The Psychedelic Revolution

All the more reason to PAY attention to what one is reading/hearing. But I do agree with you about the mechanism's at work in such an instance.
Our brain seeks patterns and familiarity in order to process and organize the "outside" world.
It is the process that you speak of that contributes to people like Bush being elected TWICE!

I always found it humorous that his strongest supporters were the hard core evangelicals with the whole future persecutions of Christians and control by the state of religious practice, you know the whole Tribulation scene. But not too many of them seemed to realize that by supporting Bush and the passage of The Patriot Act, they essentially gave the government the tools needed to enact such future persecutions.
People can be so friggin' blind to what is right in front of them sometimes that it is tragically sad.

I for one learned long ago to ignore the person, packaging, or whatever and concentrate on WHAT IS BEING COMMUNICATED. Focus on the message, not the messenger.

I used to watch Dr.Gene Scott years ago and if you got past his gruff and abrupt delivery, you found one of the most educated and brilliant minds in the world of Christianity, especially in regards to history and religion as a whole. But a lot of people I knew could not get past his personality to hear the message.

 

They revel in it. That's the plan dude as cynical as it seems. The tribulation means they are that much closer to having no longer to pretend to know God and they get to live in paradise after all the vermin are expunged. Bush was doin gods work ya know, wink wink.

It is good that you are able to distinguish form content. Many do not. Predominantly because we were told that we can distinguish content through form. You are a good boy if you do such and such. Once this culturation has been establish it is hard for the individual in the throws of it to recognize that this is so and difficult still in breaking out of the mechanical patterns that have us eagerly towing the party line.

 

I wish more people and young people in particular would foster that type of critical thinking.
That is one of the reasons why there seems to be a plethora of self-proclaimed "gurus" in the world today, or maybe it seems so thanks to the internet. Any way I have watched you-tube vids of people like mooji and others, read some of the web sites and I almost always come away with the same thing; lots of verbage that is pleasing to the ears yet almost completely devoid of any true substance of meaning and message.

It always brings to remembrance this passage;

2 Timothy 4:3

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

From where I stand, that passage sure does apply.

 

The humorous part of that is that if they are pretending to know God, well then according to the Bible, they will be left behind with all the other sinners.

 

The things that people suffer from are inescapable.The attachment to suffering is a choice.Feelings are mostly temporary. But there is a constant to be accounted for, not even in word. The energy that makes life, is a feeling. One can say one can transcend feelings of suffering, or they can say suffering is true. It's one in the same.I don't think you say suffering is constant though. Even if one were to attach themselves to their suffering, it could only occur in the cycles that feed the brain. My suffering is to teach me and guide me towards the realization of the temporary condition.

Tragedy is not a condition, it is the only final fate of life that can be verified by awareness. It is the moment of now. It is the transcendence of eternal suffering.

So if the answer lies in our suffering, I don't think there really is a search, beyond what is a search for a happiness that it itself is temporary. That does mean it is futile. Or Maybe it is futile, but shall we not DO something just because it is perceived futile.

Reminds me of a book, "Mice and Men always fuck up", or something like that.

Also, personally I think it's pretty clear that all religions are equally relevant/irrelevant. But the practice of prayer and meditation do not hold relevance to such scriptures. They hold a function as a release from our mind.

I wouldn't completely disagree with Deso's, as it is a simple idea of following a suppression of truth or a life of truth.

What we think, how we feel, how we live, is a choice. Live in light, or live in dark.

It seems as though most of this argument, and that's what it surely has been, is just a mash up of misconceptions about one other's perspective based upon one's own perspective. Relevance is a perception of the same truth that is LIFE is. Real dialogue of the soul, does not lay in redundant word.

 

Not really, at least between Desos and I, I feel we both have a fair understanding of where the other is coming from. I do for the greater part understand his viewpoint, I just don't completely agree with it.
Desos and I have been verbally sparring with one another for over a year and I think we both enjoy it and get something out of it. Usually we end up agreeing to disagree.
But hey, if you only ever had nice civil conversations with those that are always in agreement with you, you would never learn much and it would be damn boring
Sometimes all we get out of it is just a headache, but what hell, thats something.

Welcome to this forum :cheers2:

 

I really don't mean it as criticism. I am guilty of the same things, don't need to be welcomed to these forums in regards to these things, people here know that, especially the person who banned me before. But I do mean there are many parallels. I think chisel to the core, You would feel the same way looking out over a valley.

 

Didn't take it as critisicm at all.
Welcome anyway, I've only noticed your posts since you re-joined.

"But I do mean there are many parallels. I think chisel to the core, You would feel the same way looking out over a valley"

Huh? What?

Don't people just speak clearly any more?

 

All in all though I think the most important thing for people to get out of this whole thread is the following:

 

I think it's rather simple. There's no point I care to make, enough to explain that has to do with looking over a far valley of hills. Elmo loves you.

 

PB, not you, way back in the thread, nevermind. Antimagus, I think? Talking about lunar entrainment. Been trying to read through the whole thread, because it's interesting, but that note stuck out sour for me. Grr.

 

Btw, PB,

on the note of age. Yes, you are older then them, in ways that matter to you. But still, you are but an adolescent. With a life that's calmed down, you've mastered your world to a degree, and have become comfortable with the daily routine. You look at the first graders, trying so hard, being so earnest in their drives, and smile. You remember how that was, when school was new. You look at them and realize that once they've had a few experiences, been around the block a bit, they'll settle in. You look at the incredible joys and sorrows you've had, so much more then such a child could know. You are wise.

But little do you realize, that just around the corner, the world is waiting to shake you free of your reverie. Your comfortable life is but a fleeting time, and soon the innocence of this naive youth you hold will be shattered. Life will suddenly start to expect more from you, but give you unknown freedoms along with it. This shake will both energize but also wound you. Scales will fall from your eyes, and you will see that those who have held the responsibilities now demanded of you have, in many ways, been failing, and you will rail against them. For the betrayal of your innocence, and for their foolish wastes of their power. If you hold love in your heart, you will do so in a manner that is hopeful, you will stand forth with a banner to tell the world of a new way, that you and your kin have found. You will read the ancient texts and find secrets anew, and feel -you- are one of those who has been blessed with insight, and the power to act.

It's all cycles. You been where they are before, and they where you are. Wisdom follows cynicism, follows idealism, follows ennui, follows innocence follows wisdom. And the circle is unbroken, the spirals simply widen, and all ideas of linear motion are illusion.

 

Desos:

You say the purpose of the cycle is liberation. What is the purpose of liberation? Because if the purpose of liberation is to escape the cycle, then all you have is circular logic(should it be cyclical logic in this case?). The circle exists to be broken? Why does it exist in the first place then?

You say everything has purpose. What purpose suffering, what purpose hate, what purpose greed? To teach that they are bad? Bad exists to teach that bad is bad? There's no sense to that. What point free will, what point the desire of purpose when none is forthcoming, none is obvious? What point desire?

When we arose from the oceans, and rained from the sky, and became rivers in the mountains, And are now out of balance, and seeking the solace of home, the solace of the peaceful(?) ocean, why did we arise to begin with? What makes you think it won't happen again? What gives you the notion that stillness, changelessness, formlessness. nonduality, is so wonderful? So perfect that you'd never wish to leave? Why did we leave in the first place? At the end of a long, full day, nothing is more appealing then crawling into bed, and feeling the sweet oblivion of sleep. Yet a new day always dawns.

This perfect state you are so enamored with sounds to me like nothing so much as a yearning for death. A fascinated lust for oblivion, a tired soul yearning for bed, to sleep, perchance to dream.

And yet, you are so full of life of the body, for now. You have energy, you have drive, you are so earnest, so eager. You feel that -this- lifetime will be different. That a greater cycle is coming toward an end. And perhaps it is, for you. Perhaps after so many lives, you come to some greater terminus, some deeper sleep, some grand enlightenment. Lightening your load, shedding your accrued karma, your ancestral memories, the weight of a thousand lives, wisdom and foolishness, compassions and confusions, prides and regrets. But even in this, you are not the first to tread this path. Others have predicted the end of ends. The great surcease. Every generation there are those that urge all toward the perfection of oblivion.

There's no rush for me. I know that my time will come, and that when it does, I will be ready. In the mean time, I will grow, I will love, I will hurt, I will act in petty ways and hurt others, I will be selfish, I will be kind, I will create things of beauty, I will wreck destruction. And I will die. Again and again I will die. Each night when I lay my head down is a rehearsal. A little death, that mirrors in miniature the greater deaths that cycle our lives, themselves but a tiny mirror of the end of suffering. Of the end of time. Of ultimate enlightenment. And the ultimate rebirth that follows. Perfectly innocent, and infinitely foolish, the cycle will start anew.

And all this? It is beautiful. This is what existence is, at least, I believe.. Cycles and cycles, and life everlasting. It will trouble me, it will astound me, each time I see it, I am struck anew, and sometimes I rail against the futility and uselessness of it all. The complete and utter meaninglessness of it all, and I in the midst pulled ever onward by an unquenchable desire for meaning. By an unquenchable desire in general. An unquenchable desire. It doesn't need a point, it doesn't need a specific thing to desire. When I feel I have purpose, I simply desire something else. It is the nameless need. Whatever life is -now-, whatever I have now, whatever I feel now, whatever wonders and hopes and fears and grand gifts the world offers me now, it is never enough, at least not for long. The next need is soon to come. I shall remember my purpose, and desire anew, or remember my purposelessness and desire purpose. Or it will be more mundane, a desire for food, for rest, for sex, for love, for peace, for a my pain to cease, for some new pleasure. The desire is there. Always leading me on to the next thing. Always pulling, or prodding me into motion. Goading me, forcing me, to act. To move. To dance the eternal spiral.

Some call this terrible, I curse it myself sometimes. But it is also glorious.

 

Also, PB:

You say you remember what it was like to feel as they do. What it was to be young. But it seems to me you've forgotten. You remember having such thought, but not why they made so much sense to you. You remember having the feelings, but not what they felt like. It seems to my eyes, you are telling young plants that what will make them happiest is to bear fruit, and they needn't muck about with all this messy flowering business. Because to you, it was the fruit that brought fulfillment, the flowering was a trial.

But flowering serves a purpose. The headlong rush of youth, with all it's ingenuity, wild passion and blind fervor serves a purpose. It is the systolic beat of the heartsblood of life. It brings new color and springs forth new ideas. Like the systolic beat, it takes out old air and brings in new, for the systolic is the one that serves the lungs. The diastolic brings this new life to the body, and does all the real heavy lifting. That is your phase of life.

It is the nature of youths of a certain age to rail against the mistakes of their elders. Mistakes their elders have long since accepted, forgiven, grown accustomed to, seen as inescapable. In this, you cannot aid them. For these things they see, and desire to fix, are things that you have already accepted. Things you have already grown accustomed to, and made peace with. They will work to change those things you left behind. They will not do it as you would wish, but as they wish.

Enjoy your peace, and live contented knowing they will find their way to such peace in time. In the interim, they will live life in many ways as you did. They will present grandiose ideas, they will make mistakes, they will rail in despair and hope and desperation against that which is, for that which might be. Because that is what they do. Telling them to relax is telling them not to grow up, or to grow old too soon.

You can only stand back and watch with compassion. Offer them aid if they ask, and you can afford to give, comfort them in the agonies of growth, and share with them the joys of it. But you cannot guide them, except by standing watch and offering what aid they will take. You cannot save them from going through what it is they must. For if someone had somehow saved you from all those pains, you would never have gained the wisdom, and the peace, that you have now. And you would never have offered the world the fruits of all that labor.

Edit to add: All this is not to say that I don't agree with you, on many levels, in your interaction with Desos. Only that your telling him/them to calm down, just live life, and stop searching so hard for meaning, seems a fruitless effort.

 

Hey autumnbreeze, how are you this fine day?
I see you have a flair for the poetic, nice.
But I don't think you really read my posts as I wrote them.
If you had you would have seen that I acknowledge and am fully aware of where I am and how little I know, as well as what I do know.
I was going to go back through the thread and quote each instance where I had already said the things that you say I don't realize yet, and where I have already stated what you are stating now, but that would be to time consuming.

As far as my not understanding youth or remembering what drove my passions back then, you are woefully mistaken.
My wife and I have thus far raised three children from infancy to "adulthood" and three more still growing into adulthood.
Nothing in print or word can provide the lessons, insight, and remembrance of ones own youth as clearly as raising a child.
So not only do I remember what it was to feel as they do, I see it every day reflected in the eyes of my children.

In regards to understanding Desos in all of this, I think we both have a pretty good handle on where the other is coming from. We have sparred on these type of topics more than a few times. But it is always approached in the spirit of learning and sharing with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. We have a good laugh at each other while maintaining a "virtual" friendship.

A look through some of the older threads would reveal many such conversations in this particular forum.

Any way, welcome and I look forward to more from you because I do like your style of expression.

 

flowering does serve a purpose, to make fruit, because the fruit is part of the flower

they are not different.

 

Well, thank you PB. That means a bit. I've been getting intimations that I should look into being a writer, but I am in a lot of doubt on that.

But I still think that having children has differences from being a child. And it still seems you have forgotten some, or act in ways as if you have. For don't you remember others telling you similar? Telling you to trust them, they were older, wiser, knew better? Do you not remember that that was often the least effective way to get you to trust their ideas? Do you not remember feeling that you understood better simply -because- you were younger? That they had lost something vital, in getting older? That they had given up searching, given up striving, and that such giving up looked like an abomination?

Then you learned that that's just what people do. And that they didn't give up, they simply calmed down. Settled a little. Focused their efforts. But in that, maybe, just maybe, they...and you, did lose something. Did lose a measure of passion, of zeal, did lose some of the striving driving need to be doing something, anything! To make it better, or to at least suck every bit of experience from every bit of life and feel it to the fullest. The passion of hope, the recklessness of despair. These things are vital. And those who have them have something vital that those who are wise have lost.

I know something is lost. For I am at that threshold now. The flower is wilting, the fruit not yet born. I feel my youth sliding away. I know I am losing something of great value, of vital importance. I am also gaining something in equal measure. I celebrate and mourn this death/birth in my life. I do so in a manner that is strangely youthful and wise by turns.

You do seem quite taken with the notion that these who feel as they do, do so only thanks to the naivety of youth. But you only hold your position due to the settling of age. You say their grand insights are nothing new, nothing novel, but this itself is also nothing novel. And yet, there is novelty in it all. Because though the tone of their ideas are the tone of the ideas of every generation of youth ever, the ideas are -their- ideas, not yours. Their searches are their searches, not the ones that you undertook, and found to be fruitless. And their answers, the fruits of their searches, will be their own, and different from yours.

And in the settling of your age, you have lost the ability to see with young eyes. Much as they have no ability to see with older eyes. You can only use the eyes, the perspective, you have now. Once you have seen life, life cannot be unseen. So you cannot do what they can. You cannot see what they see. You can remember what you told yourself about what you saw, and see it anew through your current eyes, but the view remains different. You only have stories, stories etched in your mind, told to you by a young man who tells you that once, you were he.

 

Yes, plant_head, that was my point. One cannot gain wisdom without living life just as one cannot bear fruit without first flowering. The things PB says has taken him 40+ years to figure out have taken him 40+ years to figure out. He was probably told them many times by others, but he couldn't understand until he had had all those experiences. Being told wisdom is no shortcut. There is no shortcut.

 

Oh I have no allusions as to the efficacy of my efforts. Just trying to make the point as I have all along throughout our "discussions" that there is the plain and simple truth that wisdom and understanding of many of these aspects of life only comes with time and growth.
There is no substitute for life experience.

I guess to sum it up the following eternal give and take between the generations;

*Youth* "But you just DON'T understand!"
*age or maturity* "YES, we do understand!"

It always is the nature of a parent to try and guide the youth and impart something of our life experience and what it has taught us.
It is also the nature of youth to rebel against that and adopt the attitude of "You don't understand."

That sentiment usually arise when someone of my age doesn't agree with someone of Desos' age, then it is because "I don't understand" rather than I DO understand, I just don't agree.
Rather than explore the reasoning behind my disagreement, it is often easier and more "secure" to just fall back on "You don't understand".
I encounter this with my own children on a regular basis.
And I did pretty much the same when I was young.

I guess I have just been trying to hold my ground against the idea that as an
old fart I couldn't possibly know what these young adults are going through as they grow.
The thing is that I do understand.

 

You and I are both standing on the same side of the street it would appear

But maybe at different address'.

The "grand insights" of youth are not new or novel, but are needed in the course of growing and maturing, as I have stated many, many times. I am not by any means trying to "shortcut" or circumnavigate their "journey", just throwing out a few "lighthouses" if you will, so maybe some will avoid the rocks I foundered upon.

You and I do agree I believe, but are expressing it differently.

In my discourses with Desos, in my mind and his as well I believe, our exchange of ideas is not only limited to the particular thread at the moment, but encompass all the previous threads and messages we have communicated through.
So no offense, but in a sense you have entered in the middle of the conversation.

Throw out the doubt and put it on a page.
In just a few posts I have come away with the impression that you would do well in writing.