Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
PeterParticipantHi Anita
Still not feeling great and been trying to put some thoughts together about the apparent contradiction of someone who is obviously a loving and compassionate person having such a troubled relationship to the word Love?
I think our culture makes it difficult to have a good relationship to the word Love. One only has to watch a hallmark movie where the movement of misunderstanding that nearly ends the relationship, almost always a small thing, is overcome to end happily ever after. Well till the next misunderstanding. The characters so easily thrown off balance one wonders if any of the relationships last. Movies of Romance but not love.
I see that a way back I wrote in my journal that I was glad that the ask was that we ‘love our neighbor as ourselves’ and that the ask was not that we had to ‘Like our neighbor’ as ourselves. A intuition that Loving someone was possible even when not liking them or ending a relationship.
Of course, the ask that we ‘love our neighbor as ourselves’ begs the question as to how we love yourselves. I think your notion of self-acceptance, self-compassion, do no harm…. applies. We love others with acceptance, hold them with compassion and desire them no harm, while holding them accountable for them. If our actions good or bad have no accountability then they can’t matter and that can’t be Love. (Love defined in this way does not require one to maintain a relationship. The loving and compassionate action may require that a relationship end.)
I’ve posted these thoughts before… The contradiction of having a troubled relationship with the word Love seems to be a language issue of mixed messages where we mistake the map (the words) for the territory…. even as we walk the territory having thrown the map away.
I’m going to leave it here for now… I am about to jump into the deep end to suggest that Love as Life can’t be experienced without suffering. That Love in non-dual and has no opposite… It is and we are that.
As I pondered the contradiction I was reminded of Joni Mitchels song/poem – Both Sides Now:
Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
Looked at clouds that way…But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all…Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way that you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that wayBut now it’s just another show
And you leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away
I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions that I recall
I really don’t know love
I really don’t know love at all…Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say, “I love you, ” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that wayOh, but now old friends, they’re acting strange
And they shake their heads and they tell me that I’ve changed
Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day
I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at allIt’s life’s illusions that I recall
I really don’t know life
I really don’t know life at allPeterParticipantHi Anita
Feeling under the weather today so will be slow in my response
I’d be interested in your relationship to the word Love.
PeterParticipantspell check uggg – Its a positive that were noticing.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I was thinking that we were straying into ‘fix it’ mode, both for our own reasons. I suspect its inevitable when opening up old stories. I recall someone in another thread saying they were going to burn their old journals and thinking that maybe they had the right idea.
But then, and thanks for re-sharing the stuff from 2016, paging through the old pages can be helpful. I remember that in 2016 I was working through some things and its helpful to see what stuck what didn’t. It was in hindsight still pretty much head space trying to get to the heart, and it seems I tend to repeat cycles of such self reflection.
I have noted that you have a method you use to process the information people post and how you move from the head to the heart. Like recognizes like, so I also noted when the head stuff was being thrown up to protect the heart. In essence, we have been mirroring and suspect sometimes triggering protective habits. Its a possessive that were noticing. Maybe we have grown some?
Fallowing is part of my method of processing – a kind of free association of thoughts
A theme within your past few posts was the reminder to treat our selves with kindness, patience, understanding, self-acceptance… I noticed a tendency withing to push the words away. Then I found myself posting that I could not say that ‘I love my life’ and it’s been niggling at me.
If I didn’t ‘love my life’, (or is it that I don’t wish to say it) what did it mean for my connections to others. Here the image of how I see Frodo at the end of the story pops into my mind… Did Frodo love his life? (I see heroes of the book looking back at me annoyed…)
What does Loving ones Life look like? That Life be all rainbows and sunshine? As noted in 2016 the positive thinking thing isn’t helpful for me…
The words of Joseph Campbell come to mind – ‘Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” (do no harm) And then Tolkien – “For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.” To label such joy as Love feels absurd yet to not to equally so.
The problem is that the word love is so problematic. Like the word God it triggers so many different things the word become unhelpful.
I feel myself wanting to force a meaning on the word Love that removes the sorrows, no not to just remove sorrow but to forget it and not participate.Closing eyes… what do I feel when asked to repeat – I love my life? Not anger, not shame, a kind of detachment… or is it interference… and here it comes – Conflict of should’s, if only’s… propelled into the playground of time, measurement and duality.
Seems I’m seeing the request to repeating the words as a question. What if I just said them with out the question and measurements, and maybe remove the my. I Love Life?
PeterParticipantContemplation on the sun
As I sat in the early morning I contemplated the sun, how it travels across the sky measuring out our day. A linear experience of time where one moment follows the next and in which we play.
I contemplated the moment realizing that in the very moment the sun was somewhere rising and somewhere at the same time setting. An experience of time where all things happen at the same time, a moment where every possible human experience was happening. Here someone was laughing, someone crying, someone falling in love, someone falling out of love, someone being born, someone dying… I contemplated this moment and saw everything, everyone, connected.
I contemplated the moment of connection realizing the sun neither rises nor sets, but is and so we are. An experience of time that isn’t a measurement but Eternal. The All that is One from which all arise and returns…“When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die…”― Joseph Campbell
Breathing slows and steadies, the mind stills, thoughts and thinker one… silence…
PeterParticipantThanks for the kind words and poem Anita
I’ve been doing yoga classes where at the end the group is asked to repeat the club’s mantra ‘I love my Life’ – which I can’t do as I don’t love Life even though I’ve realized that life arises from and returns to Love.
I agree that the paradox of the desire to change will also confront and trigger the fear of change. I also agree with the advice about change – the importance of goals and process, detachment from results and finding joy in the journey … I feel this is important for the first half of life but not so great as you enter the last quarter.
I’m leaning towards Krishnamurti were all such doings are actions that happen within the temporal playground of duality and measurement and so will also always involve conflict and ‘grasping of water’. As most playground games they have proven fun and a distraction until they don’t, and a new game needed to be found. That has been my experience.
As I was writing I thought I would google to see if their was philosophy behind the notion of the sun neither rising or setting. Always a little disappointing to discover that what you discovered wasn’t new but also not comforting in a way.
Anyway, I didn’t find much though the results showed that the Rig Veda has this:
“The sun, it neither rises, nor does it set
he who knows this, he attains moksha……..”My intuition returns me to the beginning of our dialog – that we work for that which no work is required –
“To trust yourself to the water” will not be an act of doing or fixing but a leap… only not a leap you ‘work up to’.I asked the question how and, in the asking, defeated myself.
“He who knows…” but this knowing isn’t ‘knowledge’ and this is where I stumble. I so like to pretend at knowing.
Language is going to fail as language is a toy for the playground…. That said you may be on to something with poems and art.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I think, your correct about the phycology of change.
Krishnamurti makes an argument that the desire for change itself creates conflict. It’s a complex simple argument that you can’t think about change without also putting that into conflict with what you want to change. Then because we are thinking, and the thinker is also the thought…. we are the conflict, and around we go.
I think, as you noted, the notion of understanding excites me and doing so keeps its at arms length. There is a part of me that wants to ‘believe’ what I believe but another that is afraid. Its clear I use ‘seeking’ to protect me finding.
Still… out of the ‘corner of my eye’ sometimes there is a hint… ending the duality of form and formless – when your inner dependency on form is gone – which not being form or formless isn’t a doing.
In the conversation with Helcat I write about the moment Frodo arrives at the spot where the ring can be destroyed only to find he can’t do it. I’m convinced that such a thing is not for us to Do, it can only happen. And this happening isn’t an allowing or surrender. The space the ‘ring’ is released is neither form nor formless.
Yesterday after asking and posting the question I retreated to a chair to escape in a book ‘A Soldier of a Great War’ I’ve been reading.
(As often happens after asking a question I was surprised by what shows up – I also see now that the author was playing on the title as the main character is a Soldier and yet in the worst that can be experienced remains connected to beauty. Perhaps the real ‘Great War’ were all engaged in.)Alessandro wondered how a song could be both sad and cheerful, its counterpoint dancing forward even as it pulled back.
It was because the world had a life of its own. Leave winter alone or watch it to death, it would still gradually turn to summer. Miracles and paradoxes could be explained by the marvelously independent courses of their elements, and perhaps real beauty could be partially understood in that it was not just a combination, but a dissolution; that after the threads were woven and tangled they then untangled and continued on their separate ways; that the trains that pulled into the station in a riveting spectacle as clouds of steam condensed in the midnight air, then left for different destinations and disappeared; that the drama of a striking clock was impossible without the silence that was both its preface and epilogue. Music was a change forged half of silences and half of sound, love was nothing without longing and loss; and were time not to have at its end the absence of time, and the absence of time not to have been preceded by time, neither would be of any consequence.”
I note again the theme of movement arising and returning to stillness, sound arising and returning to silence and time arising and returning to the eternal. Without the arising and returning neither would be of any consequence. I feel I’m being asked to trust.
PeterParticipantHi Helcat
Early you mentioned how Sam was based on a soldier that selflessly came to Tolkien aid suggesting that Frodo in some ways was Tolkien. The image that came to mind was how ‘tired’ Frodo remained after the quest, not defeated but his youth replaced by profound knowing that aged and weighed on him. I wonder if Tolkien felt similar. Again, the word bittersweet comes to mind.
I admired Sam, though not called to carry the weight of the evil he was able to carry his friend. Sam saw what his friend saw and suffered yet at the end of his quest, he maintained a wiser innocence that allowed him to continue to engage with life. Where at the end of Frodo’s quest Frodo couldn’t fully re-engage with Life.
I recall now that Frodo parents drowned. so at a young age Frodo had a glimpse of life as it is. Perhaps this is why Frodo doesn’t have the same youthful inherent innocents that Sam had. There is always something sad in Frodo. I suspect it was this difference of experience that made Frodo the one able to carry the ring… But not destroy it.
Purist of heart…. Frodo I think had a heart that had been broken and perhaps healed by the kindness of Bilbo taking him in. A healed heart stronger because of its scares… than perhaps only such a heart that has been broken is Pure?
It took everything Frodo had in him to get the ring to the place where it could be destroyed but not the step further. Here Tolkien shows his wisdom as such an evil is not for us to destroy, we are only called to carry our part. Its a theme throughout the story as the hero’s never assume to try to change what was not theirs to change.
I think I saw Sam as the Hero because I wanted to be him. To emerge from the quest with the kind wise innocence needed to continue to engage in life after all the hardships.
In hindsight it makes sense to me that I saw Frodo as failing and Sam as the hero. I wanted to be Sam and knew I wasn’t.
PeterParticipantHi Helcat.
I marvel at Tolkien friendships and how his small group of friends inspired each other and wonder if we well see the like again.
I always thought that Sam was the hero of the story and found Frodo difficult to relate to as in the end he fails. At least that’s how I saw it when I first read the books. Today I have a different take but I’d be curious to know your thoughts on Frodo.
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 weren’t leading a person towards compassion they were on the wrong track. I feel we are on the good track.
Over the last week I’ve falling into the shadows feeling stuck. Going over the post in this thread I wrote the following.
I’m tired of retelling myself my stories.
I’m tired of the emotions the retelling trigger,
I’m tired of the shame and sense of failure and hopelessness the retelling trigger,
I’m 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 I’m bad… A shame reinforced by the retelling of old stories….
One might wonder if I’m 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 I’m 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 isn’t hope but that the realization is possible maybe…
So, the question is. How do we go from ‘knowing’ 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?
“What 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 “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” ― Eckhart Tolle
“True 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.” ― Seneca
“To 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.” – Eckhart Tolle
“To 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.”― 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 life’s 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, you’ve 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 don’t, 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 – 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 🙂
PeterParticipantHi Anita
I think you defined Skillful hope best in the previous post “My Hope now is to say YES to me being me”. 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, ’He 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 fool’s 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 ‘beginners mind’ and ‘Wu wei’.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 – The Lord of the Rings’. (Worth watching as is After Life – 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.
-
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. 