| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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I'd really like: *A Perfect Circle's "The Thirteenth Step" (lost mine) *Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's "B.R.M.C" (also lost) *Amon Tobin's "Supermodified" *Stevie Nicks' "The Wild Heart" (I'm serious, yo) and the Perishers' song "Sway" Anything else is left up to your discretion. Do you need my address? |
Is that too much? I don't want to be demanding. |
are mp3s ok? |
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I want to talk about this, but I don't know where to start or even what to say about it. I just want to have the conversation. I remember Dave saying -- years ago, I don't know if this is still the case -- that he couldn't believe in God because he couldn't understand how God could let things like children being murdered happen. My response was something like everything has a reason, even if we can't discern it, and those who suffer in this life are rewarded greatly in the next. But I don't believe any of that any more. I don't think any of that is real. I don't have a cohesive argument, or even a point to make. One day I realized that my faith in God was like a child's faith in the nightlight, and nightlights can't save you. And instead of trying to enlighten myself or taking steps to mature in faith, it came to me that there was no point, because there was nothing out there. Maybe there is something out there. But if so, it operates in a manner so entirely incomprehensible that I wonder if it's even worth thinking about. Let alone trusting. God is supposed to have order. That's what distinguishes God from not-God. The purpose and design. An arbitrary God is not distinguishable from chance, and that can't be. And if we're not supposed to draw parallels between believing in God and rejecting the null hypothesis, then I point to that passage in "The Idiot" I posted a few days ago. If God is above human understanding, then how can we be faulted for failing to understand? We just can't know, and trying to know is an exercise in futility. I still catch myself muttering prayers, but I don't think that's distinguishable from any other superstitious act. God will keep my plane in the air if I pray. My plane won't crash if I wear my lucky sweater. Last year, I had an odd experience when I was working alone in the basement of an archives and had the feeling I was being watched. I raised my hand to cross myself as I would have normally done, and then I stopped. I couldn't do that anymore; it was an empty gesture. And yet I still believed that there might be spirits in the basement with me. My belief in ghosts was stronger than my belief in God. Talk about a *facepalm* moment. I told you I didn't have a point. Except Dave. Where is he? Why doesn't he post anymore? If I write this, will he read it? |
now it is a choice, and a choice to be faithful is real faith. real faith isn't easy. you aren't faulted for not understanding. faith by definition is imperfect understanding. God isn't supposed to have order. God is order. the ultimate order. God is all things, and the order of which you do not need to understand, you cannot understand: it is too big. but you can see God's order reflected everywhere in nature. go look at pictures of ice crystals. think about Fibonacci. watch waves or look at trees. life is suffering. suffering is relieved by God's love. God's love is revealed through faith. you know all this, spider. |
Nothing's there anymore. I don't know how else to explain it. Every time the habit of prayer exerts itself, I feel an equal and opposing movement within myself to quash it, because there's no one listening. If there is a God, it is Thomas Jefferson's clockmaker, not one that intervenes. And, you know, I can accept that clockmaking God. Dante wrote, all things have an order amongst themselves, and by this order the universe has an form which resembles God. I can believe that. Once in a while something will happen -- and even has happened, and even to me -- that will suggest that there is a sentience out there listening to us. But these things happen so rarely and randomly that it's more sensible to believe that those are just irregular blips on life's radar, than that some thing out there is choosing to help X find a decent job while letting Y get born to parents who will finally beat him to death at age 6. Where's the order in that? All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well, yes? I'd like to think so, but I hear that voice that says more and more loudly, that's just not true, and I believe it. We're not accountable to anything, there's no divine justice, nothing wrong will be put to rights. |
Now that I don't have the notion of sin hanging over my head, or having to pay consequences, you'd think I would now do things I had always forbade myself, easy things like losing my temper or using people's weaknesses against them in an argument. But I don't. I like knowing that my conscience is indeed developed enough that it's not the threat of punishment that inhibits me, but a true sense of revulsion over (from? of? for? fill in the appropriate preposition) malice. Not that I don't do things that are wrong, but the wrong that I do is wrong that I've always struggled with doing. |
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the fact that our view of god is a construct developed by humans to control other humans as much as to explain life, makes it a difficult problem. there is something. there is order. maybe. is it god or math or just a matter of time and how we see things, i don't know. i don't know anything. there is joy and notjoy and standing up for things that can't do it for themselves. |
Hell. I can't write about this now, but I'll come back when I've figured out what I want to say. I appreciate your conversation. |
and i suppose it could be the point of the whole thing if there was any point at all, if there wasn't a point i don't see how there could be meaning at all. so there is - to resign oneself to no meaning, or keep searching for it. if it is the point it is going to be very elusive. i think i can feel it sometimes, but i haven't been able to capture it with a thought without killing it. |
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Awwww, little jen. Our room mate is struggling with such things at this very moment. He freely admits that if he looks inside he feels nothing. He feels that there's nothing out there. But he's bound still by the guilt and the superstition. Reading your words makes me all tingly Spider. I will read them again and again. I love the nothing. There is such freedom in that, it makes me dizzy. Not looking to anything for answers or reasons. Not trying to justify the horrors under some great plan. Never waiting at the hospital, wondering why. Why why why....it must be so tiering. The answer never comes, not to the sane anyway. I remember a post you made when all the bad priest stuff was in full tilt, you were desperate for reasons and justice, it broke my heart. I never forgot it. But things just are because they are, and it's beautiful. The sunsets, the light through icicles, heroic acts, all infinitely more beautiful because they were random and not part of a plan. |
That sense of meaning allowed me to bear anything. Roommates are being ridiculously judgmental assholes? That's all right, because I'm meant to be here. We were put together for some reason...let me learn as much as I can from them and this conflict, then. Students get violent or are desperately, vampirishly needy? That's fine, I'm meant to be here, so I must have the means to handle this. Let me figure out what of myself I need to bring to this situation, and hey look, I do have something to give after all! I'm someone who always feels inadequate to whatever situation is at hand, like I'm lacking some essential skill or element, or I don't have the energy or means to do what needs to be done (even in human, relationship terms), but when I was in Montana I felt like I either did actually have what I needed or would readily be given it through grace. It was quite amazing. I saw purpose in everything. Everything happened to teach me something, everything was an opportunity for enlightenment or growth. I'd never been in that place before. The first winter there, all of the volunteer communities got together for a winter retreat outside of Spokane. Around this time, I was having a lot of problems with one of my roommates, P., for several personality-centric reasons. (Community life is central to the JVC experience and we're asked to focus on it and work at it with great care. We're more like family than simple roommates, and it was because of this that I was so concerned about my relationship with P. -- otherwise, I would have just avoided him and left him to his own thing.) The winter retreat was partially a silent retreat, which meant that for two days we were to limit speech only to what was strictly necessary, and during our silent times we were given the opportunities to meditate/pray/read/whatever we needed to do to feed our souls. One afternoon I was outside in the grass meditating, spending an alarming amount of time focused my relationships with my roommates, when I saw P. walking alone down to the lake. Normally, I'm extremely reticent to talk openly about my feelings with men. It's one of my greatest inhibitions. And P. is not a very forthcoming or receptive person to begin with, so I was doubly reserved around him. But when I saw him walking alone right after I had been praying about him, I felt that this was a sign that I was to talk to him. I never would have talked to him about this otherwise. Seriously, I don't know if I can convey the extent of my reticence to have these sorts of conversations, but I would never, ever have talked to him like this if I hadn't felt I was meant to. I ran down to the shore where he was and asked him if he wanted to take a walk with me. He agreed, and we spent several hours walking around the lake, during which time I just, like, opened up the floodgates but in a good, measured, satisfying way. And, heh, now I can't remember exactly what I said, but I remember that one of my biggest problems was that I felt that I wasn't allowed in the house to express my feelings...like, ever, about anything (and P. was the one who set the tone among my roommates) and how suffocating that was for me. And we talked about that and all sorts of other things, and it turned out to be the deepest and most connecting conversation we had all year. I had been so at odds with him before that, but after talking with him, I honestly liked him. And the funny thing is about all of this is that ultimately the conversation solved nothing. Things were a little better in the house for a few weeks afterwards, but they did return to normal, and by the end of my first year I couldn't stand P. again. (Part of that was due to the fact that he admitted at one of our community meetings that he saw his role in our community as being the one to provide a good example for us and help us realize our weaknesses. Whatever. Pride goeth before the fall, motherfucker.) Anyway, the point to all this was that I saw profound meaning in our retreat conversation anyway, because of what it meant for me to have talked so openly like that. It wasn't useless at all -- it allowed me to overcome a huge inhibition of mine; it was a huge moment of growth for me. And the fact that I had to break the ban on speech during our silent retreat added even more meaning to the whole experience -- no, see, this was indeed "strictly necessary" speech. It was vital that I communicate this with him. Montana was two whole years of meaning. The only time in my life when I've felt I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Nothing was a waste of time or energy -- everything was a learning experience. I've lost that now. Now I'm rambling, but I'll post this anyway. Seeing meaning in things...I can't tell you how important that is to me. You can do anything if you see meaning in it. "Suffering ceases to be suffering when it becomes a sacrifice," Viktor Frankl said, and man, I'd have that tattooed on my forehead if I weren't afraid of needles. But it's true! And, oh, I want to be in that place again! |
although i doubt that frankl would have considered "issues with roommates" as suffering. |
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i think, at some point in every person's life, they're forced to examine their beliefs, to amend them or continue following blindly. every truth and observation is, essentially, a belief. you can choose to think certain facts will shape the universe or not. everything else is arbitrary. i told someone once, at a party (june 6, 2006), that i didn't believe in the devil because i am god. am i god? or a god? i don't know. the possibility is there. at times i toy with it. |
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i am facing the probability of my baby going to day care on monday. i have been crying literally for hours every day for weeks over this. it is the worst pain i have ever felt in my life. my precious, beautiful, happy daughter, in the hands of strangers 8 hours a day. or, more likely, sitting on the floor being mostly neglected by strangers 8 hours a day. other people doing half assed work at a job that i really want to do myself. do i quit my job and stay home with her, sending my family into near bankruptcy instead? i find myself praying to a god i don't even believe exists, asking this god to provide an answer and a miracle. i am heart broken and sad. i feel like a part of me is dying. i am giving away the most important, most beloved thing in my life. |
*hug* i can't even imagine |
i don't agree with that statement. people suffer starvation, and it would be hard for me to imagine them being able to interpret that as "sacrificing food". that statement assumes that suffering is always a result of our perception rather than our reality. i don't know. i used to be agnostic, and i still am, sort of. but it feels truer to say that i do believe in god. only it's not any god, like some seen or unseen, living or dead, omniscient, omnipotent person/spirit. to me, god is just an order in the universe, the way that all things are made from one thing, and all things are connected by energy, that all things affect every other thing. the story of adam and eve is analogous to what i believe to be true. in the garden of eden, adam and eve lived in harmony with nature. and the seeking of truth or intellectual knowledge (eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge) is what separates us farther and farther away from god - god being the state of living in harmony with all things. it's as if the more scientifically advanced we become as a human race, the more separated we become from each other and from nature and from what it truly means to be human. it's flawed, for sure, but that's the best i can do to describe any sort of belief in god i have. |
it is. |
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i don't agree. i used to believe that suffering is only the result of comparison. but what if you have nothing else to compare your reality to? does that mean you do not or cannot suffer? |
"but what if you have nothing else to compare your reality to? does that mean you do not or cannot suffer?" no, but it's still in your head. |
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In the Catholic tradition, you can offer your suffering to Christ (any kind of suffering: mental, physical, etc.) through prayer, thereby uniting it to his suffering on the Cross out of love for him. This gives one strength to bear the suffering, knowing that this helps Christ bear his burden -- there's meaning and purpose to the suffering now. (I can speak to the efficacy of this.) You can do it for people, too -- ask for your suffering to be offered in place of theirs. (Many of the traditional prayers for the souls in purgatory are structured around this belief.) Living people can benefit from this, too. I mean, allegedly, of course. So the tradtion goes. in the garden of eden, adam and eve lived in harmony with nature. and the seeking of truth or intellectual knowledge (eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge) is what separates us farther and farther away from god - god being the state of living in harmony with all things.That's very interesting perspective -- I'll have to think about this. Where is Dave? |
This reminds me of the arguments I get into with my brother. He says his motto is, "Don't overthink things." I say, overthinking is far better than the alternative. |
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http://www.submersibledesign.com/drinkpee/ |
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one day i awoke in dark room. i was strapped into a frame like an inquisition victim in a rack. i didn't know it at the time, but it's the frame that patients are put in when they have so many broken bones they must be completely immobilized. the rack is on a vertical axis so every so often they'd flip me over and i'd be facing the floor instead of the ceiling; this prevented me from getting bed sores. i was on massive amounts of morphine, but sooner or later i became coherent enough to remember patches of things. and they they finally took me out of the rack. i was in the icu unit of a hospital. one day a nurse came in and happened to say, "both of your arms work, so at least you've got that." i really hadn't been in a state to notice parts of me not working. my mother came to visit me and i asked her, "am i paralyzed?" when she started crying, i took that as a yes. a couple of weeks later i was moved to a rehabilitation hospital. it was basically like boot camp: grueling. there was one overriding theme: don't complain. the second you become a cripple you are not allowed to even suggest you are suffering in any way. your job in this world in this life is to put on a happy fucking face. cripples are such a bummer. "it is indeed a deplorable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and of joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground." every time i meet another human being, i assume the dominant thought in their head is: don't hassle me with your fucking problems. so i don't, fuck 'em. but spider makes me :) |
My attitude toward humanity as a whole is, fuck 'em. As long as I'm not the one doing the fucking. I tried to use religion as a way to overcome misanthropy, but I lost it before I succeeded. |
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its been.....years? hi. |
Hi, Patrick. :) |
A corollary to the Garden of Eden/Tree of Knowledge thing: Some folks take the analogy to mean that Man did not know suffering until he had knowledge. That is, before acquiring sapiency, there was no suffering because suffering is a concept of beings capable of abstract thought. |
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I'm thinking of Elie Wiesel and Viktor Frankl. Both were interned in (multiple?) concentration camps, both lost their families and livelihood and saw humanity turned inhuman. One survived with his faith shattered; one survived with his faith intact. How else to explain this but to say that mental attitude is significant? |
I like the idea that I can moan and groan over my suffering, and such drama might be entertaining for some. essentially, for the sufferer, the drama is a waste of precious time and energy. Peg Mayo Elliot, a relative unknown, says that unless you are walking on the edge (of the universe sanity and everything else presumably) you are taking up too much room. The only thing i know for certain is that I can leak my energy on relatively unimportant things. And that to be happy, I need to make things happen, and show up, pay attention, and not be attached to the outcomes. The outcome is none of my business (similar to what other people think of me or this little rant) is none of my business. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. So having not even read the rest of this thread, not knowing where and why it issued forth, I can simply say it is important that Mark and the rest of you maintain this open forum where rants, loves, angers, all sorts of feelings, depression and worthlessness among them, be expressed. Stress comes. It comes and comes. It is either eustress or distress. we humans suffer from an onslaught of 60 thoughts per second, and some of us can discern the important ones, some of us only see what is is front of us. Johnney Depp, the wonderful 21st C philosopher, says in Don Jaun DeMarco tht if we only see with our eyes, that surely is limited vision. It is our reaction to a stressor that makes all the difference in our acceptance or resistance. Most days my mental attitude sucks, but i cannot let that take hold. I cannot let the poverty of spirit or material world take hold. I am responsible for being a human. I must respond in what ever way I can. On the good days, distress can be pushed aside. if I can get out of the way long enough to see that the reason things got this fucked up might be my fault or might not be, but the key issue is what can or will I do about it? How will I react. We had a choice on 9/12/2001, and the US and its idiot president chose to respond in the usual warlike shortsighted fashion of the imperialist aggressor. Just an example of idiocy. We had a choice, but not really. We let others choose for us. Each choice is an individual choice. And Frankl chose not only for his own good, but for the good of others. So did Ghandi and Schindler and MLK and Robert Kennedy and...and they changed not only their local, personal world, but the world en masse, and forever it changed! Sagihara, the Japanese consul in Lithuania during WWII whom no one remembers, changed the lives of over 6000 Jews whom he granted visas during three months of the summer of 194?, disobeying the Japanese government's direct orders that he not issue traveling papers to them. Each of you make a difference. each of us does. perhaps not apparently immediately or on a large scale. But Sarah, you will persever and make such a difference in one little girl's life. that much you can be sure of. Droop, keep on wheelin. Keep in mind that the Christians are the only ones who got kicked out of the garden of Eden. The Hindu's Buddhists and many others are still there thanking their creator for such a marvelously strange place in which to live, and helping one another get along because of our similarities, and forgoing discussions of our differences, except to wonder at such a diverse creation to behold. Patrick, you have been as absent as I have. |
Or "groups of drunks" who get together on a Saturday morning, drinking badly brewed coffee, and helping solve MY problems. THEY exist for ME. Imagine that. Fellow travellers. Dangling modifiers. Fuck. When I was in OKCity I spent some very quiet time at the site of the OKCity bombing. Its museum tells the story of one man's and a whole country's misery in the tableau of debris. It is an hair raising place to walk through. One minute, a whole lot of explosive changed the world and my friend Dennis's church two blocks away had its roof lifted two or three feet, and set back down on the stone walls. I am so acutely reminded of what it must have been like to see the clouds over Hiroshima from the island not too far away. I am reminded of the blank video smokey as it was of Mark's office feed he was kind enough to focus on the day of 9/11. I am reminded of the emptiness he wrote about following finding his father. I am reminded of Droop's story, which I really have never heard in its entirety. And of the stacks in the library late at night where spirits lurk in every row. there is a reason Wim Wender's angels live out their "lives" in balconies of libraries. Now I must back to what is is front of. Thank you for this lunch hour rant. If we do not have each other, there there is nothing but emptiness and smoke, and no clear end of the suffering. |
to quote the intro to the interview "...she (Greenspan) argues passionately that the avoidance of the dark emotions is behind the escalating levels of depression, addiction, anxiety, and irrational violence in the U.S. and throughout the world. Her therapeutic approach encourages what she calls “emotional alchemy,” a process by which fear can be transformed into joy, grief into gratitude, and despair into a resilient faith in life." i've been seeing a jungian therapist on and off for the past year. its been one of the best decisions ive ever made. i've come to acknowledge that the desire to change and become better is one of the more brave things a person can do. to unravel my past, understand it and work to be a better father, boyfriend, dude, citizen, friend, pet owner, whatever is completely rewarding. here's the link. its a tremendous read. http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/385/through_a_glass_darkly and btw, I HIGHLY recommend The Sun. It's an ad free We subscribe to it and it is one of the best reads. |
i can say that i, as of late have experienced a sadness unlike any ive ever felt due to what i feel is a large disconnect with humanity on the whole. it's a fleeting sensation, i usually weep and then move on. the latest episode happened the other night watching this documentary on pete seeger on pbs. the images and sounds of this man who just wanted to transcend humanity, to connect with song countered with the shit in my reality that involved having to explain the other day to my daughter why the roads closed and tons and tons of police officers around and the one visibly distraught police officer came up to my car window to tell me to turn around. when i asked why, she said theres been a shooting new the middle school, 3 people down and 1 officer. so im sitting there watching and listening to a 84 year old pete seeger and i just start weeping. and N understands why Im weeping, she feels it too and so we just weep together and more than ever i just want to throw kid, woman and dog in truck and drive away. i really feel we just lost our way and it makes me incredibly sad at times. |
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