How do we embrace ruin?

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
Locked
TheImmanent
Posts: 218
Joined: Tue Dec 31, 2013 9:46 am

How do we embrace ruin?

Post by TheImmanent »

The function of suffering is to loosen the grip on inadequate conceptions and encourage the ascension to a higher state of being. Without suffering people would not progress in any real sense; they would not feel any inclination to let go of insipid and shallow world-views and modes of being (feel free to voice disagreement). Luckily, suffering and dissatisfaction is intrinsic to these inadequate conceptions, which the Buddha discovered.

Nietzsche notably wished suffering for his friends as a kind of boon to them, encapsulated in the following quote:

“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”

I'm not exactly sure if Nietzsche by this recognized the transformative power of suffering or if he merely intended it as a test of character, but the invocation stuck with me.

On a similar note the Polish psychiatrist Kazimiers Dabrowski developed his theory of positive disintegration which captures the necessary role of suffering to make us truly human (something he meant the vast majority fails to ever become). He also recognzied a higher aptitude for suffering, i.e., high sensitivity, as a treasure of developmental potential since traits of overexcitabilities carries with them the possibility of a vastly accelerated disintegration.

Still, perhaps in part due to the prevalent views of suffering (not to mention sensitivity) as regressive, most people live their whole lives in the insipid and shallow mode of being, passive in the Spinozistic sense of being acted upon rather than expressing an inner standard to the world. This is not strange.

Suffering is unpleasant, after all. There is no way around that. If it is not unpleasant, it does not have the transformative potential to destroy the convoluted self.

Positive disintegration is transcendence of convention and the disintegration of the artificial persona which is animated in the ever-familiar unlife of stereotypes, and could possibly be likened to ego-death. It is also interesting to mention that the more reknown psychologist Abraham Maslow, who developed the often cited hierarchy of needs, was not satisfied with the pyramid model that we have become accustomed to seeing and which has "self-actualization" sitting at the top. In his later years he wished to add self-transcendence as a final and ultimate step on the pyramid, something which is fairly intuitive to people who have frequently been consumed by peak experiences (the spiritually evolved).

Achieving this final step would be to abide in a "plateau" experience. In a sense, it is freedom from "self"-actualization.

But what has to be cleared away, and how? The subtle crux is of course that the person who sets out to experience ego-death is already divided against himself, since it is the ego that packs the bags and expects to go on the journey. The process leading up to ego-death, I suppose, is necessarily intensely painful. Otherwise the ego would persist. It is in fact when the ego itself is too painful -- that is, cannot bear its own weight anymore -- that it sinks away. From exhaustion, pain and surrender. To make matters worse there is of course the risk of simply developing a sick and crippled ego and go on to languish until death.

This, of course, presents us with the problem that I wished to discuss. How does one consciously tread this path? Is it destined to be a naïve enterprise that could, as if by accident, lead to success? -- that is, we can begin a process which we will inevitably and perhaps frequently regret before it is done with us. I cannot see how the ego could be anything but the somewhat unwitting architect of its own demise.

Nor is it uncommon that seekers of enlightenment balk and abandon the path because it demands too much, which they willingly confess. Yes, it demands everything.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Great topic!

The ego dilemma: the bloody struggle with its final realization of non-existence, a truth that cannot just be conceptualized ("thinged") in thought or feeling alike, without invoking the very thing it questions. Some mistake this for the clever act of denial or simply ignoring it -- as that's the pleasurable road of "ego-light". But being some superficial surface dweller does not enlightenment make, no matter all those bubbly sounds or peaceful meadows!

Just before you wrote that post I was reading Among Daughters of the Desert from Nietzsche, a playful poem written to similar souls and teasing the deeper hides, as if play here would easier enter than just any straight monologue could? One of the dangers, as Nietzsche often enough brought up, would be too much heaviness. Found in Dionysus-Dithyrambs. Excerpts:
Truly wonderful!
Here I now sit,
Near the desert and yet
So far from the desert again,
And in no way desolate:
To wit, gulped down
By this smallest oasis —
It just opened up yawning
Its lovely mouth,
The most redolent of all little mouths:
Then I fell in,
Down, through—among you,
You most beloved maidens. Selah.

Hail, hail to that whale,
If he let his guest be so
Well off! —you understand
My learned allusion? ...
Hail to his belly,
If it was as
Lovely an oasis-belly
As this: yet I cast doubt on it.
For I come from Europe,
Which is more doubt-addicted than any nagging old wife.
May God improve it!
Amen!

...

The desert grows: woe to him in whom deserts hide!
Stone grinds against stone, the desert devours and strangles,
Glowing brown monstrous death stares
And chews; its life is to chew ...

Do not forget, man, consumed by lust:
you—are the stone, the desert, are death ...
User avatar
Eric Schiedler
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:13 pm

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by Eric Schiedler »

TheImmanent wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:50 am How does one consciously tread this path?
I had my first realization of self-awareness when I was three years old. I was standing in shorts and sneakers and fanning a small charcoal brazier, when the thought came into my mind, “Wow, there is a me! And I am here.” Now, clearly, I had no thought before this moment to decide that I would think this idea and concurrently to decide to forget that I had made such a choice. That’s the way it must always be with consciousness. There is no unconscious moment in which it is decided to be conscious.

A conscious being is conscious and an unconscious being is unconscious and they don’t change or become each other. This is one of the meanings when it is said that consciousness is timeless. Consequently, there is no way to reverse-engineer the “path” to enlightenment. This means there is no manner in which it is assured for the ego to choose to die.

What is left, then? Anything that holds conscious thought at “a distance” is an error that prevents a crossing of the death barrier.

TheImmanent wrote:Still, perhaps in part due to the prevalent views of suffering (not to mention sensitivity) as regressive, most people live their whole lives in the insipid and shallow mode of being, passive in the Spinozistic sense of being acted upon rather than expressing an inner standard to the world. This is not strange.

Suffering is unpleasant, after all. There is no way around that. If it is not unpleasant, it does not have the transformative potential to destroy the convoluted self.
It doesn’t matter that suffering is unpleasant; it is not enough pain. Besides, people can forget about pain. Happiness itself must become unpleasant and suffering must become sought after.

Throughout my childhood, I always cried during moments of happiness. I was an excellent student and could concentrate for long hours on problems of mathematics or construction or logic puzzles. During those periods of study in rational thought, I remained quiet calm. But I always cried while listening to music, travelling on vacation, playing sports, eating candy, playing with a group and finding myself in moments that people would call times to be happy.

One way that I explain it is that I believe I always retained some small amount of consciousness during times when other people completely obliterate all conscious thought from their mind in order to feel happy. That meant that I was aware of the suffering that would result from the happiness and that the happiness would end. So I felt the end of happiness in the moment of it. Or rather, that the happiness was suffering. This created a sense that I was separated from something far greater, a glory beyond happiness. I believe this is what it means to suffer “enough”; to suffer with your entire being and to suffer with countless other beings within yourself.

Because Diebert is rather fond of poetry, I will offer a few lines of my own,

There is no spiritual test to undertake
For how could one ever begin?
And not beginning,
There would be no end to find of it.
So, rest easy in your duties,
You don't have the strength to do anything else.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Eric Schiedler wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 11:45 am
TheImmanent wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:50 am How does one consciously tread this path?
I had my first realization of self-awareness when I was three years old. I was standing in shorts and sneakers and fanning a small charcoal brazier, when the thought came into my mind, “Wow, there is a me! And I am here.” Now, clearly, I had no thought before this moment to decide that I would think this idea and concurrently to decide to forget that I had made such a choice. That’s the way it must always be with consciousness. There is no unconscious moment in which it is decided to be conscious.
Children, generally from age two have this interesting behavior that they start showing signs of embarrassment when seeing their own image like in the mirror. WIth three years the insight dawns (slow or sudden) about the image perceived by self and other. There is an intriguing parallel with the ancient story about the garden of Eden where shame was introduced after the first humans saw themselves as naked, as for the first time. The connection between sin, shame-stress and self-consciousness in any self-development is a given.

However I do like to suggest a kind of "second birth" which can only happen way later, which is in some respects like the first one and is about awareness about this self-awareness. A deeper reflection upon the first reflection. A mirroring of the mirrors shaping and forming us to what we have believed we are. And all that relates to our emotional and ideological support structures, normally maintained by the group or otherwise powered by radical opposition to that.
Suffering is unpleasant, after all. There is no way around that. If it is not unpleasant, it does not have the transformative potential to destroy the convoluted self.
Suffering is at is deepest the pleasant as well as the unpleasant. This way your next sentence makes the most sense: "happiness itself must become unpleasant and suffering must become sought after" . The suffering becomes that was is being sought after, usually something like life, death, health, joy or release. It is all disturbance which is relative and indeed potentially transitive, since all organic and psychological processes need some agitator, after all. This means we are not just describing enlightenment but essentially life itself by doing so.

Throughout my childhood, I always cried during moments of happiness.
When a sensitive nervous system gets charged with surplus energy, being it light or dark, it needs to be released again. This is all the fuel for the cycle of life (or more accurately its power cycling). Looking at it this way we can start to understand the Dionysian links between joy and violence, cruelty and exhilaration, creativity and darkness. And right there the biggest taboos and misunderstandings of history.
There is no spiritual test to undertake
For how could one ever begin?
And not beginning,
There would be no end to find of it.
So, rest easy in your duties,
You don't have the strength to do anything else.
Ah poetry .. like Nietzsche waxed: " only a poet! A cunning, plundering, stealthy beast".
Any spiritual test, which is just a contradiction to resolve, to allow to collapse, always starts at words like "one".
Serendipper
Posts: 136
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2017 12:43 pm

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by Serendipper »

TheImmanent wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:50 am The function of suffering is to loosen the grip on inadequate conceptions and encourage the ascension to a higher state of being. Without suffering people would not progress in any real sense; they would not feel any inclination to let go of insipid and shallow world-views and modes of being (feel free to voice disagreement). Luckily, suffering and dissatisfaction is intrinsic to these inadequate conceptions, which the Buddha discovered.
What is suffering? It's 10F/-12C here and I find any time spent outside to become suffering in short-order, yet the geese and ducks seem oblivious. I've given this topic a lot of thought this winter. What is pain, really?

There was a faith healer of Deal
Who said "though I know pain is not real,
If I sit on a pin and it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel."
https://ratiocinativa.wordpress.com/201 ... r-of-deal/
I'm not exactly sure if Nietzsche by this recognized the transformative power of suffering or if he merely intended it as a test of character, but the invocation stuck with me.
After some years of life illustrating the proverb “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger”, I gradually but eventually came to the realization that whoever first uttered that was an idiot; only later to discover the author was the revered Nietzsche O.o

The adulated popularity of that aphorism is explained by people's intrinsic gravitation to the comforting belief that suffering has meaning and a deeper purpose, if not for atonement of some transgression then for the building of strength of character, but I've found being brought to the brink of death only leaves one near-dead, scarred, and then having the undertaking of rebuilding what was lost. Evidently that is why animals do not endeavor to torture themselves for a competitive advantage and it's not beside the point to observe that pain endured for a greater good is not pain, but pleasure.

A man will renounce any pleasures you like, but he will not give up his suffering. - Gurdjieff

I believe what Nietzsche overlooked is that any set of advantages will come with off-setting disadvantages which means there is nothing to be gained other than a shuffling of attributes. Comforting numbness comes at the cost of insensitivity. Strength comes at the cost of bulk. Integrity comes at the cost of intolerance. There is nothing to be gained in pain except to be mixed up.
On a similar note the Polish psychiatrist Kazimiers Dabrowski developed his theory of positive disintegration which captures the necessary role of suffering to make us truly human (something he meant the vast majority fails to ever become). He also recognzied a higher aptitude for suffering, i.e., high sensitivity, as a treasure of developmental potential since traits of overexcitabilities carries with them the possibility of a vastly accelerated disintegration.
Reminds me of the Saw movies where rehabilitation was sought in what now seems to have been "positive disintegration".
Suffering is unpleasant, after all. There is no way around that. If it is not unpleasant, it does not have the transformative potential to destroy the convoluted self.
If the self initiates the transformation, then it bolsters the self. We can't egoically destroy the ego. That's what the Taoists call "beating a drum in search of a fugitive".
How does one consciously tread this path?
The realization of futility through the persistence in folly.

The Way of the Sly Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31m0zVseNtI

A snippet:

When the Buddha first discussed the middle way, he put it like this: he said, "To try to solve the problem of suffering by immersing yourself in pleasure only leads to a hangover. To try to solve the problem by asceticism also brings no liberation; you merely get tied up in a kind of masochism where you say 'I know I'm right just so long as I'm hurting'. All that is doing is expiating your infantile guilt sense. There is a middle way between asceticism on one hand and hedonism on the other."

But actually the middle way is a little more subtle than that and it's beautifully discussed in professor Bahm's book "The Philosophy of Buddha". A fascinating analysis in the form of a dialog:

The student brings a problem to the teacher and he says "I suffer and it's a problem to me."
The teacher says, "You suffer because you desire. If you didn't desire, you wouldn't suffer. So try not to desire."
And the student returns and says "I am not very successful in this. I can't stop desiring; it's terribly difficult. Furthermore I find that in trying to stop desiring I'm desiring to stop desiring, now what am I to do about that?"
Teacher says, "Do not desire to stop desiring anymore than you can."
Student: "I still find myself desiring excessively to stop desiring and it doesn't work."
Teacher: "Do not desire too much not to desire to stop desiring."

Do you see what's happening? Step by step the student is being brought together with himself to the point that he catches up with his own inner being and can accept it completely. And that is the most difficult thing to do.. to accept ones self completely. Because the moment you can do that you have in effect done psychologically the equivalent of saying in philosophical terms that you are the Buddha. Because we are always trying to get away from ourselves in one way or another. And it's only by stopping doing that through a series of experiments as we try resolutely to get away from ourselves as we are. That's the middle way.


Snip

Now this lies behind the whole problem that is discussed in the book "Zen and the art of archery." The necessity of letting go of the bowstring without first having decided to do so. Another way of putting it, the decision to release the bowstring and the action of doing so must be simultaneous. Why is this? If you're going to be an expert archer, you must shoot before you think; otherwise it will be too late. You don't aim then shoot; it's all one action. That puts up a very curious problem that, in its own terms, becomes a bind: To try not to decide first, and that is an impossible problem.

How can I decide not to decide? How can I make an announcement that I won't be making an announcement without making an announcement? There is no way out of that bind. Try as you may, you'll go on and on and on.. trying... as Herrigel did to release the bowstring without thinking first to release it. But then strangely enough one day the thing happened... he did it.

We work and work to achieve that final point of perfection and it doesn't come, it doesn't come, and then one day it happens. What is the reason for that? It is not that we have practiced it so often that it suddenly becomes perfect; it is much more subtle than that. What happens is we practice so much that we find out we can't do it. And it happens at the moment you know you can't do it. When you reach a certain despair. You come to a point called "don't care." You stop trying... you stop not-trying (trying to get it that way)...your decision, your will doesn't have any part in the thing at all. And that's what you needed to know. You've overcome the illusion of having a separate ego.


I recommend listening to the video. It's one of the best seminars of Alan Watts.

And that is why, in other threads, I've said that as soon as you decide to improve yourself, you've gotten in your own way. Therefore, the only truly innocent endeavor is that of enjoyment.

"The moment you start practicing yoga or praying or meditating or indulging in some sort of spiritual cultivation, you are getting in your own way." - Alan Watts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQEIUBORqvU

He also said, "Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined", meaning, by seeking help you are defining yourself as someone in need of help. So should you seek help? If you think you need it, then yes. Because it will be the helpful realization of futility through the persistence in the folly that someone else can help you.

"The fool who persists in his folly will become wise" - William Blake
TheImmanent
Posts: 218
Joined: Tue Dec 31, 2013 9:46 am

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by TheImmanent »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 10:14 am Great topic!

The ego dilemma: the bloody struggle with its final realization of non-existence, a truth that cannot just be conceptualized ("thinged") in thought or feeling alike, without invoking the very thing it questions. Some mistake this for the clever act of denial or simply ignoring it -- as that's the pleasurable road of "ego-light". But being some superficial surface dweller does not enlightenment make, no matter all those bubbly sounds or peaceful meadows!

Superficiality is terrifyingly passivating, and so easy to slip into -- especially since it is the prevailing norm. Even spiritual pursuits are adjusted just so, like stylish accessories and something to chat about, so that they don't actually cause any disruption to daily life. Fetishized.The over-arching religion remains dualistic materialism, the rest is lip service.

A sign of progress is perhaps to willingly stretch your antennae; to not retreat from the humiliations, shames and indignities of daily life. To regard the pangs of painful emotions as pointers to let go.

But being some superficial surface dweller does not enlightenment make, no matter all those bubbly sounds or peaceful meadows!

I think this is very often the case: it is easy to both feel wise and seem wise when one is in a pleasant environment and occupied with pleasant projects in life, if one simply has a modicum of manners. The true test is of course when the world falls apart, as in the Book of Job.

Eric Schiedler wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 11:45 am
TheImmanent wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 7:50 am How does one consciously tread this path?
I had my first realization of self-awareness when I was three years old. I was standing in shorts and sneakers and fanning a small charcoal brazier, when the thought came into my mind, “Wow, there is a me! And I am here.” Now, clearly, I had no thought before this moment to decide that I would think this idea and concurrently to decide to forget that I had made such a choice. That’s the way it must always be with consciousness. There is no unconscious moment in which it is decided to be conscious.

A conscious being is conscious and an unconscious being is unconscious and they don’t change or become each other. This is one of the meanings when it is said that consciousness is timeless. Consequently, there is no way to reverse-engineer the “path” to enlightenment. This means there is no manner in which it is assured for the ego to choose to die.

And self-harm and self-promotion is essentially the same thing; a strengthening of the ego. Now, the one who feels self-destructive might be in on the secret that the ego is a source of suffering, only he reacts with vengefulness against his own self-conception -- loathing it and reinforcing it at the same time.

It doesn’t matter that suffering is unpleasant; it is not enough pain. Besides, people can forget about pain. Happiness itself must become unpleasant and suffering must become sought after.

Some kinds of suffering brings that situation about; when the ego is irreparably damaged any fleeting joy becomes a reminder of grave loss. But I also think that sufficient insight brings it about, as you describe:

Throughout my childhood, I always cried during moments of happiness. I was an excellent student and could concentrate for long hours on problems of mathematics or construction or logic puzzles. During those periods of study in rational thought, I remained quiet calm. But I always cried while listening to music, travelling on vacation, playing sports, eating candy, playing with a group and finding myself in moments that people would call times to be happy.

One way that I explain it is that I believe I always retained some small amount of consciousness during times when other people completely obliterate all conscious thought from their mind in order to feel happy. That meant that I was aware of the suffering that would result from the happiness and that the happiness would end. So I felt the end of happiness in the moment of it. Or rather, that the happiness was suffering. This created a sense that I was separated from something far greater, a glory beyond happiness. I believe this is what it means to suffer “enough”; to suffer with your entire being and to suffer with countless other beings within yourself.

To know that what you seem to want is an impossibility; that perishable it shall perish, and even the thought-experiment of it being perpetual results in its distortion and destruction. Cornered with no way to be satisfied.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:02 pm Suffering is at is deepest the pleasant as well as the unpleasant. This way your next sentence makes the most sense: "happiness itself must become unpleasant and suffering must become sought after" . The suffering becomes that was is being sought after, usually something like life, death, health, joy or release. It is all disturbance which is relative and indeed potentially transitive, since all organic and psychological processes need some agitator, after all. This means we are not just describing enlightenment but essentially life itself by doing so.

Yet, is seeking suffering different from seeking happiness? It seems like another fix.

Freedom from the cycle, weariness with the emotions. This comes about through a letting go of both suffering and happiness, by coming to recognize the pendulum.

Serendipper wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:04 am What is suffering? It's 10F/-12C here and I find any time spent outside to become suffering in short-order, yet the geese and ducks seem oblivious. I've given this topic a lot of thought this winter. What is pain, really?

There was a faith healer of Deal
Who said "though I know pain is not real,
If I sit on a pin and it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel."

Suffering is what is objectionable to the ego.

There are people who do not suffer from puncturing their skin with a pin, but enjoy it as pleasurable. The impact of the sensations depends on our conceptions of them.

Reminds me of the Saw movies where rehabilitation was sought in what now seems to have been "positive disintegration".

Too much suffering and too little insight would result in a crippled, tortured ego, not enlightenment. The greater the suffering, the greater the insight has to be in order to disintegrate positively. Kazimiers Dabrowski also knew this: that many processes of disintegration ends poorly, in a regression or suicide.


And that is why, in other threads, I've said that as soon as you decide to improve yourself, you've gotten in your own way. Therefore, the only truly innocent endeavor is that of enjoyment.

That might be correct; you seek simple enjoyment, then insight takes it away. Then you seek simply enjoyment elsewhere, until insight takes that away too. Finally insight has taken away all enjoyment, and enjoyment is found only in letting go.
Serendipper
Posts: 136
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2017 12:43 pm

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by Serendipper »

TheImmanent wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:04 am That might be correct; you seek simple enjoyment, then insight takes it away. Then you seek simply enjoyment elsewhere, until insight takes that away too. Finally insight has taken away all enjoyment, and enjoyment is found only in letting go.
But letting go is itself a way to hang on to salvation. In the end, you'll realize the futility in searching for insight and the joy of it will pass. Enjoyment isn't found just in one thing such that insight or anything else could take it away. Joy will be found in boundless locations. To me, philosophy is fun, but one day it will get old and I'll move to something else.
User avatar
Diebert van Rhijn
Posts: 6469
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Serendipper wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2018 10:38 amTo me, philosophy is fun, but one day it will get old and I'll move to something else.
More realistically, you will just get old and all meaning, wisdom and lightness just moves on elsewhere. A different perspective then: it's not you as consumer, it's about how you are being consumed and digested. Any potential fun a nervous response.
jufa
Posts: 841
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 11:17 am
Contact:

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by jufa »

How do we embrace ruin? How do we embrace inevitability? How do we embrace anything when ruins, inevitability turns on a dime and brings the opposite to the front? Life is lived one person at a time. And in my experience, to keeps my head to the sky, I had to be a non-conformist to mass thinking, ritual and symbolic acceptance. I came in this world alone, I go through living between the arc of birth and death even when I have intimacy of family, friends, associates, and minds which have place their experience and knowledge on parchment for self-gratification and wisdom for other to relate to. I find with all this I have to elect to be a cornerstone, as well as the stones I build my temples with, irrespective of my trials and tribulation. And although I realize I am in the world, I do not have to be of the world. The world will not change for me, nor will the pains and pleasures of living exempt me from their grasp even when I expanding upon the knowledge and wisdom given me by direct experience and accumulate information received from my predecessors.

I have also come to realize expansion does not signify knowledge. it demonstrates the depth into the darkness one has ventured into, and willingly, with courage to venture deeper to bring out, with understanding, the ups and downs of the path which has place me in upon this spot, and this place I stand, so I may/may not see how to bring out of my house something old and new of the story I tell in my living. And in the telling of the story to myself, I endeavor to persevere the heartbreaks and blessedness equally, and move forward seeking a better way and higher position. To me, should not so do I "...have sow the wind, and... shall reap the whirlwind."

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa
Serendipper
Posts: 136
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2017 12:43 pm

Re: How do we embrace ruin?

Post by Serendipper »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2018 8:59 pm
Serendipper wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2018 10:38 amTo me, philosophy is fun, but one day it will get old and I'll move to something else.
More realistically, you will just get old and all meaning, wisdom and lightness just moves on elsewhere. A different perspective then: it's not you as consumer, it's about how you are being consumed and digested. Any potential fun a nervous response.
Do you really think so? I have a repeating pattern in my life... I was once a decorated math whiz who used to enjoy nothing more than grinding through mathematical puzzles during class, lunch, on the bus ride, and sometimes even at home in lieu of tv or playing outside. By the time I hit college, I totally lost interest. I honestly felt I had taken math as far as I could efficiently go... and by that I mean in order to learn one more thing would take SO much effort that is wasn't worth it.

I've repeated that pattern to more or lesser degrees in all my interests throughout life. I've built engines from the ground up, ground down camshafts and rewelded lobes, drilled and bored carbs, wrote oodles of simulations and suddenly dropped it all then couldn't care less. I've been passionate about audio for a time where I built all sorts of enclosures and amps over a period of years, then suddenly lost interest and now I hardly listen to music. When there is nothing left to learn, there is no reason to continue. I'll do the same with philosophy. I'll take it to the point that to learn one more thing will require infinite effort and then I'll move to the next thing. Maybe one day I'll learn to write :p

But now I want to learn who I am, what I am, where I am, how I am, if I am, and who is going to clean up afterwards. I'll figure it out or realize the futility of it by persisting in my folly, so let's get the show on the road!

Welcome back my friends
to the show that never ends
We're so glad you could attend
Come inside! Come inside!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_zo0FiNheI
Locked