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PeterParticipantHi Anita
You seem to have understood quite well. I did laugh when I read the word cute, a label I don’t think has ever been associated with myself. I did wonder how the word was being applied and then used the Rule of Charity and choose the kindest reading which seems to have been correct.
“Accurately labeling emotions is necessary for mental health and healthy social function” – I would agree. My thought was that having done that work and as time passes it might be a interesting exercises to try to re-write the old stories or journal entries while trying to avoiding labeling language.
My first attempts were surprising. Without the labels it seem to free the memories, allowing them to flow. Their was still the memory of the experience and emotions but by flowing they didn’t become the emotions in the moment so I didn’t relive the experience by bring the past into the present.
I’ve also been playing with the idea of re-writing the old journal entries without using the word ‘I’ which isn’t easy but kind of fun.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Your and Helcat response had me looking though my journal for the labels and measuring I applied to my stories. I was about to add a statesmen at how bad I was/am at labeling my experiences but the use of the word ‘bad’ suggests a label and a failure, when the truth as I see it today is that it isn’t/wasn’t a bad or good ability it just was/is me at the time.
I recently watched a documentary call The Stories We tell – by Sarah Polley. “a investigation into the elusive truth buried within the contradictions of a family of storytellers…”.
The stories told center on Sarah’s mother who had passed away years ago, who it turns out had a affair which resulted in Sarah. What struck me as her dad, brothers, sisters, mother’s friends… told their story’s was the lack of labeling, no blame, no wring of hands, no existentialist angst, no this was bad this was good.
I imagine myself or others learning about such things about their mother making them question their sense of self, and all that drama. Maybe that happened… but if it did they moved passed it. These were stories about a mother who was mother and a human being with dreams and faults and gifts… and that they loved. It was clear she influenced who they were but her story didn’t define them.
Not sure where I’m going with this… What struck me was how desperate we are to tell stories and make sense of them, but that we don’t get to do that having all the information at hand. What struck me was how we can let others peoples stories define our own but that we don’t need to do that. Doing that is a choice. At the end of the documentary my though was that the story about their mother the story tellers arrived at mattered, really mattered but that it also didn’t.
Sarah Polley choice in imagery and camera shots… she would hold the camera focused on the person while they waited in silence, to begin or process a end… and you could see…. them… all of it in their faces, the shots pierced the heart… the bitter the sweet, and it was beautiful in all its messiness, they were beautiful in their discomfort of sharing.
I could imagine people watching the documentary and labeling the actions of this and that person, or event, imagining how angry they might be if this happened to them… but I wonder to what end? And they would have missed the beauty. I can’t stop wondering why we label our stories as we do, or measure our experiences as we do, if perhaps were afraid of that kind of naked messy beauty. Have I missed the beauty?
I was about to delete the this post thinking it didn’t fit in with the thread, as this would be a new and not old journal entry. But then perhaps it does fit. As I go back over the old stories the old journal entries that I say I’m not looking to ‘fix’… fix in place? fix as in change, reshape?… but perhaps see with different eyes.. can I tell the stories today without the labels and let them be as they were/are/will be?
Can I allow the messiness of myself to be beautiful? LOL Why do I feel a need to label is so?
PeterParticipantHi Helcat
I guess it is a mixed message… and of course I hope you engage with anything that resonates. One of the great things about the site is how much people want to help each other, yet sometimes I feel we can get caught up in desire to want to fix things, fix others. I know that when I go into fix it mode I also go into measuring labeling mode which often isn’t helpful. I’m trying to avoid that. I wonder lately how much of the pain or anxiety we experience is created by the labeling and measuring vice the actual experience.
I liked reading about your bucket lists and how they changed over time. Looking through my journal and it seems I’ve avoided creating anything like a bucket list…
I’ve been reading your recent post and very intrigued by your thoughts on the void. I was very tempted to comment and go into my over analyzing philosophical mode but stopped myself. One thing I have learned by going back over my old journals to much information at the wrong time can get in the way. And for some things a person must push through themselves
I would share a experience I wrote about in my journal… wow 30 years ago.
I was in hospital and coming to consciousness after a surgery. What I remember is the awareness of nothing, a total black void. There was no fear no anxiety, or a I. Paradoxically their was a awareness that their was no fear, anxiety or I and that this void was also everything. (Was going to say – was at the same time everything – but their was no awareness of time – more eternal present?) It was bliss. Their is a memory of looking around for the source of this awareness and a question: what was conscious, then the question where is the ‘I’?
And like that scene in the Matrix where Neo enters the white void of the matrix and the rows of clothes and weapons appear filling the space of which he dresses and arms himself. I remember saying/thinking nooooooooooooo as I ‘dressed’ myself in all the things, all the data that is Peter, and of course with that the fear and anxiety. Compelled to dress myself I was pushed/pulled into consciousness.
I wasn’t afraid in the void and wanted to go back and though I couldn’t there was a kind of bitter sweet peace/longing about it. In hindsight I feel maybe because the notion of the void was no longer associated with fear but something transcendent, being completely empty and containing everything, a something that was also ‘me’ and everyone.
I’ve been wondering over the experience for 30 years. Its difficult to write about a experience without using the word ‘I’ when their was no I. As I write of the experience today I wonder at the words used – Compelled to dress myself – consciousness wasn’t a choice… how much of what I dressed myself, armed myself with, was?
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Yes, you understood the intent. Like you I also have a habit of trying to fix myself and others by excessive intellectual analysis so wanted to create a space where anyone could express their thoughts just to experts their thoughts. Journals are good at keeping things private but sometimes its not till you put those thoughts out in the world that you really see/hear them. Often, I think posting them enough. (Funny at work if I get stuck and ask a question to someone that might help, I find that once I ask the question I realize the answer before they respond. But it only works when I actually ask the question out loud or post it and not just think it. I assume this is the universe notion of a joke.)
“Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength is life living through you. Peace is life living through you. “He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you.”
As I was rereading the above poem today, I was thinking about you, Peter. In my mind, it’s as if it was written just for you. But then, it’s as if it was written just for me, and it’s very relevant to every moment, every day of my life still.
That very much resonated, thank-you for sharing. Had I read that 20+ years ago I might have said yes that is a truth and great advice, yet not able to ‘understand’ or put it into practice. In this moment what came to mind as I read it is the experience of being ‘Transparent to the Transcendent’ – life living through you… in that experience further words fade… enough said.
I was inspired to go back in my journal and look for the words that started my journey. The event was a relationship that did not go as hoped. (I was going to say a failed relationships but today would say no relationships are failures, they just are. Relationships the crucible in which we discover ourselves… and everything is relationship).
Anyway, it was a title of a song that irritated me after my experience got me looking for answers. The song title was the question. ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. It sounds silly, but I was so disappointed so angry about the experience the notion of ‘love’ was a abstraction I didn’t know how to come to terms with. It was clear I had no idea what this thing called love was. Why Love hurt… LOL, I have a list of song titles in the journal.
Then their was a email I received by the author of ‘Philosophy for Dummies’ by Tom Morris. The author at the time had a site where you could ask questions, and I asked a question about what I felt was a contradiction between freedom, peace and grace.
Tom Morris didn’t respond with a philosophical explanation of concepts of freedom, peace or grace. His response instead introduced me to the problem of perception and the Rule of Charity. The rule is that if there are multiple explanations for an event, statement, concept… and your unable to determine which version of the event is the ‘truth’, pick the kindest most compassionate one. (I was reading Life of Pi at the time which at some end of the story suggest the same).
This ‘rule’ changed my perspective on how I might be kinder to myself and others. What I was to discover was that most of the time I didn’t know, and didn’t have all the information, and wasn’t going to be able to get all the information, or get to know why or what… but that I created a story anyway. A story that almost always was a villain and or victim story. I wondered if it was the story was creating the hurt more so than the truth of the event.(What comes first the emotion or the naming of the emotion? I am surprised that my experience is that its the latter. I name something as so and then experience it, more often then not getting the naming wrong. What if instead of naming I just feel it?)
The second thing Tom wrote was that ‘we work for that which no work is possible’. I remember reading this and feeling a huge weight being lifted. I was oddly very excited, even as I didn’t fully understand why. How bizarre that the work we need to do is to get out of the way, where we realize we already are and always have that which we seek… In the words of Hokusai ‘Life living through you’. Perhaps the universe notion of a joke. Not till ask out loud…
I also found reading parts of the journal stressful, embarrassing… noting how I wasn’t usually ready to ‘hear’ what the words or experiences pointed towards. I look back and the self-critical eye wants to have its say, then I recall the rule of charity and chose compassion.
I note in my the first page of the journal TS Eliot’s words, (promise) that at the “end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (perhaps a answer to why the Buddha laughs.)
For anyone else that wants to meander in their thoughts, what question and or words sent you forward on your quest?
PeterParticipantI forgot about the following entry, I think from a book from John Eldredge ‘The Sacred Romance’, and surprised how it resonated today.
The Sacred Romance
“There are only two things that pierce the human heart, one is beauty, the other affliction.
We cannot deny the Arrows have struck us all, sometimes arriving in a hail of projectiles that blocked out the sun, and other times descending in more subtle flight that only let us know we were wounded years later, when the wound festered and broke.What will we do with the Arrows we’ve known, or what have they tempted us to do? But to say we all face a decision when we’re pierced by an arrow is misleading. It makes the process sound so relational, as though we have the option of coolly assessing the situation and choosing a logical response. The heart cannot be managed in a detached sort of way. It feels more like and ambush and our response is at gut level. Our deepest convictions are formed without conscious effort, but the effect is a shift deep in our soul.
There was a girl I loved but couldn’t love, intimacy requires a heart that is released and mine was pinned down with unknown arrows of fears and grief and so I let her go. I place that last Arrow in my heart that day and shoved it cleanly though. I did it to kill the tears of mourning inside that would have insisted that there was something I had lost.
I had no one to help me understand the ambivalence created by the messages of the arrows. So I became my own author and killed the one to control the other. I broke my engagement. I gave up the mystery of the Romance for a story that was much more predictable – which is to say, aloneness. Yet there was still an ache and longing for something and someone, I couldn’t quite define and felt agitated and betrayed b such feelings, I pushed them down refusing to be healed. I lived those years in a tangled web of fantasy divorced from present living and reality. The outer story became the theater of the should and the inner story the theater of needs, the place where we quench the thirst of our heart with whatever water is available – sexual fantasies, alcohol, violent videos… The heart deadens and the arrows win.
The things we do to protect and preserve our hearts usually end up hurting us more. To choose to shut your heart to love – so that you won’t be hurt – is to deny the very thing you are made for. To demand perfection of yourself so that no one will ever criticize you again is to lay an intolerable burden on your back.
We must renounce our childhood vows. They trap our hearts, pin them down. They destroy us by getting us to agree with the lies. The pain makes the message of the Arrow seem so true, so deep inside; we believe the lie and make the vow. It is important to break the vow so it may not have a strong hold on our hearts.”
The things we do… my heart cried again when I re-read those words. I’d like to say that when I read them the first time some 20 years ago I was able to heal the wounds and break the vows I made… was in the possess of making after being hurt… I didn’t though, I held on tight. Today I wonder how many remain and how they have shaped my experiences.
At the time when I added my thoughts to the authors words I noted a memory of my 10 year old self making a vow to not be hurt again. I wonder if it was the moment I became a Enneagram type 5. I don’t recall the circumstances only how lost the young boy was.
Read a novel over the holidays –
- The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife
by Anna Johnston. The author asked herself if someone could redeem another persons life and then wrote her book. I love the book, funny and poignant, definitely worth reading.
Redemption and forgiveness, second chances and Found Family…. I wonder about the lost young boy making vows and the now old man.
Prayer
Somewhere deep inside my heart is wounded within me. I fear to even open up these places, and yet I long to be free. So come, take me by the hand, and lead me into the Arrows of my heart. Only do not leave me there but lead me thought to the fields of gladness and joy. – John EldredgePeterParticipantHi Kane
Interesting thoughts. I’m with Helcat and not that interested in emotional mastery. The word ‘mastery’ itself may unintentionally suggest the creation tension between the mastered and un-mastered, resulting in a blockage vice flow.
My own experience and observation is that we are really, really bad at measuring and labeling our emotions and I suspect that sometimes naming and or measuring them we end up creating and getting stuck in them. A kind of chicken/egg thing. What comes first the emotion or the label?
Lately I’ve been trying to feel what it is I’m feeling without labeling or measuring them… what I notice is that when I do the heart and breathing slows down. What I’ve found is that, one I don’t tend to notice and so take the moment to pause and stop labeling for the more ‘positive’ emotions, and two, that behind the negative ones that I very much notice there is a constrictive feeling just above the gut. A kind of constant general anxiety and or fear. It seems that for me emotions arise from that general state. I suspect it has become a habitual default.
PeterParticipantThanks Anita.
Merry Christmas Everyone. May we all find space to pause and be content.
I am a dream made real by virtue of the world touching me. This is what I know.
I am spirit borne by a body that moves through the dream that is this living, and what it gathers to keep becomes me, shapes me, defines me. The dreamer I am is vivid when I fully inhabit myself – when I allow that. Meditation is not a isolated act of consciousness. It’s connection to the dream. It’s being still so that the wonder of spirit can flow outward, so that the world touches me and I touch the world. It’s leaving my body and my mind and becoming spirit again, whole and perfect and shining. – Richard Wagamese – Embers (one of my favorite books)Richard life was not a easy one, his painted canvas contained many difficult and dark bush strokes. Richard had to climb the mountain a few times. I feel he was someone who got to where he was going, realizing the mountains as mountains and was content, Transparent to the Transcendent.
PeterParticipantHi Adrianne
The season can be a challenge with all the expectations and maybe feeling like your missing out on the ‘magic’ and joy, especially when the past is in the present. Not the most comfortable place to be in my own experience.
As Anita suggests its ok to ask for space to take care of oneself and to pause.
While feeling anxious at these times I like take a moment and ponder the Christmas tree. How the ‘Ever Green’ represents the Eternal Now and from which we hang the ornaments of our memories and hopes. How the lights is caught by those ornaments and cast shadows and color on those memories. Perhaps seeing memories in this way, changing with the light and perspective, we find the way to release them or let them be, their is no exception in that silence.
It feels to me a reflection bitter sweet, the cry that is a laugh the laugh that is a cry.I ponder the wrapped gifts placed under the protection of the ‘Ever Green’. I wonder… The promise of the planting of a creative possibility, a gift I could never have realize was within and only needed to be allowed, unwrapped… The promise of the hidden and unknown gift, can that be enough? The unknown possibility what flower might spring bring. The Promise and protection of the ‘Ever Green’, that Spring will follow Winter their is no need to know.
A meditation by Richard Wagamese came to mind.
“I am my silence. I am not the busyness of my thoughts or the daily rhythm of my actions. I am not the stuff that constitutes my world. I am not my talk. I am not my actions. I am my silence. I am the consciousness that perceives all these things.
When I go to my consciousness, to that great pool of silence that observes the intricacies of my life, I am aware that I am me.
I take a little time each day to sit in silence so that I can move outward in balance into the great clamour of living.”I wish you true peace
PeterParticipantHi Anita
On the contrary I found it quite ‘enlightening’ to have someone reflect my thoughts back to me. The way I communicate can be… confusing, and you were kind enough to read what I wrote from a place of compassion. I felt that we were both trying to, get at a something…articulate what maybe can’t be articulated..
You seemed concerned when I expressed disappointment in the events of the day wondering if it was disillusionment. That surprised me and still pondering that. As in the other conversation with Jana, I don’t think the experiences of anger or disappointment are ‘wrong’ in and of them selves, or to be avoided. They just are and can be useful in getting us to act. Its the energies (and where the energy comes from, often emotions) we feed those experiences that matter. I’ll need to take some time to see if I’m been honest with myself as it concerns disillusionment.
I also feel selfish for engaging in analysis that I find so enjoyable, without fully considering how it came across to you.
LOL you may have some type 5 in you. 🙂 FYI the supper power of a type 5 is detachment and not taking things personally… detachment sadly is also its kryptonite.
You might notice I tend to stay away from the post asking for advice, especially relationship advice. To be candid I tend to post when I’m trying to make my own thoughts clearer and or see if I can express something I’ve experienced. More often then not what sounds so good in my head/heart doesn’t come out that way. The Tinny Buddha is I feel a safe place to do thatHope your having a good weekend.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I posted about “The Life Impossible” by Matt Haig as I felt it fit the topic of Blank Canvas
The student character does indeed seem stuck, depressed and maybe suicidal. I thought that the way he expressed himself would resonate with a lot of people.
The response the character gets from his old math teacher is a story of the Teachers struggle with similar feelings and then experience of the impossible possible. The book is worth a read for anyone that has had similar thoughts the student has.I liked that the Teacher didn’t judge his thoughts or try to take him out of them, but through story suggests… what I’ll call the eternal now view of connection.
What strikes me about these stories is that the characters find a contentment even as they still at time experience disappointment or concern for world happenings. Here language begins to fail as it returns to silence…
“Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.” Dogen
I don’t know what enlightenment is. I have had peek experiences that brought ‘colour’ into my world. And there was a time I might thought/hoped that those experiences would have change the world some how but such hope was… unskillful. Still I am grateful for the experiences, just… not in how I then measured and so tried to control them.
I know if I say that I don’t believe or hope… that many will find that scary and maybe even label that as depression. But its actually quite freeing. There is no need to hope or believe when the mind is still – Love comes into being when the mind is naturally quiet, not made quiet… – The suggestion here is that all belief and things like hope are constructs of the mind and all constructs constrict. Let the constructs go and everything opens up. This is the blank canvas.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Seeing my thoughts from 8 years ago has been startling. I still don’t have a answer to the question on the nature of Change.
“Even though you express a lack of belief in change, your curiosity about others’ experiences suggests that you are still seeking understanding and perhaps hope.” that is true years ago I set out on a quest to find people that changed and actually lived what they believed, and doing so found themselves content. I have found some that seem content while at the same time able express disappointment at what they see in the world. Then their are the ones that remain content and compassionate as they engage with life as it is. Mr Rodgers I think managed it.Ref the energy to act. I am very much a Enneagram Type 5 – the investigator/Observer. As someone who steps back before acting I’m very aware of the ‘energy’ needed to step forward. I agree being seen by others is the best source of energy to move out of stillness and into engagement with life.
As a type 5 my communication style will always seem to be coming from the head, something I know can be off putting, but I like to think anyone taking the time to read or listen will see heart.
Ref the comment about “profound disillusionment” I don’t know how profound it is 🙂 I am disappointed in the choices society seems to be making and the direction this might take things. We live at a time of massive consumption and wealth yet still fear not having enough. Then their is AI which wasn’t a really a thing a year ago and today were just ready to accept it as a given.
I’m a old white male so things will probably work out for me but I worry how things will be for the generations that follow. I don’t think History is going to be kind to this golden age.
Eight years ago part of my quest was to answer the question – what’s Love got to do with it? I agree the word is overused and would add that we tend to mistake the word for that which the word points to, the word being a symbol and metaphor.
My answer to the question of – what love has to do with it – is everything and nothing, similar I think to what I read in a book by Krishnamurti just this year where he says ‘Love can do nothing, but without it nothing can be done.’ (theirs a paradox for you)Today (is this a change?) I realize that Love is the attribute of the ‘Eternal Now’ and so has no opposite. Love IS.
Love IS from which all things arise and return. (In the temporal playground we just mess it up by trying to possess and or be possessed by it, and measuring the… stuffing… out of it. Yet still Love remains as it IS.I don’t think their is a point to believe in ‘What Is’ so still say I do not believe in Love, only now I like to think I say that without disillusionment…. most days 🙂
Love comes into being when the mind is naturally quiet, not made quiet, when it sees the false as false and the true as true. When the mind is quiet, then whatever happens is the action of love, it is not the action of knowledge.
Knowledge is mere experience, and experience is not love. Experience cannot know love. – KrishnamurtiA riddle: The observer is the observed and the observed the observer, the though is the thinker and the thinker the thought.
PeterParticipantReading ‘The Life Impossible by Matt Haig. Matt has been candid about his tendency towards depression and suicidal struggles, which make his stories very much worth reading. He fascinates me because its clear he ‘knows’ the experience of all things connected and that the answer to Life as it Is, is a authentic Yes, yet this ‘knowing’ has not kept him from his depressive experiences, though it seems to have helped him move through the experiences.
The Life Impossible starts to with a young person letter to a math teacher asking for help, which very much resonated with me.
…
At times I have found it very hard to carry on. It feels my life is already written at this young age and everything is known. I sometimes can’t breathe with all the pressure.
I am in a pattern, like a number pattern, a Fibonacci sequence – 0,1,2,3,5,8,13,21… – and like that sequence things get less surprising the further I go on. But instead of realizing the next number is found by adding the two before it, you realize that everything ahead of you has already been decided. And as I get older, as I pass more numbers, the pattern becomes more predictable. And nothing can break that pattern. I used to believe in God but now I don’t believe in anything. I was in love but I messed that up. I hate myself sometimes. I mess everything thing up. I feel guilty all the time… and I feel guilty for that too..
I look at what is happening in the world and I see that our whole species is on a path to destruction. Like it is programmed, another pattern. And I just get fed up with being a human, being this small tiny thing that can’t do anything about the world. Everything feels impossible…
Matt Haig – The Life Impossible(The novel is the response of the math teacher)
I suspect a lot of people can identify with those questions and thoughts, especially in this digital age where everything including ourselves is becoming a algorithm.
The experience of the blank canvas, beginner mind, Eternal Now… hasn’t and won’t make things different. The patterns remain… (My suspicion is that only forgiveness can change a pattern. Perhaps the only tool we have to influence life)
Still realizing the Eternal, their is a change which I can only describe as bitter sweet, which is a kind of contentment?
I suspect Campbell had it right when he said – “Realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal—not moment, but forever— is the sense of life.”Richard Wagamese says it better
–
From our very first breath, we are in relationship. With that in-drawn draft of air, we become joined to everything that ever was, is and ever will be. When we exhale, we forget that relationship by virtue of the act of living.
Our breath commingles with all breath, and we are a part of everything. That’s the simple fact of things. We are born into a state of relationship. Relationships never end; they just change. In believing that lies the freedom to carry compassion, empathy, love, kindness and respect into and through whatever changes. We are made more by that practice. – Richard WagamesePeterParticipantI understand that answering how this is changing your experience of life can be complex.
Hi Anita
I often ask myself if I am living what I believe, and suspect I’m not. Even as I write that I question my use of the word believe…
I have got to a place where I notice in most moments the “yin and yang” dancing around themselves, though for me I would replace the words with the temporal and eternal. (Even as I know the eternal has no opposite as it is the source from which the temporal arises and returns) If I’m honest with myself I must admit that I spend most of my time in the temporal experience, judging, measuring… I know this because I find myself anxious most days that that arrises from the tendance to measure. The difference today in that I remain aware of the eternal, and the possibility of the return. Thus the image of yin yang as the best I seem to be able to do/be is a dance between the two even as I ‘know’ it remains a blank canvas.
Then there is Alan Watts warning: “if you’re going to outwit the devil (ourselves), it’s terribly important that you don’t give him any advance notice” If I set the intention to try to live out what I believe, the ‘devil’ is going to come out to play. Better perhaps not to try or believe and instead dance.
In reference to the blank canvas; You aren’t really dancing until you get to the place where you ‘forget‘ all the rules of dancing. Oddly it seams we first must learn so that we can then forget and do/be – work for that which no work is required.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
You have a knack for writing. You ask a good question, how this is changing your experience of life, of which I’m not sure how to answer. Language is surely troublesome.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
You put that quite nicely.
The key for me was a realization of the present moment not as a measurement of time but the Eternal Now.
Odd thoughts on the Eternal.
The Eternal is not infinite though it contains the infinite.
The Eternal is not continuous, continuous is a measurement and the Eternal is not a measurement.
The Eternal nor does it have a opposite.
The Eternal IsCampbell’s suggested that the question behind the Hero quest is ‘ How will you respond to life as it Is?’ I think we assume (I did anyway) that we we see/know what Life as it is Is. Now I realize that most of the quest has the hero being confronted with the fact that they do not know or see life as it is. In fact their is a tendency to run away from seeing.
The wisdom traditions point that the answer to the question, if we do not wish to live in fear or anxiety is YES. I used to assume that saying Yes was enough only to realize that I couldn’t answer the question when I wasn’t seeing/knowing Life as it IS
To return to the metaphor the canvas is always the a canvas.Anyway Today I was reading from ‘Notes on a Nervous Planet’ that had a quote from Alan Watts
“We seldom realize that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own.
For we think in terms of language’s and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”My still self felt the truth of that statement. I noted in other post that I’m struggle with the current happenings has left me questioning reality. Why I was not seeing things as so many were (not just a little but almost a total disconnect from their experience) The above quote resonated with me, that perhaps the thoughts and emotions were not mine… language really is problematic. I also felt that the notion fit into the metaphor of the blank canvas
I was wondering what others thoughts on that quote might be.
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AuthorPosts
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 