Early this year I pronounced the year 2006 to be my Big Self-Improvement Year.
It is really paying off, I could write a book if it all wasn't so complex.
Yesterday after going to bed, I had an extraordinary experience. Like I have sometimes suspected, and like some philosophers have told us, I rather suddenly got a perception that:
Everything I ever desired or longed for is present right here, right now.
Any happiness, any pleasure, and riches, any love, any joy, any excitement... it is all with me right now. I just have to be willing to touch it, and there it is.
I've sometimes known and learned this, but this is the strongest subjective perception of it I have ever had. It was very wonderful and very remarkable.
Yes, I agree, we can touch it, if only for a few moments. Such moments give strength to carry on, living a life in harmony with our surroundings.
ReplyDelete"IT" gives me more than any religion can offer, religion becomes restricted to a man-made user's manual for the ordinary-minded, nothing more.
Greetings - Gen.
I think it need not be only for a moment, I think the potential is unlimited.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably the difference between happy people and unhappy people. Lord knows I can't see any other common denominator.
I am getting better and better at it myself.
Just don't get me wrong, to make this clear: when I say ordinary-minded, I'm referring to people without scientific education. It's by no means a devaluation!
ReplyDeleteOff-topic:
ReplyDeleteI like the clarity of the formal composition of your postings, eolake!
I'd take the beautiful picture of the leaves as the new background of my desktop, if only there wasn't already Vera from domai, amidst a lot of yellowish leaves shining in the autumnal sun. ;-)
Have a good weekend!
I also have been touched by "It" and for lived for years in the sheer memory of it, it was so powerful. Now I'm in a new place, stepped over a threshold it seems, and I must consciously intend it, bring it and create it and be it. It is the difference in feeling of floating on a vast expanse of ocean, and entering with no option to back out into a swift moving mountain stream. This wakefulness, this orientation to "BE NOW" what I already am, to every day attain what I came for, is up for me, is now expected of me. It is in recent years that I was subtly hoping daddy, or mommy, or God, or my spiritual teacher, or the perfect partner, would come and save me, or do it for me. Nope. Now it's just me and this incredible bliss inside (it's so subtle and requires such inner sensitivity) and the finite myriad forces that want to pull me off it back into "time" .
ReplyDeleteEolake, I hear you :) Thanks for posting that. And Gen and Lucid, thank you too.
Laurie
Right here.
ReplyDeleteRight now.
there are beautiful feelings and things of this earth, but ultimately the true eternal bliss and contentment goes way beyond the blue.
ReplyDeleteit's the spiritual side which we have not encountered yet. Lord Jesus will introduce it to me someday..........
Thanks, Gen. Grammar was never all that holy to me, but clarity is.
ReplyDeleteClarity is the efficiency of communication, and efficiency is paramount.
Uhm, I meant effectiveness, not efficiency.
ReplyDeleteI just looked them up, the latter means: The ratio of the effective or useful output to the total input in any system.
The former means: how well something works. (My definition.)
Adam, thank you for that.
ReplyDeleteI felt my heart skip a beat just to read about it. Eolake's experience too. I think it's catching :)
"IT" gives me more than any religion can offer
ReplyDeleteGen, just because of that, you guys should watch your backs from homicidal albino Opus Dei monks. You're a grave threat to the position of a millenial institution. Should this secret ever get out...
"it doesn't have to last a mere fleeting moment"
Some things once broken can never be rebuilt. Like virginity... and like ignorance! He who has understood cannot really cease to understand anymore. This is why racism and fanatism fear education and wisdom so much : once you've seen the truth, they can no more delude you with their fabricated myths, like "some people are worth more than others by nature, birth, religion, gender, wealth, etc."
A person can be educated, but never de-educated. Which is why I have so much hope for this pessimistic-looking world. Some progress can never be suppressed.
"Feelings are not mere chemical reactions with no rhyme or reason, after all."
No more than a Domai photo is mere electric signals on a hard disk. The beauty in it transcends the basic laws of computer physics.
"How can a man who aspires to be a philosopher expand in mind when he spends his evenings watching television?"
Hey, watch what you're saying! I expanded much of my mind, and still do, by watching documentaries and other useful programs. I even learned several things from the catastrophic social examples that appear on the Jerry Springer show. Great examples of what NOT to do... and of what CAN actually happen.
Of course, I must say I spend very little time watching TV on average. When there's nothing worthy or entertaining, I soon turn it off and go do something else. Like reading.
"How can a runner hope to win a race if there's a part of him that thinks he's incapable of attaining victory?"
You've been watching Forrest Gump, haven't you?
;-)
"Chalking it up to luck is a cop out. It's laziness."
Thursday evening, I was waiting for the bus in Beirut, and there was a group of (professional) beggar children. (I know, stop dreaming, there are no social services or government involvement HERE.) I happened to spot a lost money note on the ground. I signaled to one of them, and showed it to him : "Hey, it's not mine, so why don't you take it?"
I don't know, maybe I saw it as a sign. This little bit of luck could mean much more to another than to me. But he DID have to make the effort and pick it up, so it wasn't laziness. ;-)
"It is in recent years that I was subtly hoping daddy, or mommy, or God, or my spiritual teacher, or the perfect partner, would come and save me, or do it for me."
Well, maybe not EVERYTHING we desire is already here, like the perfect partner (which to me is just perfectly loveable and loving), but we certainly shouldn't count on him/her to make us complete as a person. They only make us complete as a couple, on a different level. Our intrinsic longings as individuals cannot come from the outside. Just, eventually, stimulated by a contact with the outside, like a post on some guy's blog. :-)
In the end, if understanding doesn't arise from within, it will never happen. I have given up trying to change some stubborn people who believe they are very happy being miserable. If they don't want any of my shared wisdom it's their business. I'll just give it to the ones who accept it. (For instance, those here who give it too.)
Yes, it is an amazing phenomenon. There are people who run into enemies *everywhere*, and there are people who never have any.
ReplyDeleteI replied; "Well, you are not going to believe this, but...
ReplyDeleteTypical "hard to believe" stuff. But since I know by now when you're horsing around, I'll consider you're very serious and believe you anyhow! :-)
In fact, I bitterly envy you! ;o)
But then, maybe some of us are deemed more in need of "having a spiritual experience" than others. I have felt lost sometimes, but not any more. "Right here, right now" is just making sense, deep inside. Maybe I shouldn't be jealous, just congratulate you. :-)
Regarding Forrest Gump, you're probably right (God, I *LOVED* that film!). But I myself just meant that Forrest Gump always ran without thinking that maybe he couldn't do it.
I don't always do it with my legs, but when I get "that" feeling, I just run too. And boy, does it feel good! Following what my heart "knows" is my personal religion.
To reach what you desire and long for it's everyone's hope.
ReplyDeletesomeone long time ago told me "the art is the result of frustration".Then I wascross,how he could say such thing,the art is something saint,can't be a result of frustration of any kind,till the life forced me to reconsider,when I couldn't create any more nothing,absolute nothing.What happened?I have lost all,even the hope,I was evicted by the "Romanian Orthodox Church" from my loft where I used to live since my childhood,where I created so much living a "boheme" life and throwed out in a sort of rat-hole where I couldn't create nothing during ten long years,but thinking every minute about Art,and how I started to create Art.And then I realized,remembering my first real creation.I was living an unbelievable frustrating life; because I was very skynny some of my school colleagues were torturing me (I realized then the so called "racial discriminations" are in fact not the result of the "afraid of the unknown";I belong at the same race as them only very skynny so easy to hit;but the attempt to get rid of a rival(every insecure male in his subconscious consider the other males as rivals,and I was the rival they can hurt without the majority disapproval because they weren't feeling exposed,they are torturing someone who was very skynny,they weren't skynny so they couldn't be they target,so why to care about it,especially in a such cruel society as one under the rule of the Romanian communist regime).I was feeling very lonely without any possibility to express my feelings of love for the beauty of the world, looking for a friend in the school courtyard and I founded one in the shape of a very beautiful and interesting tree.I become very familiar with "him" and when our drawing teacher proposed a contest for a watercolor with that tree as subject,mine colleagues get very angry "how Paul could capture its essence in only few moments and we not?".When I lost all,even the hope and I couldn't create anything during ten long years I realised that the Art is indeed part of a result of frustration to communicate his love feelings and emotions in an aesthetically way for the Beauty of this world,they are geting out more intense when more and more you can't express them in another way,the endless love for all this world,even ,or especially with the ones who treat you badly,because they are feeling insecure,they are in fact the weak ones,the lonely ones are the strongest because they couldn't survive otherwise.But the Art is also the result of hope,the hope about the possibility of you'll be heard some day.The hope emerged again when by chance I discovered DOMAI's girls and I found out more than fascinated that even nowadays the women can be so magnificent and so full of character in a such simple and natural way,not only be fade "comrades" or "ferocious sexual beasts" like the females are now mostly represented almost everywhere.At course I saw very similar girls when I found also by chance in a second-hand bookshop a 1932 collection of the german magazine "EHEGLUCK NATUR UND LEBEN" that was in my backpack when I passed by in the summer of the year 1996 in my short pilgrimage to Lourdes through Italy (in fact the country where I was trying to remain for accomplish my art study-I couldn't but the hope is still alive even now,so what I'm 42 years old,it's never to late for that) and in an transient visit at the "MUSEI CIVICI EREMITANI" in Padua,I found out a small statuary in white marble exhibit of girls represented in a such simple and natural magnificent way that I can call it now a "DOMAI before DOMAI",I was so exited (honi soit qui mal y pense) I gived a short spontaneous speech to the casual audience,who by the way,was at least so exited as me;but all of the where old representations,I could realize then,there are such kind of representation nowadays,the real splendor of the natural and simple beauty can vainquish all the misery of the fake of our world,because love is beauty and beauty is love, and the love conquers all.When the hope again appeared I could start to begin to create again.
With great admiration and gratitude,yours Paul Alexandru Cazacliu artmanro@yahoo.com
Paul,
ReplyDeleteI think the insecure idiots who picked on you were the real skinny ones, in their mind. You know, narrow brains and things like that... It is difficult to decide, sometimes, whether to be angry at them or feel pity for them, because their ignorance is their own prison (and being imprisoned is what makes them mean). While you are free in the most important way : in your mind. You have access to the whole world, simply because you know you can.
As for art, frustration isn't always necessary. It is just a good source for the energy that can create through art. Art is in fact expression. (Even if you express alone.) Frustration is one of the motivations that make you want to express your self, to create from what is inside and you need to share. Hope, love, happiness, can work as well.
I'm happy to hear that you are able to create again today. Your story in itself can bring hope to many others.
Domai.com has a section for viewers' art. Maybe you can send your creations to Eolake, and we'll be able to see them?
:-)