Thanks Silkie for your posts.Posted by Silkie (here)
.......... life loses its freshness. I would never want to live to be 300, and I can't imagine the horror of living forever, even here on our beautiful Earth.
Today I was sent a link to an article
Do Insects Have Emotions and Empathy?
Very interesting and supports that they do and I am not surprised.
A comment about the article suggested this book
This review in turn led me to this story of a life that touched me deeply.The Soul Of The White Ant
a passionate, insightful account into the world of termites. It is a meticulously researched expose of their complex, highly structured community life. Originally translated into English in 1937, the quality of research remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published. This illuminating account will not only appeal to those with a scientific interest in termites, but will similarly enthrall readers who are new to their captivating world. An exceptional feature of his detailed research is the extraordinary psychological life of the termite.
This man was a genius according my definition and he died so saddened and bereft. He reached a dead end. I seek some balanced way to be in physical and yet not a victim of the pain of life that is considered "normal". I am sure there are apologists for pain who feel fully justified but I am in disagreement.Eugène N. Marais Author profile
born in Pretoria, South Africa January 09, 1871
diedMarch 29, 1936
gendermale
genrePoetry, Nonfiction, Children's Books
About this author edit data
Marais ('mah-REH', silent s) was the thirteenth and last child of his parents, Jan Christiaan Nielen Marais and Catharina. He attended school in Pretoria, Boshof and Paarl and much of his early education was in English, as were his earliest poems.
After leaving school he worked as a legal clerk and later as a journalist before becoming owner (at the age of twenty) of a newspaper called Land en Volk. He involved himself deeply in local politics.
He began taking opiates at an early age and graduated to morphine (then considered to be non-habitforming and a safer drug) very soon thereafter. He became addicted: An addiction that ruled his affairs and actions to a greater or lesser extent throughout his life. When asked for the reasons for taking drugs, he variously pleaded ill health, insomnia and, later, the untimely death of his wife. Much later, he blamed accidental addiction while ill with malaria in Mozambique.
He married Aletta Beyers but she died from puerperal fever a year later, eight days after the birth of their son, Marais' only child.
In 1897 - still in his mid-twenties - he went to London, initially to read medicine. However, under pressure from his friends, he entered the Inner Temple to study law and qualified as an advocate.
When the Boer War broke out in 1899, he was put on parole as an enemy alien in London. During the latter part of the war he joined a German expedition that sought to ship ammunition and medicines to the Boer Commandos via Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique). However, he was struck down by malaria and before the supplies could be delivered to the Boers the war ended.
From 1905 he studied nature in the Waterberg (Water mountain) and wrote in Afrikaans about the animals he observed. His studies of termites led him to the conclusion that the colony should be considered as a single organism. Although Marais could not have known it, he was anticipating some of the ideas of Richard Dawkins. In the Waterberg Marais also studied the black mamba, spitting cobra and puff adder as well as observing baboon troops at length. He was the father of the scientific study of the behaviour of primates.
His book "Die Siel van die Mier" (the "Soul of the White Ant") was plagiarized by Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck, who published "The Life of the White Ant" in 1926, falsely claiming many of Marais' revolutionary ideas as his own.
Marais contemplated legal action against Maeterlinck but gave up the idea in the face of the costs and logistics involved. Marais had by now for some time been a morphine addict and suffered from melancholy, insomnia, depression and feelings of isolation.
In 1936, deprived of morphine for some days, he finally borrowed a shotgun (on the pretext of killing a snake) and shot himself in the chest. The wound was not fatal and Marais therefore placed the end of the weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Marais is amongst the greatest of the Afrikaans poets and remains one of the most popular, although his output was not large. Along with J.H.H. de Waal and G.S. Preller, he was a leading light in the Second Afrikaans (language) Movement in the period immediately after the Second Boer War, which ended in 1902. Some of his finest poems deal with the wonders of life and nature but he also wrote about inexorable Death. Although an Afrikaner patriot, Marais was sympathetic to the cultural values of the black tribal peoples of the Transvaal; this is seen in poems such as "Die Dans van die Reën" (The dance of the rain).http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..._The_White_Ant
To me Pain should only be a hint that leads to correction. So contrast will lead immediately to righting oneself. That is not what we have been conditioned to allow. IMO the reason is that we (collectively) have been desiring a MAJOR change so we explored separation from self, others and the world.
It is not outside our reasonng for experiencing but was stuck in social consciousness IMO. OR since this is my experience I was stuck in a loop.
I think it is a mistake based on shut down of some faculty that I may regain. So to me the deadening of feeling is the result of intergenerational trauma in my own lineage. To overturn this is my intention.
I believe I am capable of renewing my "brain" circuitry like in Joe Dispenza's WORK. He talks about being comfortable in the unknown. I agree and he suggests that we are moving to a unknown partnership with source. I think it is opening up some kind of depth of sense I have never felt.
My desire to feel is to reach communication with multi-dimensions and yet have our bodies. I want to be friendly with everything and be involved with deep feeling for all living beings so I am in communion. This is like living from the new sense.
The new sense is not being all homogenized as a borg but communicating to one another the depth of who we have become WHILE feeling comfort in togetherness that transcends all separation. That is to me the organic global consciousness where we may trade in real knowledge and expand in wholesomeness that escapes ennui and angst leading to suicide.
For me, new knowledge is the favorite that makes life worthwhile. At one time it was "information" that I sought. The ONLY thing that would make living 300 years worthwhile would be DEEP touching of one another. I am not content to say I will just explore on the bright side of life but be an explorer into the depths.
I may be mistaken but the story I placed here speaks to me of the lone-liness, the sorrow of loss, the isolation of inability to break through a veil we have as separated out individuals. I experience the maddening (as in "Pissed Off'ed angry) frustration of the sense that just beyond my ability to FEEL it there is a layer of depth in the world waiting.
This is just my own issue but I think it is relevant to many. No amount of stuff is satisfying. Relationship is what is pressing and we have the courage to face the distortion that led to less than full feeling BECAUSE we know now that all is well. Trusting in the benevolence, I can begin to loosen the rigid walls that keep me from being in direct contact.
The way I am approaching it is to just let me feel what is there and stop trying to make it different but just be what it is. If I am not saying anything because I am avoiding saying, I will speak. I can now be having whatever experience while knowing that is all for my benefit. It is waking up my numbness that locked me up.
I am aiming for transparency and being fully who I am and expecting I will benefit from this messy part where my life is in chaotic incomplete and maybe not so fun mode.
So for instance, WHAT IF a the geniuses like us now could break out of the lone-liness and be a newbie every day having renewal of the pleasure circuits by way of expansion AND always in touch with our beloveds? Yes, I'd live to be 300 then....