If you want to find true happiness, look within.
People and culture will tell you that you have to obtain this or that, to look outwards to find it.
In our highly materialistic age, people wrap their identity around
superficial material items. These are all nice toys, but they will not bring you true happiness,
just an ephemeral feeling of it.
There is a nice aphorism from Yoda:
“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”
Most people are dominated by fear. Our society even promotes it with these false religions
that constantly infuse their subjects with paranoia about going to hell, the end of the world, etc.
This is their method of control.
True benevolent religions do not infuse their disciples with fear.
The fear of losing control. It’s the root of all suffering.
In order to overcome this, you have to face your personal demons, look them straight in the eyes.
If you continue to run away from them, you will never win. You must face them and remain calm.
This is the beginning of enlightenment.
It’s not easy to do this, but you can do this. It’s possible.
Once you beat them, then serenity will fill the void that used to eat away at you.
You will finally let go and truly be fearless, even of death itself. Nothing will make you flinch.
You will be full of an inner peace and calm, the happiness that you’ve always wanted.
Did Primal Rage convert to Buddhism? Didn’t see that one coming.
I’ve obviously been away far too long…
Hey Primal, have you found your inner peace yet? I’ve found in life that the only truly way to find inner peace is when you die. Only the dead have peace, the living not so much.
My demons used to dominate me as a teenager, made me think of bad disturbing thoughts. I ran away from them. But I stopped running away from them and just accepted them.
Now I dont get the same kind of disturbing thoughts, but instead I am flooded with bad memories. Memories about how people I trusted betrayed me, memories about just how alone and unloved I really am, thoughts about how ugly I am.
I learn to accept those too.
But when the demons are no longer there, I do not feel happy. I always dread the future. For example, I dread a doctors appointment. Then I asked myself, why do I dread a doctors appointment? What is so bad about it exactly? Once I realize it, there is nothing really for me to dread, I am just feeling bad chemicals.
Once you realise most of your feelings are just bad chemicals, you just say to yourself “This too shall pass, it’s just bad chemicals.” And the suicidal feelings shall pass.
No such thing. You cannot be conscious of unconsciousness, so presumably you would just rebirth as some other lifeform, which has a 50/50 chance of being better or worse than your last lifeform.
I suppose that some people may go from A to Z in one clean swoop but that’s not usually how it happens, Erik. It’s a process. It’s a flowing and an ebbing, a flowing and an ebbing and an also standing still and then…
You might be in what’s called the honeymoon stage with yourself. It’s enjoyable and it feels good – you feel like a whole new person but be prepared to become a bit or more so than a bit unbalanced again.
It doesn’t happen overnight. Many monks and Buddhists may take almost a lifetime to achieve it. So don’t be disappointed or hard on yourself when something occurs to leave you off-balance. Learn from it. Don’t deny it, don’t suppress it. Allow yourself to feel the unbalance and then right yourself again. You may need a long stick to balance yourself with.
If you keep on seeking out new experiences and achievements and think you’ve mastered them, you might be too disappointed to carry on with the life lesson. Everything is a process. It’s not a failure. It’s just a learning experience.
Inner peace is not written in stone.
I think that we only learn true balance by our being in our unbalanced modes and working through them. We can also learn it by observing others in their unbalanced modes and then in others by how they balance their selves.
If you stay too focused on your honeymoon stage, you won’t see it coming. Your daemons are simply lying dormant. A bit of inner opium is deluding you. But don’t give up. Balance can be beautiful. Even nature has to work to achieve it.
I personally don’t think that stillness is the result of being fearless. We’re human. We can’t always escape our fear. But I suppose that MA may have a point.
Stillness I think is the result of balance being achieved by a realization and an affirmation of our selves and flowing on with that.
They are both part of our nature the way I look at it. They’re both important at different times. I wonder how we would have come to evolve if we hadn’t had the fear. It’s engrained within us and it serves a purpose.
If you’re going to paint a picture, you have to paint it in its reality…with all of its colors and all of its hues.
Even the so-called saints didn’t sit around contemplating their bellies in perfect stillness…except for maybe the mystics and I think that they were simply the other side of the coin hedonists.
it is a process, you are correct. I’m not claiming to be a Buddhist master.
But I have realized my false perceptions and faced my own personal demons.
I can see clearly now.
Now, it’s a matter of mindfulness.
Trixie, you shouldn’t see masculine/feminine within the binary of masculine being good and feminine being bad.
That’s what I used to do and it is an error to do so.
That is what I have been saying all along. Eyes seem to see only what they want to see, clarity when reading is lost.
Have I not been saying androgeny is key?
Have I not been ranting against the 100% woman?
Furthermore, i must declare what is good and what is evil. Good is good, evil is evil.
Fear is just adrenaline and cortisol. Drive is just adrenaline and cortisol. But Drive is not Fear.
When you open your presents on Christmas, it is the same chemicals as opening a message of Facebook.
Yet one is good, and the other is evil.
Identical chemicals, but not identical identities.
How can you tell when drive-based actions are NOT fear based?
They can be both one and the same you know. Wouldn’t they have to be observed and reflected on to determine their nature? I’m not saying that all drive based actions are fear based but they can be.
How would you distinguish between stillness ------------ and------------ exhaustion brought on by high dopamine levels having become exhausted.
The reality that we are capable of seeing and knowing , even if with our brains such as they are … why does this reality need belief? A tree is a tree. That’s a fact. It doesn’t need belief.
God is not a fact. It does need belief.
I know that reality exists. But even reality needs to be explained to be understood. A tree can be beautiful but knowing deeper about the tree can only make it more beautiful, more real.
Why bother saying it at all, if it goes no deeper than that?
Just like beauty, morality and ethics are also in the eyes of the beholder.
So? One size does not fit all when you’re dealing with situations.
Again, how does one determine that? Words are meaningless without context.
It needs to be said, because of Nihilists and psuedo-intellectuals muddying things up.
You don’t want to acknowledge that my logic trumped yours, you don’t want to see that your logic was poorly formed and malformed syntax. I cleared it up for you, and I get no thanks.
You presented the age old argument, Is Evil evil if it is done for The Right Reason?
And I destroyed your argument for you, and I get no applause.
NetGood=good+evil+good+good
In an attempt to save your argument, and avert eyes from your defeat, you divert the discussion into a new argument…
“What is evil?”
Which I explained to you as well. It is a qualia of itself.
It cannot be described by a physical chemical means, because chemicals are neutral. The same chemicals could either be good or evil. Evil can be best described as evil. This argument defeats the idea that Chemicals are what determines good or evil, it defeats half-formed henids made by psuedo-intellectuals claiming how “good and evil” doesnt really exist and is just mind over matter, arbitrary human decisions. Good and evil is a qualia in of itself, it is spiritual.
If you cannot recognize the genius of my latest posts, that’s on you.
He’s been doing the typical thing that young people do when exposed to philosophy. Whatever the next thing he reads, he’ll find it to be profound, then he’ll align himself with it until the next thing. How did you not see this coming?
