A comfort with death

[wil]

I supposedly died once and recovered,.and then was killed (they cool you down till everything stops functioning and then have a half hour to finish the operation before your brain needs blood and they have to get your heart pumping and lungs working again)and brought back. Don't recall any of it, 2 weeks of.coma/lost memories, but never less was a wakeup call.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

I supposedly died once and recovered,.and then was killed (they cool you down till everything stops functioning and then have a half hour to finish the operation before your brain needs blood and they have to get your heart pumping and lungs working again)and brought back. Don't recall any of it, 2 weeks of.coma/lost memories, but never less was a wakeup call.

That is really scary sounding. I was under anaesthesia on January 17th ot something for the procedure they performed. I like that one just skips it and the trouble or pain seems gone immediately after while the anaesthesia still hasn't completely worn off, but the big or main pain generally remains gone. Had I died, I expect I might have still woken up, but just in a situation ir state unfamiliar. If I never wake up or exist again, that is maybe a little sad but I'm not present to care, so not too bad. The real troublesome option is waking up worse off, in a nightmare of any kind, but something in most people no matter how good or bad seems to prevent them from expecting anything like that ever.

I suspect most people secretly think they won't come back or if they do it will be better and something free and good, maybe because they were born and their parents apparently didn't pick them up like the Lion King was picked up and immediately commencing smashing them down to the ground.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

There is something to cessation, which is very remarkable, in ordinary everyday living experience: In dreamless sleep, or in the change of focus from one thing to another, the observation that it is only ever possible to focus on one thing at a time... that one perception can not perceive another perception... have you explored this?

It takes an unconditional gesture of acceptance of the contingencies of our existence to really get into this. Surrender to God, if you prefer that way of phrasing it.

Hope this is helpful and not just mystic sounding gibberish...

In some things written by the Buddhists and attributed to the Buddha, the results after dying can be described as rather terrifying as consequences for things we wouldn't even find bad or wrong or warranting such results today. The punishments to an entertainer, the punishment of the skeleton man being carried around attacked by birds or something. People seemed to understand these various things quite literally, and their hope was to do what it takes to at least have better, if not the best, and the best was transcending all further risk into an unfluctuating, risk-free, unlimited stability.

When the Brahmins asked or accused regarding cessation, trying to make it out to be a complete non-existence rather than just the end to further grasping and struggle and the pain of wanting and becoming and wanting again, the addiction of mortality, they were told I think that a complete extinguishing was not what was meant by this term Nibbana (Nirvana) as a goal. For centuries, the Buddha (perhaps wrongfully) became considered a continuously living presence who sat above the increasingly slowing wheels of change as they near the point at which they stop turning and where one can finally be rid of terror.

As for me, that takes a lot of faith and vision for things I don't see anywhere, and no one said we should expect to see everything or whatever we see or understand now or take from this world is all there is, but there seems to be no one able to give me confidence about some possible escape from the Mara's prison palace of pleasure and pain. That terrible Deva, Prajapati, Kama, Namuci, seems to have been left with unrestricted sway over this experience, so much so that for me, it really seems like false hope to ever think it can be anything but modified or varying degrees of terror.

My vision can not seem to pierce into hope except some small chance or glimmer in a deal with the ruler of this world, to keep my head down and act justly.

We who lived all had saviors who saved us and helped us, but then couldn't anymore and were overtaken, and so the religions of saviors leave some doubt, though I wish to be saved, to be saved again like I was from my apparent beginning this time.

I can not have hope even in myself to do a thing or keep a vow among the ruins of so many vows in a place barren as evidence that a promise has no promise of being kept. So the Mahayana stories often sound like humans puffing themselves up again, as they do. When they feel weak, they pound their chest and roar. When they feel sad, they fill that hollow vessel with feelings of determination.

I do enjoy sometimes the end or conclusion or completion of things, though I find myself a little lost feeling afterwards. Then I get at something else. One may even fantasize about the everlasting gobstopper, the end of greed, and just having one meal for all meals, one death for all deaths, one execution for all the sinners to be cleansed. Yeah, but where is that true?

In the future, our closest example of it may be in cloned meat, generated from and regenerated from the cells of one cow over and over, until we discover some harm in it perhaps. This constant discovery of harm lurking in every place and after all things makes me wonder if attainment is only ever a temporary delusion.

How does one really know when they are the boss and have got it made? Even when there is no tommorow, when can anyone be certain the endless won't end?

The solution of the most esteemed seems to conclude with just song and dance or obliviousness. None of them really seemed to be able to give the final assurance which appears impossible to provide.

That is why my compass of the Gods turned round and round and rested only upon the place of an infinite lack of confidence, where the words attributed to the writings collected by or written by Mark sit with my special number set 10:27. Words that fill most with hope, and some with the helpless relief of abandoning all hope.

 

[Cino]

How does one really know when they are the boss and have got it made?

The Buddhists would say, one doesn't. Nothing lasts. There are no bosses.

Mark 10:27 - cue a modern day St Peter bumbling in to say, but but but... did I do it right? Please say I'm doing it right?

I don't want to presume knowing all about your situation, just a thought here: It looks like you are in a chaotic place, crossing wild waters, to stay with Buddhist imagery. Now may not be the best moment to take apart that lifeboat, wait until things are calmer, maybe? In other words, stay with whatever practice that brought you this far, for the time being. If I overstepped, I apologize in advance.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

No apologies necessary, but they are appreciated. I'm actually fine as far as I am aware and this is just how I write and produce discourse or dialogue on subjects, its just a style and technique, a kind of ecstatic meditation that seems wild and rough or angsty. I'm as far as I can tell, a very cool cucumber, and there is no need to l be very deeply concerned, if I'm in real trouble, I will let it be known, but really regarding death, though I dislike it and fear it and don't want it for myself or my loved ones, I also don't care all that much about the aspects of it I can do nothing much about.

The boss thing I was talking about were Mahayana models placing the Buddha as having transcended beyond return, so I was saying, how does one know any of that, and like you said, they don't and can't, which is why I've yet to find anything more honest than what I call Chaos or perpetual instability, and don't have any faith that one can force their way to jnanas or stay there even if they do, because reverting to a "day we were alone as God clearly didn't last, and never seems to. This is us, and we are forever making this mistake.

I don't mind hearing about it though, and I appreciate efforts to try to bring in other thoughts, perspectives, solutions, or comforts, and my statements are to try to encourage such things being brought up because I like to think of it.

The same as I've complaibed about death, I'm also often quite pleased with it, but wouldn't have to be except for things I wish never existed at least coming to an end. I've even thought, especially in times of extreme pain, oh its nice that there seems at least to be a limit and that people do die, phew.

I also encourage people to try to make me respect or admire people that I really look at with a kind of snarling or crunched nose disdain, people or figures real or imagined that are beloved across the world, the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Socrates, and maybe others, President John F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln, Osho and Sai Baba?

I like people to try to teach me why these men are worthy of respect, because I have found them to be sort of not that pleasant and their teachings to be things that I just don't really think can be trusted or are otherwise potentially dangerously misleading. Even a Devadatta gets there eventually though, to the right place, so you're not wrong that I may need some more time to cook, but I don't at all mind being helped out, as long as my feistiness or strong tear jerking fumes (while being cooked or roasted) don't perturb one's serenity too much through empathy or thinking about it much or whatever.

What fascinates me is how people come to believe certain things and why, and how I may also be able to come to believe such things as well, as if it were a process or a recipe for how one systematically comes to prefer or take some thing as real or true.

Even though I'm not fond of the Buddha, or Jesus, I do still freely use whatever I can of things attributed to them or associated to them when they seem useable for me, as well as the things considered opposite to them, or from among their competitors as well or the villains in their stories or rival factions.

At the time of both of them, there seemed to be rival teachers and teachings and factions, and those which came after as well, and those which came before also.

http://buddhistarticles.weebly.com/six-heretical-teachers.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBi...s_anyone_have_a_list_of_firstcentury_miracle/

I love to know what strikes people from various things they like or subscribe to and why they don't get the same sort of nausea about certain things that I do or how they might not doubt where I doubt or where they might lack confidence in something I feel more certain of.

When I say death, I really mean life, and life after death probably, as the void interim is only a little scary or annoying sounding and isn't too much of an issue if there isn't even an issue to have or a place for it to be processed. Even now I might crave some cessation because my tummy is not feeling too good right now because of some spicy food.

What I really like, is safety, peace, laughter, good food and no one really bothering me or being mean to me and just niceness all around, the very sensual sort of pleasantness of a worldly kind of paradise seems to be at least a first ideal to try to work towards in what ways may seem pragmatically possible (such as improving conditions in this life) and investing some in the gamble of something after.

Ideas about escaping my material pain body realistically, I don't seem to have come to the sense or awareness of that being possible yet through sheer effort, will, or any practices. This has me very much trapped without any hope of escape as a child of this Earth, and that being a rotten and decaying position, and my not liking it, does not seem to really make it that I can just escape my total sensual absorption.

In other words: "surely I'm an idiot, and I don't get how to not be an animal while receiving any input".

Other things I don't know how to do? I don't know how to be a fish, even though I feel I'm closer to potentially achieving being a fish in various ways than I can achieve being a living thing which does not receive input, or how to exist while not being in process or moving through information in some way.

I do acknowledge that even now I am not what I was a moment ago and I'm really not anything except a moment here and there and gone and gone again, but does that change the very real perception of pain inflicted on me or sensed by me? I can say "well I'm nothing, its not me, there is no me, but the pain continues, my tummy ache persists and burns. I can forget about it burning just a moment before, but what about the burning now?

Then I can call upon Jesus the Healer, or look at the Buddha's message of healing, or call upon the endless well intended saviors who are supposed to help me, or even God or the Devil. None of them take the burning away from the stomach apparently. The petitions are apparently rejected. So where is the omni-benevolent and where is the love and where is the help and where is the truth?

So I conclude there isn't really much good, but bad seems to rule, and there isn't anything which cares thatI suffer or don't, that I am not privileged or loved, and so death becomes a concern, except as a tummy ache relief maybe, but then who do I have to look forward to?

Even though I largely accept them all, I'm a failure by most of all the standards, and besides being a failure, I have only to look forward to facing the very same which ignored me or put me through tortures all my life and just hope they might be sorry and give me a break suddenly? Maybe, but I can't.

The Buddha left me here, and Jesus doesn't spare me, and God or Nature is the one who breeds and births even children who chafe and burn with diseases of all sorts. So who can say honestly that anything reigns but Evil? An understandably unpopular view, because "ew", who wants to believe a kid is innocent but born with a horrible disease? I'm not going through anything like that, just a little bit of tummy burning because of some tasty spicy Buddhist style food, "manchurian veg" an Indian East Asian fusion dish.

I find atheism kind of cute too, because of the idea that because so little is good there is no power which animates change. I'd love to believe that something isn't ultimately responsible for bringing about this set of information which ends up being me experiencing my tummy burning, and that such a thing isn't clearly unfavorable to me for being the ultimate as well as immediate cause of my suffering.

 

[Cino]

Even though I largely accept them all, I'm a failure by most of all the standards, and besides being a failure, I have only to look forward to facing the very same which ignored me or put me through tortures all my life and just hope they might be sorry and give me a break suddenly? Maybe, but I can't.

And you never rebelled? If it were like that for me, I'd torch down heaven&hell and get that great big demon&god-slaughtering guillotine going.

A more mundane angle - when people behave like these your gods do, their behavior can be called narcissistic. Not nice to grow up under, or to live with. Their behavior tends to get them into powerful positions, even in religious settings.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

And you never rebelled? If it were like that for me, I'd torch down heaven&hell and get that great big demon&god-slaughtering guillotine going.

A more mundane angle - when people behave like these your gods do, their behavior can be called narcissistic. Not nice to grow up under, or to live with. Their behavior tends to get them into powerful positions, even in religious settings.

When people use the term Gods these days, they seem to be thinking of or imagining powerful people, and this may be what others imagined as well at times, but the tyrrany I am talking about is the tyranny of nature and reality just as it appears, not particular powerful people or men in the sky or whatever. Most people don't think these days that nature is animated by a power. What I consider the only thing worthy of being called God or Powerful is whatever is responsible for the generation and apparent animation of change, what brings about the experiences and processing we constantly go through, and to me that is not a human being or anything human at all, except that this concept of "humans" or whatever we are and seem to be and every bit of information related to it is generated ultimately by whatever generates. One can call it the Ultimate Reality, the Nature, the Universe, the Power, whatever is doing it, that thing is responsible for all this vileness it has made seem "necessary", all the troubles, diseases, whatever system or systems may be experienced, whatever at all. Its not something anyone can really deny, that nature is cruel, that the situation is dire, that I have no recollection of wanting this and no apparent control over all that I am forced to witness and bear.

That monster which apparently can't be stopped, the one that tortures children and torments the elderly, that we all live by and die due to. That is what I'm referring to with terms like God.

I really don't know who can kill it and end this system and this reality or make a better one. So that power, in all its wickedness, continues to dominate all the people.

The claim of some is that the Buddha, Mahavira, and Jesus variously conquered it. That the Buddha learned how to go beyond it and not return (others say we simply cease to return without a wasted life of disciplined effort), Mahavira is said to have conquered it mightily like some before him, and Jesus is said to be the manifestation of it incarnate into a form which basically rules it. I don't know what evidence there is though for any of that, except that each such person must clearly be a villain, because if they had the ability to heal, and end terror, and to make things free from what causes so much suffering, and killing, and all that, why didn't they or why don't they? Their followers make all sorts of excuses because its so hard to admit our helpless state before pure evil, which creates by limiting and binding, which generates vileness including the concept of vileness and that we take it as vileness and that we suffer and generates all our terrible experiences, and they just stand by or stood by, helpless before the true and most violent power.

Its not the God of my choice. I'd prefer something benign that does good and does not generate or tolerate or perpetrate suffering and evil, but there is no such power as that, there is only this terrible thing we live in and by which we are made of and which constantly rapes our senses with troubles and we see things slip from our own hands and it feeds our experience and minds with constant errors and troubles and drama.

Yes, and narcissistic too, because everything refers back to it, depends upon it, and willingly or unwillingly desperately obeys its every whim without any other option or escape.

The claim is, like a domino or a leaf in the wind that might deem itself self sufficient, we are driven like cattle by whatever drives us, and we do it, and that is what they call the "will of God" that absurd generation of things like noses and butterflies and every thought we have and decision and where it comes from.

 

[wil]

Most people don't think these days that nature is animated by a power.

Well the number of people that pray it rains on the crops or that the hurricane turns and doesn't hurt them or believe the hurricane hit New Orleans to punish the gays and sinners in the French Quarter ... It may not be most but it surely is many that believe G!d animates nature.

 

[Cino]

That monster which apparently can't be stopped, the one that tortures children and torments the elderly, that we all live by and die due to. That is what I'm referring to with terms like God.

I really don't know who can kill it and end this system and this reality or make a better one. So that power, in all its wickedness, continues to dominate all the people.

Sounds like the Gnostic Demiurge and its merry band of Archons.

The claim of some is that the Buddha, Mahavira, and Jesus variously conquered it. That the Buddha learned how to go beyond it and not return (others say we simply cease to return without a wasted life of disciplined effort), Mahavira is said to have conquered it mightily like some before him, and Jesus is said to be the manifestation of it incarnate into a form which basically rules it.

Also, they all died, all three of them. That's something we actually know about them, not requiring any belief in anything extraordinary. What happened after their deaths, on the other hand, is a matter of belief.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

Sounds like the Gnostic Demiurge and its merry band of Archons.



Also, they all died, all three of them. That's something we actually know about them, not requiring any belief in anything extraordinary. What happened after their deaths, on the other hand, is a matter of belief.

To the thing about the most people don't believe statement I made, I agree the majority of people say they believe in God, its just that when I've talked about the wind blowing and stuff, most people think of that as "just nature" and by that they mean random and without thought or not deliberate or conscious or done by anything, just happening randomly. So there is a disconnect between their idea of nature today and God even if they say God made nature they almost seem to think of nature as its own thing running by itself with no consciousness behind it like stuff just happening, not remote controlled or anything.

As for those three dead fellas, we expect they all died if they ever lived, but everything about their having lived or having died and especially after are all at this point very hard to verify, but just based on all that we've seen and heard in modern "true stories" and videos and whatever, we see that everything that is born seems to be eventually killed one way or another.

Among "primitive" people, sometimes it seems they find death very hard to believe, and instead of taking it as is, they seem to think they would've kept on living had not something happened, which sometimes they attribute to witchcraft. I mean, they aren't wrong about the first part really, something did happen which killed them, but it also seems people just deteriorate to a point where they just stop functioning and fall apart or the poisons build up so much that they can't be sustained any longer.

I was looking at this cute Burnese Mountain puppy and saw its lifespan expectancy is only 6 years! Imagine putting yourself through that knowingly? Bonding with this cute cuddly buddy and in 6 years Dead and you miserable (unless you're a love filled Buddhist at peace with it all)! What a horrendous investment and deal! At least with humans, we don't expect them to die really soon, and generally only after they become pretty gross looking to our sensibilities.

So that is what I call God. What is responsible for this, forgive my French,
merde absolue!

So yeah, the Demiurge, Abraxas/Abrasax, Nature, Reality, what we see, what is doing it, the Force, the System, The Man maan! That thing is vicious and wild and can't seem to be tamed and brought about and generated this night and daymare of constant flux and sorrow and pain, the very same which seemed to be the bane of the Buddhists and Jain and what they hoped to overcome.

Did they do it? Is there any reason to believe they did it? If anyone has power, why can't they help others or end evil or live forever immune and un-harmable in our sight?

Every one of them seems to have lied, lived in lies, and failed.

Mara remained Lord Supreme, the undefeated champion, slayer of the Buddha, crusher of Mahavira, and consumer of Jesus Christ, who swallowed him up once, and supposedly swallowed him up again, first as Hades, then as Heaven.

The Zoroastrians lied, the Gnostics lied. The Zoroastrians said that Evil doesn't rule, but God is good, oh yeah? Oh yeah? Does Good tolerate endless and pervasive evil? Did Good make this system of destroying things to survive by burning their corpses in pools of acid in our body after chomping on them? No. Ahriman was always the only God, the source of all this evilness, even the evil we call good. In the Bundahisn written later on by Zoroastrians, Ahriman is even given credit for the motion if things, for change, which is necesary for processing or what we call "being" or existing, which is made up of constant destruction of moments replaced with new ones which are killed just as fast, and so we are made of death, empty, just told whatever we are in a moment, an experience, and if we are told something else, firmly as our reality, we will believe it, even if it was not before, so the lies can become the truth and the truth turned into nothing or no longer so. So who is the Father of Lies except that which generates what was not and now is, who said "there are things called noses on things called faces on things called people on a ball of a thing called dirt and a thing called water. Making up stuff from nowhere and nothing, and making us believe it helplessly "and they need to drink it or they suffer and they need to suck it up and consume or they feel pain, and even so they will be made to feel there is more and better than this and they can barely enjoy a thing" this is a demon, THE Demon (alotter).

The Gnostics lied that there is anything good or any way out, so far as we can see, or that anyone can fight or defeat the Reality while being in it, and that it persists, none has, since Evil reigns still, so even if a thousand evil realities take the place of this one, Evil overall still reigns supreme.

So the great question of why is there evil? Because God is not Good, God is God, that which generates all experiences freely and is the only truly living One.

And so what? How does it help us that the Reality is clear and the Nature is bad or unpleasant?

We seem to think we have two choices at least, but can only pick one, and the one we pick we are forced to pick by things we can't even know, our upbringing perhaps, what we ate, factors beyond our ultimate decision or control which led to some thought or some decision, and we are impelled and have no real choice, just an impression if it.

Some of us are forced to grovel before the Grand Nature, Teitan, Archon, even as we hate what it does to us, and others are so blessed as to not really let themselves believe it, because they think that people are maybe talking about a man, and a man with so much power is a silly notion (and I agree).

Those who are blessed to just go about life thinking they have won or will win or that there isn't anything haunting their experience, those who are busy with the little picture and don't think about puppies limping around or children with diseases, are said to have a few years to enjoy at least. Maybe some Buddhists think that those things they never thought about are what they end up having to think about by becoming those things. I think the way people have made Karmic Reincarnation an excuse to think that people deserve or are responsible for their suffering, that a baby born with a messed up body must have also been a rapist at some point, are pretty much major league connards.

So two things I've been unable to resolve. issues with Death which are ultimately issues with the whole of this reality and nature which all falls under the category I call God or the Ultimate and also Forgiveness.

I can't just feel ok about people who harm and do crimes and destroy people or relationships and are vicious and evil.

I can't also think anything that perpetrates, supports, tolerates, or stands by while able to stop it can ever be considered good or right.

So neither of these things seem to be near any resolution or change.

On the flip side though, I'm comforted by the fact I can complain and present what I perceive to be the truth and also find some peace in admitting the reality, admitting that I'm its chienne through and through, and talking about God, in the manner of Job, which is secretly "praise".

 

[wil]

Forgiveness.

I can't just feel ok about people who harm and do crimes and destroy people or relationships and are vicious and evil.

How do you think it affects those you speak of?

 

[Cino]

Everyone gets to be the Lord of Death at tome point, in Buddhist mythology. But they get to relinquish that role, too.

Have you played with the squirrels lately?

 

[wil]

I been a little squirrely my whole life ask anyone.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

How do you think it affects those you speak of?

The evildoers? That I don't like their villainy? I don't think they really hear about it or know me or my thoughts of them, and if they see me they probably don't think I have anything for them to steal or whatever so I hopefully get ignored by the jerks.

Here is something I wrote just now which may feature some related things since it includes "what do you want to do with your life before you die".
I thought that lord if Death Yama Raja thing was very interesting and would like to hear more about it and what it means and means to say and how they get it and relinquish it.

"Concentration, sitting, martial arts, artistry, sports, all of these things involve the body and mind which starts to form new neural networks and develop or start shaping the networks towards whatever skill is being learned. Taxi drivers start getting neural networks shaped towards road navigation for example, certain people adapt to pick up certain cues or color that they are repeatedly exposed to and need for some reason so they focus on it and they start morphing.

The body morphs too, with subtle muscle changes and other changes and starts shaping itself similar to how plants move towards the sun. One can change their face, breathe underwater longer, pick up heavier things so long as sufficient nutrients are given for repairs and larger growth.

People have improved their minds through mind exercises, improved their memory, math calculation speed, writing and vocabulary.

If they believe in Gods, God, or Nothing (which to me are all the same anyway), it very probably makes no difference in regard to the skill they repeatedly practice and stretch and build and expand on and improve in. I like, in relation to any endeavour or pursuit or undertaking or desire, to also include praying for my success in it as an extra bolstering and empowerment and to further want to work at it to prove the prayer manifestly answered.

Its good you bring it up since I haven't thought really of praying about some of my latest desires, like getting healthier and becoming more fit to very fit.

As for the email you mentioned, I may now be remembering it a bit more but you still might help me by forwarding it again to me or the section you want me to comment on.

So there are people who go to mosques / the masjid and religious community gatherings like Church to be seen of people or as some obligation or out of tradition or habit or in the hope of keeping their family more civil and restrained like to keep them from over-sexuality from an early age. I personally have an individualistic and inteoverted personality mostly, so I avoid almost all mass gatherings of people, all authority structures, all places where I may be judged or commented upon or have to conform to some rules. I escape obligations and rules and restrictions whenever I can. If a Salafi type Muslim says to me I am required to wear a beard because of their made up traditions, I'd have to say they are mistaken because I am not a Muslim (like them) even though I really am by my standards and the standards of the Qur'an, but would be a non in their eyes just to avoid their bothering me for example, that is how much I hate clubs with rules. I sneak in when I can and pull out ir deny wholly if its going to get people trying to control me or try to push false things on me.

So these people who go sit at Church are nothing like me, I can not even attend a ceremony which people speak blasphemies, and I can not allow myself to be caught by any group which wants to impose things I don't agree with or put me into a rank and authority system or try to compel me or push me to do anything to meet their standards.

So my very important priorities are to be left alone and to practice whatever I may in peace and in a way that no one will know or care or bother me.

People often like structure, they like being told what to do, they like having a leader tell them what they do as if it takes all the responsibility off of them to simply say they were told to do it by so and so and were only following the orders given to them by their superior or an elder or authority. So I think many also feel a sense of relief, thinking they escape responsibility and judgment by simply being told what to do by someone else and being ready to blame them if things go wrong, rather than having no one to blame.

It also feels very good to some people to have people they can talk to and maybe imitate or relate to or look to for guidance on what to do or how to be and they prefer to be the same and feel secure by having many people to fall back on or call to for help (though often they find these people are superficial and not often there when trouble really hits because they are busy with their own lives and survival).

I don't think these people who seem religious only socially and for social reasons are genuine or that their efforts count towards much spiritual good or guidance. Their personalities and decisions are so alien to me that I don't really know how they ever really keep up doing that all, but I think they simply follow the motions and don't think much or deeply.

I can't relate though if it really has created a trigger and reward system which makes them happy, because I don't feel happy with it myself, and the things which make me happy probably don't make them happy, to think or to do. Some people also are not so wholly devoted to happiness and its pursuit as I am, but find themselves locked in a number of duties they feel they must perform to be approved of. For example, some people have children young and then feel its their duty to support and live for the benefit of their children to be a good person. I agree that people should be dutiful like that, but should avoid those circumstances in the first place if they can, even for the sake of their health and longevity and avoiding all stresses as much as can be defended against and protected from through forsight and self-restraint and careful calculation and prioritizing.

If everyone did what I do though or want to do, its very likely the great ease of rhis world produced by the hard labor of people would cease and things would very quickly become terrible to disasterous, as everyone would be so entirely lazy and hedonistic and do nothing at all until they die off and do even less then.

Ultimately, I have no real goals other than vanity and self-glorification, and pleasure and enjoying myself to the last. I like sleeping, eating, reading and learning silly and stimulating things, enjoying things like toys and my own thoughts, and basically doing very little and avoiding people and pressures wholly as much as possible. My goal in life is to persist in that and improve at it so that every minute or second and hour is extensive enjoyment and no hardships or anxieties, just ease, wealth, great food, great entertainment, no children, no pets, no judgments, relaxing and not working to serve or impress anyone, but having sufficient skills, security, beauty, wealth, to entice or seduce or put to work or use many people in the world if necessary by being broadcast as talented or wise and very good looking, nice, polite, smart, funny, a pleasure to know and all that."

 

[The Artis Magistra]

I been a little squirrely my whole life ask anyone.

Whats all the squirrel stuff about? I may be missing the meaning or reference or forgotten if I mentioned squirrels or something in one of my posts here. What brought up squirrels and the question about them?

 

[wil]

The evildoers? That I don't like their villainy? I don't think they really hear about it or know me or my thoughts of them

Exactly, forgiveness of others is for your benefit, not theirs. They will have no idea you have forgiven them but your psyche will be freed from negative thoughts every time their name comes up.

 

[Cino]

Whats all the squirrel stuff about? I may be missing the meaning or reference or forgotten if I mentioned squirrels or something in one of my posts here. What brought up squirrels and the question about them?

Just me, trying to evoke a mental image of playing with the squirrels outside in the sunlight.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

Exactly, forgiveness of others is for your benefit, not theirs. They will have no idea you have forgiven them but your psyche will be freed from negative thoughts every time their name comes up.

I don't understand how to do this honestly. I know everyone talks about it lots as if it is the easiest thing, and its not as though I dwell on it throughout the day, but when I hear about something on tv or someone tells me something, I remain sensitive, so if it is mentioned that some character in their story they are telling me has been rotten, I don't feel forgiveness for them but would be more pleased that they be eradicated so as not to keep spreading harm and disturbance. I don't understand how to not be even slightly agitated by bad things happening except to be sort of a numb psychopath myself which isn't something people seem to be able to just choose or flick on or off really. So that has been one of the things I can't seem to resolve, no matter when injustice and wrongdoing is brought up I don't like the people who seem to be going around doing the bad and harmful or obstructive stuff to people. They even tested babies and babies even seemed to recognize in non human shapes that were animated that the triangle blocking the circle seemed unecessarily annoying to them and the villain.

 

[The Artis Magistra]

Just me, trying to evoke a mental image of playing with the squirrels outside in the sunlight.

Haha, I like squirrels hopping around but they seem so timid and fast that they don't seem to be seen playing with people often, here at least. A slow squirrel is a funny thought. Mainly I like how they look and its a treat when they are seen around or right outside my apartment here by the tree or on it.

 

[wil]

Not the easiest thing..but the most worthwhile. I've met a number who have. I know a woman who forgave the man who killed her sister...said it was the biggest release of her life. She visited the man in jail. The best thing we can do is learn from those that are successful at hard (and beneficial) things.