Plans for a religion

An excellent tree requires a good seed, good soil, good water, and enough luck to land on a nice patch of dirt, and not get eaten.

An excellent soul is a product of luck.
Joe would disagree, but, i must explain.

Do not consider your goodness your own, because your whole human existence came about from non-self.
Your parents, your food, your water, was the outside world nurturing you.

So, appreciate the golden rarity of virtues.
If you are very virtueous, you are also very lucky.

Likewise, child soldiers are an example of someone, who was born into a dangeruos corrupt land.
This child soldier is unlucky from birth. Do not hate him. Hate if anything, the world that forced him to do what is wrong.

When a good being becomes arrogant at their good fortune, looking down upon less intelligent, less powerful beings,
this kind of thinking is how angels have fallen.

Big a wise king knows that he is not great or powerful,
then he sets up measures to ensure his life. Most kings were not wise enough.

There was a man, proved evil due to his cruelty to his own horse.
This is why harmful street drugs are a form of disvirtue.
A soul wasting its body, or a body wasting its soul. Such a common evil is this.

Hi dan,

Great thread! Developing nicely.

Question for you: you’ve experienced meditation before, right? There are those who say they can meditate all day. I don’t think I could ever do that… like ever.

But! I think I could maybe maintain a certain state of mind for a significantly long period of time. Like acting. I’ve considered taking acting classes. Acting is like maintaining a certain state of mind–the state you imagine is the character’s state of mind. So if I’m jack sparrow, I’m clever, a little weird, sneaky, manipulative, a bit charming, etc. Its not the real me but I know I can act as if it were, and if this counts as an altered state of mind that I can maintain for a prolonged period of time, would you say this is a form of meditation that can be practiced just as ordinary meditation?

One idea is that meditation becomes easier with time.

I was switching between sitting and stairing at the wall, focusing on breath,
then laying down, and letting go of mind and feeling, desire, plans, etc.
So when i can no longer sit, i would lay, and when i could no longer lay, i’d sit.

I had a form of happiness that is not associated with any cause or event.
I still feel it now. And any negative feeling rapidly shrinks away.
I’m not perfected, or ultimate, but i do feel better now.

I think this experience may be perminent.
I decided to take a break a few minutes ago, because i was worried about becoming nutty from over-straining my mental states.

The practice starts as letting go of motion.
The second part we let go of mind and feeling.
Then we let go of self.

At some point you reach boredom, which i consider to be a form of excess energy.
Then you take that energy and calm it down and internalize it.
After i did that, i felt no longer any boredom.
It was interesting to have no boredom after a whole day of these types of things.

There are things you can do though.
Like doing short meditations again and again. It all counts.
At least, as far as i know, it does count.
Some type of illumination is a permanent quality.

I hope this has helped a little bit to clarify this.
To me it is an experiment still in progress.
I’ve never done this before.

There’s 2 forms of love which i am going to explain.
I hope this differenciation wont make the ideas seem dualistic.
First, weak love / weakness love:
Weak love makes you cry; it makes you melt. You feel like you can’t stand to live without it.
The more you get, the more you want. If it stops, you go insane.
The weaker you are, the more you need. It’s an insiciable black hole of attachments.
Strong love, on the other hand, is a form of calm strength where you realize the need
for care and altruism and helping people, but you don’t feel dependent on them for your
peace of mind. Strong love is a form of refined will-power. Strong love is generally
non sexual. It’s doctor-like. The doctor doesn’t cry and collapse each time someone
dies or falls ill. The doctor must be strong and keep a stable composition, otherwise
he looses his mind and his ability to help.

The ideal is to turn all of your weak love into strong love.
Develop stronger and stronger love, tempered with balance and resiliance.
Be positive no matter how bad things are.

Positivity is a form of courage. Positivity needs courage.
The world needs and requires courage.
Courage is also a virtue and an honor.

The doctor doesn’t love his patients as intensely as lovers love each other, married couples love each other or parents love their children.

Sure, it’s probably a bad idea to fall down crying during a terrorist attack because you have more important things to do. But afterwards … why not cry over the bodies of loved ones?

Why not cry if your loved one is terminal? It seems perfectly reasonable.

Why should that be the ideal?

It seems to require the suppression of some basic human emotions.

Being emotionally expressive is not necessarily being negative. Two entirely different things.

I think you don’t see the point.
Strong love can do anything weak love can do, and “strong love” is something I made up so you can’t tell me I’m wrong if you don’t even know what it means.

That’s possible.

So why don’t you explain it some more?

You described it and I responded based on that description, as far as I understood it. What else do you expect?

Strong love is not painful or irritating. It lasts much longer than attachment-love.
It comes from logic, deduction, effort, etc. It’s a form of virtue/morality.
The more we feel of it, the stronger and more stable/balanced we feel.

What he is saying is Vulcan logos vs. feminine decadence and hysteria.

However vulcans are known to Snap and turn savage.

Thirdly, what is life without feminine humor and a good dose of hysteria.

I don’t know.

It seems to me that love always contains a degree of attachment. That’s just unavoidable.

Pain and irritation is a part of love just as it is a part of life in general. It comes and goes. If pain and irritation is chronic, then there is something wrong.

I don’t recall personally using logic and deduction to decide if I loved someone or something. I don’t think anyone does that kind of conscious calculation.

I like when I am attached, though not when I cry and gasp if they go out for the shopping or something.
I like also when I can deal with tough situations with those I care about.
My long term connections seem to have both qualities - though not so negatively,in the case of ‘weak’ love, despite great attachment - and not so detached when it comes to ‘strong’ love.

Made me think of agape and eros, thought it’s not quite those.

There is less pain if you are not so attached, just ask Siddheartha.

On the other hand, I think one is missing out, if one is just strong, striding through life, never wavering, good and helpful.

I wouldn’t want to marry my doctor, and have them love me like a doctor would.

But some of that ALSO is really good.

For me the strong love sounds to be carefully avoiding being hurt and the weak love sounds seeking, but not yet having much balance. What is being called weak love here sounds like someone who is not grounded in themselves yet to the point where they can be passionately attached, but also enjoy being alone. And also likely does not trust the other person.

A child missing a parent in a dark place.

But I get devastated when those I love die or are suffering. I have found I can also be a support, in part this comes out of my attachment.

scottjeffrey.com/zhan-zhuang/

Standing a certain way effects your energy flow.
I just found this today, but, i had a version of this already discovered by myself earlier.

Just realized that in a way Dan’s two versions of love relate to the…

[i]dopamine reward pleasure

seratonin contentment[/i]

dichotomy

Next up:
Weak and strong will.

Weak will exists because of attachments, cravings, deficiency, hunger and unideal living conditions.

Strong will exists because the whole of the being has a intention or true will that they live by.
The true will is special. It transcends singular goals. It’s more of a way than a specific goal.
Strong will consumes weak will, when it becomes a higher priority.
Strong will gets stronger.
Weak will compensates for inner weaknesses and needs.

“Somewhere in Greece…”

Very nice Dan.
I might join.

What kind of gatherings, if any, do you conceive?

Do you agree that religion is a communal thing?

I would imagine health can be generated more quickly through a collective effort like the Greeks had with their sports, and most peoples have with training for war, and a lot of peoples have with dance.

Often fire is part of the ritual. But monotheist have abandoned this. They found something beyond fire.
Maybe whatever is beyond fire should considered irrelevant.

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First we do chat and email.
In the distant future i get some money to set up a camp which will later become
a cluster of houses used as a resting space for members.
Donations would be welcome but we would make food from scratch
at a farm so that it was not very pricey.

The idea is that people need a relief from work and money,
to focus on all forms of meditation instead of always having to use up our mind and soul on labor.

Working for a corporation is degrading.
I’d like to have a set up where people work for themselves.

Dan,

It lasts much longer…

So, if you have to discipline your child (out of love) let us say by taking away one of his privileges for a week to teach him that actions and behavior can have consequences, are you saying that there cannot be pain and irritation there ~~ both on the part of the parent or the child?
What to you is the most basic ingredient and value where love is concerned?

You seem to be portraying love in a kind of easy-going, harmonious way? Is real love always that way?

I really do not want to take away from your thoughts here but doesn’t that statement almost feel like love itself is being used for the purpose of feeling better about ourselves instead of for the growth and maturity of the parties involved?

Acting out of love in a real way does not necessarily have to make us feel more stable and balanced. I mean, that is not its real purpose unless perhaps it allows for the other to feel that way…support that is.