I don't care to learn anything anymore.

[Bruce G Charlton]

I try to remind myself of the difference between optimism and hope, between pessimism and despair.

Optimism or pessimism about our prospects or the quality of this world is just an estimate of probability, based on incomplete knowledge.

But as a Christian, my hope for salvation beyond death should always be certain, so long as I have faith in the love and goodness of God the creator.

And therefore despair is always wrong.

So no matter how realistically pessimistic I may be about the future, I should never despair (and should repent if I do despair); because my hope does not depend on anything that can be kept from me without my consent.

[thepainterdoug]

HopSan I agree totally As an artist and musician I think music, vibrations and frequency is the highest form of the arts.

[palehorse]

I can't think of anything else but this


“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ

[Sue (Ayt)]

Posted by palehorse (here)
I can't think of anything else but this


“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ

I just posted this in another thread, but it coincides so nicely with your post, palehorse, that I thought I'd put it here too.


Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 76

A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.

(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

[Michel Leclerc]

Hopsan, what a great comment, thank you for that. Yes! The greatest music brings the greatest joy! Famous is the reaction of the Vienna choirboys having participated in the premiere performance of Gustav Mahler’s gigantic 8th Symphony with choirs and soloists – enthusiastically tugging conductor Mahler’s sleeve after the never-ending ovations: “it was a great song, Maestro!”

I’ll PM to you an excellent Youtube version of Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem. Basically it was a Requiem “mass” intended for his mother (as was the one Gabriel Fauré wrote in France). But – whereas Fauré’s Requiem uses the Latin Mass text as Mozart does, the Lutheran Brahms chose to write a “German” (“Deutsches”) Requiem on texts from the Bible. So the impressive texts both stern and sweet, are in German (a good opportunity for your German ;-) ) ; the composition is considered one of Brahms’ greatest achievements with magnificent solo parts (as in Mozart) as well as phantastic choral writing, with far echoes from Händel. Of course it calls for a larger, romantic, orchestra, than Mozart’s Mass.

Doug – a composer sings silently, internally, does he not? The “inner voice” is not only the one that repents, but also – and maybe therefore – the one that creates.

Hopsan, “the greatest music”... it is Beauty – of great art – that reconciles us with everything. Consoles us for everything. Beauty in Nature, the beauty of bodies, of all glorious, beaming bodies, both human and animal – and vegetal... – enchant and fulfill us, but then, they wither and grow old, losing their bloom and bliss – or worse: they are slaughtered and eaten, and killed and shredded on battlefields and in human monsters’ rituals.. If that is not what we need consolation for, then what is? Art however can not be killed – although Art’s makers may be persecuted and killed – if it is destroyed it is resuscitated in the work of a worthy heir. I feel that this particular resilience, this immortality Art has finds its very reason, its justification in its role as consolation for all the beautiful dead whom we mourn.

In that sense, every piece of Art is a Requiem.

[Sunny-side-up]

Doug

You sound like you have descended and reached the depth of free diving, found the ocean floor.
You had a good look around and found it to be so different to the surface.
You ascended, still looking around and have found the surface to have changed, but as you look around you find it is the same if not worse.
You find though it is you who have changed and have a greater reality, well done.

Do what is good for you and stay saine.

Have some

[Agape]

Posted by palehorse (here)
I can't think of anything else but this


“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ

It's a good point 🪷

I know plenty of people including disabled people, people after life trauma or currently going through who found their balance again through practice of martial arts.

There's a timeless beauty in being on watch for your shadow

There's equilibrium in between "your light" and "your shadow"

And you are walking on thin invisible line in between.

There's full acceptance and harmony of our "right" and "left",
of our weight and lightness , elements and mind.


In short, when the world gets completely absurd and filled with smoke so dark you can't breathe in living room

and mirrors so crooked they make fun of all we are

Kick your chances for survival

Just B&B without As

It's called practice


🙏

[HopSan]

Posted by Michel Leclerc (here)
“The greatest music”... it is Beauty – of great art – that reconciles us with everything. Consoles us for everything. Beauty in Nature, the beauty of bodies, of all glorious, beaming bodies, both human and animal – and vegetal... – enchant and fulfill us, but then, they wither and grow old, losing their bloom and bliss – or worse: they are slaughtered and eaten, and killed and shredded on battlefields and in human monsters’ rituals.. If that is not what we need consolation for, then what is? Art however can not be killed – although Art’s makers may be persecuted and killed – if it is destroyed it is resuscitated in the work of a worthy heir. I feel that this particular resilience, this immortality Art has finds its very reason, its justification in its role as consolation for all the beautiful dead whom we mourn.

In that sense, every piece of Art is a Requiem.

Thanks Michel,

Good Heavens, this must be one of the great oratory pieces of last years!

I have not much to add, but to remind that there are surprising happinesses ahead for everyone,
sooner or later, here or there.

But we must fight for it, whatever the cost.

[palehorse]

Posted by Sue (Ayt) (here)

Posted by palehorse (here)
I can't think of anything else but this

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

I just posted this in another thread, but it coincides so nicely with your post, palehorse, that I thought I'd put it here too.


Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 76

A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.

(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

It is beautiful Sue, thanks.

Posted by Agape (here)

Posted by palehorse (here)
I can't think of anything else but this

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

― Bruce Lee



It's a good point 🪷

I know plenty of people including disabled people, people after life trauma or currently going through who found their balance again through practice of martial arts.

There's a timeless beauty in being on watch for your shadow

There's equilibrium in between "your light" and "your shadow"

And you are walking on thin invisible line in between.

There's full acceptance and harmony of our "right" and "left",
of our weight and lightness , elements and mind.


In short, when the world gets completely absurd and filled with smoke so dark you can't breathe in living room

and mirrors so crooked they make fun of all we are

Kick your chances for survival

Just B&B without As

It's called practice


🙏

I think he explains that balance in this video

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nzQWYHHqvIw

[Michel Leclerc]

Posted by HopSan (here)
:

(...)

I have not much to add, but to remind that there are surprising happinesses ahead for everyone,
sooner or later, here or there.

But we must fight for it, whatever the cost.

Thank you Hopsan. As you can imagine, I believe what you believe.

It is just the “whatever the cost” that you write which I have doubts about.

Literature occasionally tells us the story of artists who went so far as to sacrifice a human life for a work of art.

Or conversely, they tell stories about non-living creations that the artist finally brings to life.

Should one sell one’s soul for one’s artistic calling? Maybe one’s own – when one believes that devotion to the realisation of the calling redeems the fact that one does evil to one’s self / oneself —— but is it so easy without also gravely hurting, damaging other humans’ life? Animal life?

Goethe laboured half of his life to write his second Faust, in which Gretchen’s self-sacrifice is strong enough to redeem even him who deserted her. Mahler put that aspect of Goethe’s masterwork to grandiose music. (Gretchen deserved more tears of sorrow maybe than Alma.)

When the artist deeply understands how his/her work constitutes a requiem for one or many or all victims, does that very realisation not put him/her on the verge of turning one more life (his/her own) into a victim — of the very work of art that was supposed to mourn them?

Note: with “art” is meant every form or discipline of artistic expression.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Ya, it's all BS.

The thing to learn here is that there is nothing here worth the entrance conditions. Then it can all be let go. Still working on 'family' and 'my one true love'. Most 'friends' are already gone. Nothing else comes even close to being worth it.


As far as learning goes - we can only learn that we can learn nothing because we cannot reduce anything to its absolute condition. Everything is relative to other things, which means nothing means anything in and of itself.

The total is far greater than the parts and we only live in the parts, disconnected from truth, separate from the others, with everything around us unknown and unmastered.

[thepainterdoug]

Ernie interesting comments to a large degree true. are they sad comments neutral or happy? none and all. they are all relevant and defined by comparison.
imagine there was only one temperature of water? lets say 70 degrees. no hot or cold distinction. only descriptors of wet ,cloudy or clear.

no matter what we do in the amusement park, when they close the gates, we all gotta go home

[HopSan]

Posted by Michel Leclerc (here)

It is just the “whatever the cost” that you write which I have doubts about.
And 'high art', in pure form, is very, very near -- the soul itself.

Literature occasionally tells us the story of artists who went so far as to sacrifice a human life for a work of art.

Or conversely, they tell stories about non-living creations that the artist finally brings to life.

Should one sell one’s soul for one’s artistic calling? Maybe one’s own – when one believes that devotion to the realisation of the calling redeems the fact that one does evil to one’s self / oneself —— but is it so easy without also gravely hurting, damaging other humans’ life? Animal life?

Goethe laboured half of his life to write his second Faust, in which Gretchen’s self-sacrifice is strong enough to redeem even him who deserted her. Mahler put that aspect of Goethe’s masterwork to grandiose music. (Gretchen deserved more tears of sorrow maybe than Alma.)

When the artist deeply understands how his/her work constitutes a requiem for one or many or all victims, does that very realisation not put him/her on the verge of turning one more life (his/her own) into a victim — of the very work of art that was supposed to mourn them?

Note: with “art” is meant every form or discipline of artistic expression.

I agree, strongly!

I did not say 'personal cost', because anything else did not occur to my mind.
Sacrificing someone or something else is nothing, worthless, despicable.
Fame, and success: nil.

I mean the danger and risk and cost of personal sacrifice, for good.
Yes, art, in pure form, is very near the core of 'soul', as its expression.
Hope and happiness realising 'true and right and beautiful' is a good deal.

Andrei Tarkovsky's movie 'Sacrifice' is about exactly this.
Sorry, this link is in Swedish.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ivTODosMeOQ

[thepainterdoug]

I decided to find this old post. I still feel the same.

question?? what has anyone learned, discovered, found out, of true revelation or importance in a way meaningful for all, within the last couple years?

have you learned anything amazing that is a game changer for you? please share

thanks
pd

[norman]

I found out what it really means when a rare few people say "this is a spiritual war".

Until quite recently, it was only a theologically academic soundbite being passed around the spiritual industrial complex branch of academia.

[Casey Claar]

The subject of being, in itself - who and what I am - fascinates me to no end, there is no end to my curiosity at this.

I find it funny when there is something I am not very good at.
The way my appearance changes I find highly amusing. (aging and gaining weight beyond my ability to even see myself anymore. it is so funny.

Aside from self enquiry, I am riveted at all times at the question "what is time?"

I find it funny that I do not seem to know.

How can I not know? It seems an impossibility.
What is in the way?

I just wonder at it. (near endlessly

I enter states that are highly pleasant, experientially informative. I am content so long as I always have my sense of wonder.

Windows are a person's best friend. I could just sit and look out the window forever.

Do you know what just this has the capacity to teach?

Do you ever window gaze, Doug?

[thepainterdoug]

Norman and Casey thanks for your posts. Norman, I agree and its probably something very evident I didn't yet make note of to myself.

Casey I am always thinking on these things every day. But perhaps a personal musing, more than something we are all being made aware of.

Im amazed how many books are being written everyday, sometimes multiple books by the same author on the same topic, and yet what is being delivered?

Reams and reams of info, and I dont feel any less for not knowing about it. tell me what I am missing? Surely all these words must be communicating something of importance.
The only info that has made a difference for me comes from NDE,s

and let me add, I am very disturbed by the medical industry. i get doctors are very valuable, but they have become a thing to seriously avoid.

I have proof its a racket, a money maker, by passing patients around a corrupt system. From the doctor, to the blood lab, back to the doctor. to the doctors referral, to the pharmacist and so on. I found this out first hand.

this is an awful state as people will die, just to avoid this racket. Im at risk and i refuse to get on that hamster wheel

[RunningDeer]

Posted by thepainterdoug (here)
I decided to find this old post. I still feel the same.

question?? what has anyone learned, discovered, found out, of true revelation or importance in a way meaningful for all, within the last couple years?

have you learned anything amazing that is a game changer for you? please share

thanks
pd

True revelation? Game changer knowledge that’s meaningful for all?
That’s a tall order, doug.

I suspect what feels important to me might not hold the same weight for others. Life is more about the small, everyday things. I don’t need some grand revelation. What I aim for is learning how to quiet my mind and live more from the heart.

Lately, I’ve been discovering new ways to be more efficient. It's exciting because the ideas come out of no where. It’s nothing dramatic. Just little shifts in how I organize my day, approach my workouts, or prepare more nutrient-rich meals.

I’m also learning to be gentler with myself. I’ve realized I didn’t sign up to change the world. I’m here to be in it and to show up as honestly and authentically as I can.

[thepainterdoug]

Running Deer, a great response and answer. yes, my request a tall order so your very honest answer makes me smile. i agree

[Casey Claar]

Posted by Casey Claar (here)
The subject of being, in itself - who and what I am - fascinates me to no end, there is no end to my curiosity at this.

I find it funny when there is something I am not very good at.
The way my appearance changes I find highly amusing. (aging and gaining weight beyond my ability to even see myself anymore. it is so funny.

Aside from self enquiry, I am riveted at all times at the question "what is time?"

I find it funny that I do not seem to know.

How can I not know? It seems an impossibility.
What is in the way?

I just wonder at it. (near endlessly

I enter states that are highly pleasant, experientially informative. I am content so long as I always have my sense of wonder.

Windows are a person's best friend. I could just sit and look out the window forever.

Do you know what just this has the capacity to teach?

Do you ever window gaze, Doug?

Casey I am always thinking on these things every day. But perhaps a personal musing, more than something we are all being made aware of.

Im amazed how many books are being written everyday, sometimes multiple books by the same author on the same topic, and yet what is being delivered?

Reams and reams of info, and I dont feel any less for not knowing about it. tell me what I am missing? Surely all these words must be communicating something of importance.
The only info that has made a difference for me comes from NDE,s

Doug,

There is only self inquiry and self realization. <-- this is what is of central importance.

Everything else is surface data.

I feel you hit the nail square on the head of this when you say the NDE ( which is a variety, or specific form of OBE ) is what still is making a difference to you. This is likely due to what the NDE is ( ie: an expansion, a wider experience space ). The data it contains is only relevant in relation to the space itself -which, to be clear, is consciousness space. This is where I am attempting to direct you. ( via the question about window gazing ). Into consciousness space. It is where we learn all that is of central importance. The window gazing can be very helpful in getting the attention off thinking and into what Houses the thinking. It is here that we all find ourselves again, and with this our zest. Do you have a meditation practice?

Regarding the books and what other people are saying and sharing.

I am interested only in the people themselves.
I may listen, or read, but solely to see where they are in their evolution of experience.

Everything else is just words. Some of which can be interesting, if within them is a scope I've not ventured into in quite the same way. But, for the most, it is the person themselves that interests me. ( this makes some people nervous, lol ).