the trickster that is memory, fears, discomfort, hopesā¦. which often distorted reality and in hindsight, leaves me wondering about choice. (though not responsibility).
Question: Can a distorted view of realty fool us into believing that we are choosing happiness or despair?
(I have wondered if sometimes I werenāt happy being miserable.)Looking back in my journal its clear in hindsight how among other things unskillful hope hid and distorted my reality which I donāt feel was a āconsciousā choice. As Anita noted – childhood happens so fast only in the context of an adult looking back that we begin to see clearer. This is where I see the exercise of removing measuring labels from our stories as being helpful as it allows the space between observer and observed ā that I now realize are both me ā smaller.
Looking back I note a tendency of getting stuck in the retelling of stories of something that happened where in hindsight I see a nu-articulated thought or hope that if I repeated a story enough times the outcome could be different. Writing that I also note the tendency to mistake a wish for hope. (āThat trick never works!ā… āThis time for sure!ā – LOL a memory of a carton i would watch over and over as a young boy. A lesson on never learning the lesson… unskilled hope or healthy optimism??? š – 10 points if you get the reference.)
From that I note the following thoughts about unskillful hope
– itās not fully conscious – perhaps the reason it can unintentionally reinforce its opposite, though in the moment
provide relief.
– a desire to change what happened in the past, a hope to change what canāt be changed and is not ours to change.
– a desire to control the future and create what is not ours to create.
– a desire that life be other then what it isā¦
– a desire to avoid and or hide from reality.Humm… the word desire is showing up quite a bit.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Rereading my last post it might sound like I had a horrible childhood which it wasn’t. As it comes to hope as a child I doubt I gave it much thought. Life happens so fast at that age that memory hasn’t had enough time to get its hold into you.
The think when were young even unskillful hope can act as a band-aid for the moment, even as they may sub-consciously reinforce the fear that the hope was called upon to relieve.
It is in hindsight that I realized where much of my future anxiety came from – I hoped unskillfully, unintentionally reinforcing the not quite conscious suspicion I was wrong/bad.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
āMy thoughts: generally, we live in the Eternal Realm and in the Temporal Realm. it is not possible to live, as humans, in one or the otherā¦ Itās about living in both, letting go of attachment to one or the other. Not labeling either one as superior to the other.ā
Well said. I agree and sometimes imagine it as the yin yang symbol in motion. I know when Iām in anxiety mode both feet are firmly in the temporal (the spinning image goes all wonky) as Iām measuring/labeling like ācrazyā. In those moments I need to notice bring myself closer to the Eternal, centering and slowing the spinning image.
āIf you ask peter the young boy: āwhat do you hope for?ā What will he say?ā
Funny Sad that just reading that question I feel a tightness in my lower abdomen as my hope as a young boy came from a place of fear and anxiety or you might say discomfort and the Hope was to for comfort because discomfort was not only bad but āsinā.
Iām afraid my Hope was not for Life but to change what cannot be change. In other words as a young boy I was unknowingly saying a big NO to Life while believing I could fix it by being good and following all the rules. ( I think you had a similar experience with taking on the label of bad, if for different reasons? I wonder if most children do?)Krishnamurti made an argument that most of our hope really represented a fear. And that one hoped when one was in despair.
āHope means you are in despair. Being in despair, you look to something to give you hope. Have you understood the nature of despair, why you are in despair? Have you ever looked at your despair, why it exists? It exists because you are comparing yourself with somebody. It exists because you want to fulfill, become, be, achieveā¦ā ā KrishnamurtiYears ago I determined that if one was to hope unskillfully it was best not to hope at all which I still think, only I didnāt give up on the notion of learning to hope skillfully.
Its why I want to revisit my relationship with Hope ā Krishnamurti not wrong but surprising myself, my gut says there is a Hope that, yes, we might turn to in times of trouble, but isnāt about fixing that trouble, or comparing, or even becomingā¦. Though I feel such a hope would bring one closer to a ātrue selfā. Kind of the Joy and sorrow relationship? Maybe? Language is going to get in the way, but think I’m in a space to explore it.
PeterParticipantHi Helcat
I enjoy your ramblings š and happy that you tolerate mine.
Iām curious about your experience of joy, if you would like to describe it?
For me the experience of happiness is fleeting, a gift of a moment while Joy or Bliss goes deeper and is more durable. Its not lost when the sun sets.
Where I tend to try to cling to happiness for Joy that urge isnāt present…
Iāve been using the words āBitter Sweetā to describe it, for me, Joy has a taste…
Where happiness has a giddiness about it, joy has a somber yet content note. LOL Like a good wineā¦. Happiness is like a sweet wine easy to drink, enjoyed in the moment, but easily forgotten. Where Joy is a complex wine with body, various notes (emotions), presently lingers, where just a sip is enough for you to remember for a life. (I imagine that to be so as I’m not a fan of wine – but metaphor works, maybe…
“What happens to the moment when the sun sets?”I tend to see language as metaphorā¦.
There is for me a difference between Meditation on a sunset and when the sun has set.
Meditating on a sunset, feeling calm, content maybe even happy verses Meditating when the sun has set, and you find yourself in the dark ā metaphorical dark ā where the world and fears swirling around you. In “darkness” I imagine I might be able to maintain a calm stillnessā¦ maybe, but not happiness where if I succeed in remaining calm and still in all that motion, I may even experience as Joy.I had a teacher say that its easy to be calm and happy sitting quietly by a lake with no one around, not so easy in the middle of rush hour and being honked at. Its good to practice by a lake but a point of the practice is learning to take the lake with you wherever you find yourself. Or something like that.
š As a parent youāre going to get a lot of practice
āToday my son learned to walk and with that came absolute chaos. Rolling with it is important. But sometimes you just need to stop and breathe for a bit.ā
The image that created for me made me smileā¦ and I image that this moment, when remembered years from now will bring a smile to your face. Joy and or happinessā¦
PeterParticipantLast night I happened upon the following.
From Youtube channel – Like Stories of Old – Interstellar’s Hidden Meaning Behind Love and Time
āListen to me when I say that love isnāt something we invented, itās observable and powerful, it has to mean somethingā¦maybe it means something more, something we canāt yet understand. Maybe itās some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we canāt consciously perceive. Love is the one thing weāre capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.ā ā Dr. Brand, Interstellar.Then book I’m reading at bed time – āA Soldier of the Great Warā ā by Mark Helprin
Old man: Do you know why you walk slowly when youāre old?
Alessandro: No
Old man: Because with age you receive the gift of friction. The less time you have, the more you suffer, the more you feel, the more you observe, and the more slowly time moves even as it races ahead. (a good description of how Iāve been experiencing time lately)
Alessandro: The less time, the more friction, difficulty, and viscosity. Time expands. Is that correct?
Old man: Yes
Alessandro: At the end, when no time is left, it will pass so slowly that it will not pass at all.ā
Old man: Correct
Alessandro: Then, at death, time stops?
Old Man: Old men on their deathbeds call for their fathers not because they are afraid, but because they have seen time bend back upon itselfā¦ When I was your age I was skeptical and quick. I made fast work of the myths of heaven and hell and of the vastly deficient idea of nothingness. As Iāve grown older, Iāve seen that the world is made of perfect balances and exact compensations. The heavier the burden and the closer you get to the end, the more vicious time becomes, and you see, in slow motion, intimations of eternity.Then this morning as I woke I had the intuition to step back and let these notions we’ve been exploring go for – their is a time to think and analyze and a time to treasure up and ponder in ones heart.
That said looking back at some old journal entries I noticed that I’ve struggled with my relationship with the notion of hope so I might explore that in my next posts.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
That was a very thoughtful and helpful break down – thanks. I feel were on to something.
As I read through the dialog I’ve been asking if it possible to move past realizing a truth and living/being it. ā āJoy, life living through you.ā?
I feel the perspective on sorrow and discomfort is a important realization.The following new journal entry was written before your breakdown
I’ve been thinking about the space between the thought and the thinker, the observer and the observed, the experience and the experience. How we fill the space with language, measurements, judgmentsā¦ constructs unintentionally creating discomfort, then using language and measurement to relieve us from the discomfort. We contract ourselves in a seemingly endless loop.
I wonder if its in the filing of space between observer and the observed that the illusion of time is created?
The created time and space that can only be memory and so the past, or a future that imagines it can change the past or life to be other then it is. Perhaps the space become time may be better thought of as a playground if only, so I donāt become trapped in itā¦.In my early journal writings, there is a quote by Kierkegaard who argued that “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you will never have. ” I realized that this is a truth and noted how most of the hurt in the stories arose from an imagined future that would or could not ever beā¦ its not just sad morning the future that cannot be, itās exhausting if you fail to let it goā¦
I note as Anita has shown from my past writings that what I have been seeking is an answer to what I now see as the āproblemā of the illusion of space between the observer and the observed. The exercise of removing measurements of labels and now I think language itself?
(“We seldom realize that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society“. – Alan Watts)How we love to fill that space with language. I recall now how many creation/beginning stories start with words being spoken? “in the beginning was the word”
Circling, always circlingā¦ to what end?
I recall the thought of the martial artist and dancer training and training until their reactions were responses were no thought (no space) was requiredā¦. that its when the dancers āforgets the rules that they are dancing, the seeing paradox that they had to learn first before they could forget.
A story told by Krishnamurti
In ancient China before an artist began to paint anything – a tree, for instance – he would sit down in front of it for days, months, years, it didnāt matter how long, until he was the tree. He did not identify himself with the tree, but he was the tree. This means that there was no space between him and the tree, no space between the observer and the observed, no experience experiencing the beauty, the movement, the shadow, the depth of a leaf, the quality of colour. He was totally the tree, and in that state only could he paint.Days, months, yearsā¦ measurementsā¦ My thought is that moving from words of understanding to being that which is sought will not be an act of will, of tryingā¦ it would be a happening?
As a type 5 my playground, my happy place, is the search for understandingā¦ unintentionally creating days, months, yearsā¦ but to be an artistā¦ ?PeterParticipantHi Helcat
(Shoot my first attempt of a reply failed to save and I lost it. It was brilliant and anyone reading it would have laughed and cried realizing that now they understood everything. Sadly the response is lost forever.) š
I had to read May’s quote a few times to realize that he wasn’t saying that we weren’t meant to be happy but that it was in our labeling of discomfort as wrong and bad and comfort as right and good that we stifle growth. As you noted safety, and comfort can also harm us.
Finding happiness fleeting I felt that the May quote fit nicely with what Walter Wangerin was saying about the contrast between Joy and Happiness. Where Happiness tends to fade as we experience discomfort, Joy transcends discomfort as Joy does not deny or hide from discomfort or sorrow (labeling it bad or wrong) but arises from it.
In Anita example and response, and something I have also experienced, having come through to the other side of discomfort, hurt and sorrow we find ourselves, our character strengthened, more resilient, more our true selves. An experience that transcends itself becoming oddly Joyous.
I agree that happiness is always present and something that we fail to notice. My thought is that the experience of Joy lead us to be more open to noticing happiness… Then I may be playing with words… to be candid I resonate more with the word Joy then happiness.
I love the moments where a sunset can bring us to stillness and contentment.
A question I ask myself and others is what happens to the moment when the sun sets.I wonder is if its possible to be still and content while engaged with Life that is in constant motion?
My feeling is that when we do, we might label the moment bliss or joyous, but then in such a moment maybe we wouldn’t feel a need to label it at all. -
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