martinhea
As a man thinks....
Posted on: 04/09/2009 22:07
As a man thinks so shall he be. If we truly come from God and the creative universe then we too are creators like God. However, if what we envision can be manifested simply through intention and will, then why can we not create peace? Personally, I think that desire and will alone are not adequate to create a thing in our lives. A state of readiness must also accompany it. The lightbulb could not have been invented in the 12th century because the ability to harness electricity, blow glass into a bulb shape, understand the excitability of electrons in their valences in a filament and the electrical wiring codes are enough to create an alternative to the gas lamp. The environmental conditions must be primed to accept the infrastructure resulting from the invention of the lightbulb. All we have to do is look at the designs of Leonardo Da Vinci's helicopter and submarine - great inventions looking back on them, but figments of imagination during his time. The concept of peace as well must have it's ideal conditions. For now peace cannot come to our time because we have not created the accepting conditions for it. There is not a state of readiness, and like the lightbulb we sit in the dark ages thinking that there's gotta be a better way to see at night than by lighting a torch. By sitting and pondering the mere lack of peace in our lives, it will not come. By wanting peace in our lives it will not come. By making ourselves ready for peace...it will come. How can we do this? Think of things that happen every day that you can be peaceful about. For example, when someone cuts you off when driving to work, instead of giving them the finger and honking your horn, recognise the feeling of anger you feel and turn it into a feeling of forgiveness and love. Easy to say, hard to do, I know. I spent years driving with clenched teeth and talking abusively to other drivers. I thought the whole time that I was hurting them and getting my point across at their expense, but I was actually giving myself high blood pressure and my husband even commented that he hated to drive with me. I changed my way of thinking by becoming aware of my angry feelings and realized that I had more control over how my drive in the morning went than I had at first thought. Soon, I became calm and took other drivers with a grain of salt. Perhaps that person is late for work, perhaps their child is sick at home while they have to go to work, perhaps they really hate their job, but can't quit because there's another baby on the way. Funny how if it were us or our best friend or family member in that situation, we would be compassionate and understanding..so why do we hate this unknown human being who offends us? Jesus said it so well when he told us to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". It really is the biggest challenge we face as a human race. Finding peace between family members, neighbors, countries or other religions or races all begins with the small ways that we make ourselves ready for peace. If we are ready then we can create the kind of peace that we dream about, the kind that our creator promised when he sent his son for our salvation.
Search
Recently Active...
Comments
SLJudds
Posted on: 04/10/2009 01:07
My body has not yet followed my mind into the gutter.
trishcuit
Posted on: 04/10/2009 14:09
my brain hurts.
martinhea
Posted on: 04/10/2009 18:45
Hey, at least you read it...thanks.
trishcuit
Posted on: 04/12/2009 00:09
we aim to please.
Motheroffive
Posted on: 04/12/2009 00:56
martinhea, I appreciate the effort you've made in bringing your thoughts to the WCafe. However, one of things that I've noticed on internet discussion boards is the need for lot of "white space" around the text. Lots of people post in a kind of "train of consciousness" style, one sentence/thought following another and it's hard to figure out when to create a paragraph. But, for those of us reading, it's essential to have white space to be able read what's been written.
Can I suggest that you break up your opening posting into grouping of 4-7 sentences and then hit enter twice between them (for some reason, on his board, it will only show up as one line between the paragraph)? This would make it much easier to read what you've written and to give it the attention you deserve.
InannaWhimsey
Posted on: 04/12/2009 01:36
Hello there martinhea, welcome to some semblance of paradise :3
Why not peace indeed?
I think various different traditions have tried to come up with 'answers' to this, involving various different knowings and mechanisms for action...
Just some of them:
Nietzche saw the beliefs around him failing and tried to come up with his Eternal Recurrance and the ultimate of the Self-Made Man...Free Market economics was invented to try to harness man's self-interest in a more positive manner...Hermeticism was discovered, as people kept on seeing similarities and correlations between what they saw in the outside world and their inner worlds...Buddhism came aboot to deal with "the problem" (suffering) and "the cure" (freedom from suffering)...Wittgenstein created his Tractatus-Logicus Philosophicus, because he saw that a BIG problem was people confused their thoughts on something with there being Real Insoluble Problems when it was really just a matter of psychology and clarification of terms...we have the writers of the Bible seeing the big problem of people being slaves and being able to be free but not freeing themselves...
To end with, a quote by Colin Wilson.
"Man is literally a god: a god suffering from laziness, amnesia and nightmares.
The Catholics call this 'fault' of human consciousness Original Sin; Heidigger calls it 'forgetfulness of existence'. But it is important to understand that it is not a basic flaw. As odd as it may sound, we suffer from the 'spiritual head cold' because we want to. A man who wants to think locks himself into a quiet room, and perhaps closes all the windows. This has its advantages and disadvantages; it allows him to concentrate, but it cuts out the fresh air and the sound of the birds. When I have to concentrate...I lock myself into an inner room, and close all the windows. If I now decide to go for a walk, I cannot simply open all these windows again. It takes time to 'unwind', to relax.
This is why most human beings spend their lives in a highly uncomfortable state of 'generalized hypertension' without knowing what to do about it.
When we are worried, there seem to be two possible courses. One is to _do_ something about it, to look for a way out. The other is to go on feeling worried, to accept it passively as we accept a bad cold or a toothache.
There is a third course, but most of us are unaware of it. When a man wants something badly, or wants to avoid something badly, he makes an immense effort of concentration, an inner convulsion. The mental body 'contracts', and the result is a new sense of power, control and _freedom_. Graham Greene's 'whiskey-priest', on the point of being shot by a firing squad, realises that 'it would have been so easy to be a saint.' Why? Because the threat of immediate extinction causes the inner convulsion, a greater effort of will than he has made in years, perhaps in the whole of his life. And he realises, with a shock, that if he had made this same effort of will earlier, he need not have wasted his life."
--Colin Wilson
As above, so below, a self-writing poem,
Inannawhimsey
martinhea
Posted on: 04/12/2009 22:08
Thanks Motheroffive for the rebuking on the paragraphs (or lack of). So sorry about that. Thanks Inannawhimsey for the reply.
I am impressed with the numerous religious philosophers you referred to. I agree that we 'manifest' things around us that help us deal with the trials and tribulations of being of a higher class of animals.
On Wilson: I cannot remember if it was Dostoyevsky(sp?) who wrote a short story about a man who recounted what a waste his life was as he lay dying. Perhaps it is also this fear of having come to the end and upon looking back realized that we could have done so much more with our lives.
The question to your answer is what worries us most? If we are simply reactive creatures and create simply to placate and solve an imaginary problem then we can rationalize anything. (Wars are begun this way, No?)
Our exsistence without consciousness becomes redundant and repetitive. I take it as a great comfort that we are even contemplating this, don't you?
Motheroffive
Posted on: 04/13/2009 20:50
I wasn't intending to rebuke but rather to give you a heads-up around those of us over 40 whose eyesight is changing, and not for the better.