Stringy's Xanga

Posts Moved

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:56:28 GMT

I feel it's time for me to consolidate my bloggins, and therefore am moving all my future posts will be on MySpace: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=93864904

so, if your looking for me, that's where to find me. Cheers Xanga.

Ah, the irony of the ego. . .

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 12:37:19 GMT

You can't figure out the meaning of life. To figure is to think, and thought is not reality, thought is the ego trying to make sense of reality. What then should we be asking ourselves if "What is the meaning of life?" is the wrong question?

Looking around, our ego identifies with objects, this is that, those shoes are brown, In reality, saying something is something, is a label, and not really what it is. What is it then? It is. Don't worry, it sadly doesn't make sense to me yet, either, as the problem is that I'm still trying to understand by thought, or maybe it's not that I'm trying to understand by thought, but rather just the attempt to understand is wrong. Luckily I have the "I'm going to figure this out, ego." so someday... it'll be clear.. i just may not be able to express it audibly.

Will the depthness of the human mind ever be reached?

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:13:41 GMT

Alright, so for the entire day, I've read Eckhart Tolle's take on reality, as reality is not the thought we produce of reality but rather the awareness of that thought. So through investigation I asked a crowd today to think of an apple, an ordinary apple, once they conceptialized it, I then asked, how do you know you are thinking of an apple, I intended the answer to be, "I am the awareness that produces the thought, that I am thinking of an apple, not the thought its self." I was surprised to hear the answer to be, "I am the being that, both produces the thought and the awareness that I am thinking of an apple."

...

It's safe to say that I am legally drunk right now, so better clarification will come in the morning, but my pre-emptive thoughts right now are that my understanding of reality through Eckhart Tolle's teaching is deeper than my life long thought on reality of being thought, but is still not the true reality.. so what is deeper than thought? Awareness, ok, so what is deeper than awareness? Being.. is my best answer.... if that is my best answer, are we so intrenched in some concept, that we have no answer to, "What is deeper than Being?"

CRAZY! I got nothing right now. . .

Edit: It's good to know I'm equally coherent while intoxicated as I am when I'm not. I read some more today, and realized that Eckhart was meaning Being, while describing it as Awareness, and that my ego mind, was just getting hung up on the terminology, the sign, pointing to the truth. Unfortunately I still don't have it quite figured out yet.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 12:45:01 GMT

I just bought a book from the BX yesterday called "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle, here is an exerpt, I'm sure there will be more to come. If it doesn't make sense, I strongly suggest, picking it up, if your not all about paying for books, leave a comment, and I'll mail you it when I'm done. I can tell right now it's going to be good and I'm not even 50 pages into it (of 309).

a quick look at the pretext to define a context for the quote below is this: Eckhart, up to this point has been talking about how our identity or the identity we have of ourselves is connected to everything we define with the word "my."

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," Jesus said, "for theirs will be the kingdom of heaven." What does "poor in spirit" mean? No inner baggage, no identifications. Not with things, nor with any mental concepts that have a sense of self in them. And what is the "kingdom of heaven"? The simple but profound joy of Being that is there when you let go of identifications and so become "poor in spirit." - Eckhart Tolle

Ok, so the point he's making is, once you let go of all those objects and ideas that make up your egotistic identity, you are "poor in spirit" and will then experience "the kingdom of heaven."

Once again if that didn't make sense, but your intrigued, I recommend the book, if that doesn't appeal to you, a web blogger by the name of Steve Pavlina, talks extensively on similar subjects on his site www.stevepavlina.com also recommended.

One Red Paper Clip? How about, One Sorry Job?

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:40:22 GMT

Ok, so I stumbled upon this story, about a guy that started out with one red paper clip, traded it, upwards of 14 times, and one year later, found himself trading for a house. Pretty neat experiment with a nice pay off. I was sitting here thinking about it.. and realized that a similar and yet really cool experiment would be to do the same thing, but with jobs.. I'll trade you my "X" job for yours for "X" amount of time, or until someone offers me a trade-up. The details would be difficult to work out, but the whole concept would be quite an experience.

What Questions are you Asking Yourself?

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:36:01 GMT

Asking myself the wrong questions...

but I'm so close.

I'm selfish. . .?

yeah

I'm ungrateful?

no

Your missing the point?

Big time. . .

Why are you trying to improve by changing your ego?

I'm not sure, but I realize it's a conundrum of meaninglessness.

How do I further detach myself (consciousness) from my human desires and reasoning (Ego)?

By winning the battles in the moment, denying the ego's perspective.
Limiting the distractions I allow myself to partake in.
Realizing I'm not meant to live in the past or future, but in the place I have greatest control (Present).

How can I teach my ego that, this perspective is just as rewarding to it as it is for me as a whole?

How can I jump start living in the moment?

Be grateful for the little things in life. . . .?

"You can't control everyone else, only yourself, so do what you want, let people know about it, but don't expect them to show, even if they say they will. Things come up and you have to learn to accept that, or you'll be continually disappointed with others in life. It's unfortunate but you'll find that as you do things you enjoy when you feel like doing them, you'll be happier, and therefore attract similarly minded people."

I was looking through some older writings and found this... it's dated for June 23rd 2007.. so apparently quite recent, yet it feels like months ago.. anyway, interesting thinking.. it's amazing how much I've changed and grown in the last couple months.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 04:34:52 GMT

"Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need & ask the same question:

"We are willing to help Lord, but what, if anything, is needed?"

It is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with & should know who elude us but we can still love them. We can love completely, without complete understanding.

- Maclean (Father) "A River Runs Through It"

Refreshing Perspectives. . .

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:35:00 GMT

What’s so terrible about being wrong? If you’re never wrong, to me that indicates you aren’t growing. I hope that five years from now, I’ll look back on some of my blog posts from this year and disagree with myself. Otherwise it would mean that either I haven’t grown or that I was too timid in expressing myself. -Steve Pavlina

Over-investing your ego in your results is unproductive and unnecessary. If you think the failure of your ideas is a personal failure, you’ll take too few risks, risks that could ultimately pay off. But if you can learn to separate yourself from your ideas and your work and see them as something separate from yourself, you’ll feel you truly have the right to be wrong. If an idea fails, why not let it be the idea’s fault instead of your own? Allow your ideas to fail without turning them into personal defeat. -Steve Pavlina

By keeping ego out of the picture, you can do as Winston Churchill suggested — move from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm. -Steve Pavlina

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” -Albert Einstein

“Man’s grasp exceeds his imagination.” -Robert Angier (The Prestige)

You just need to summon the courage to acknowledge your true desires. -Steve Pavlina

Ironically, the real key to motivation is to set goals that scare you. -Steve Pavlina

Harry Potter. . . 4?

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:27:22 GMT

I just got back from watching the movie, Harry Potter.. I think it's the 4th one now? 5th? anyway the "Order of the Phoenix" No spoils here, just what I pulled away from it.. It was not the same as the past 3-4, but it had a pleasant message behind it, for some reason I didn't feel drawn to the message, maybe it something I've already overcome in my personal life, but since I wasn't being drawn to it, I forced myself to look for another meaning, the movie may be expressing if only by accident.

Leaving the theater tonight I was wondering the reasons for not enjoying this movie as apposed to it's predecessors, and the best conclusion my mind would give me, is that, for the state of being I was in while watching the prior movies, I found a longing in them, based on the black and whiteness of the issues discussed, and how I really wished my life was more black and white (as I was in a state of uncertainty). This quickly triggered the thought of the 'Live' song "The Beauty of Gray" as the chorus goes,

"This is not a black and white world
To be alive
I say that the colours must swirl
And I believe
That maybe today
We will all get to appreciate

The Beauty of Grey"

The best I can draw from this is a reminder that life isn't all black and white, and if we could stop fighting the uncertainty gray brings to it, we may see that it adds flavor, as something to be experienced, enjoyed, excited for.

Lately, I've been trying to look at everything I encounter with the perspective of, absorbing the truth of what's being expressed. As I've noticed, I've really always been this way, the only change that has occurred, is that, instead of feeling something resonate inside me after observing a message, and absorbing it, I've begun to consciously extract and focus on what it is that I want to gain so as to not have any future blurriness for accepting it so rashly. I'd say the way I made this transition was, when presented with something that resonated with the core of my being, I began to explore why it made such an impact in me, so as to not only understand myself more, but to also dig deeper and see if it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Furthermore, since I've noticed that I've rashly taken in so much in the past, I've started going back over content that pinned me in the past, and exploring it further to see if there was something I missed, so that may be a good starting point.

The Analysis Paralysis Cycle. . .

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:27:20 GMT

Session 1:

Why aren’t you moving?

I don’t know where to go. . .

What are your options?

Believe in religious Christianity. .

Ditch that and figure it all out on my own…

Ok, well you’ve been through your first option, and that got you back to here.. so why don’t you try the latter?

What if I’m wrong and I should just be following Christianity?

Well, you need to look over that again, and confirm that your confident with living in a world of your own version of reality, learning by being, or go back to Christianity.

That’s not happening. . .

So I just need the confidence and courage to take on life, and trust what’s inside of me to bring me to the truth, even if it’s almost identical to the Christianity I’ve followed.

Ok.. how can we summon that courage?

. . .

I’ve had the courage in the past, and it was an amazing time in my life, then I doubted… much like the passage where Jesus and his disciple walked on water.. now that I’m back in the boat… I don’t remember how to step out of it.

Describe your mindset during that time of your life.

I defined success as something intangible, more of a sense of doing what’s right, what I’m meant to do. An analogy I had was, that of reaching the afterlife and meeting countless people that I had affected positively in life, yet never knew.

Money wasn’t an object of success, desire, etc. The freedom from that allowed me to live somewhat careless, truly realizing that “God” had my back, and the fact that I just put God in quotes, was ok with him, because he knows where that’s coming from, from an innocent search, and/or that he’s more than the name “God” even implies.

So, what caused you to doubt that path you were on?

I genuinely thought I could change people, raise their understandings from their irrational fearful slavery. In all reality all I can ever be is a symbol that others see truth through, and then it’s up to them to summon the courage to change.

(That last answer doesn’t feel completely accurate for some reason)

Please explain that.

During this time, I felt I was on the verge of becoming what a “Christian” was always meant to be, have faith enough to perform miracles in some form. During this time I was helping someone through a self-enslaved depression, much like I had been through in the past, banking on my logic I couldn’t think of the right thing to ask or say, but something kept tugging at me to ask certain questions without having a follow-up, the person replied with the expected answer, and I didn’t have anything to reply with… I felt like I just reached a hole in my new amazing philosophy, so I scrapped it with doubt, and now I realize that it wasn’t a whole so much as the edge of my reach, anything past that point, is going to be on him to figure out for himself. I can’t tell him anything as it won’t be real enough for him, in the future, when he’s on his own.

(That felt better)

That’s relieving to think that through.

Good, lets get you back on that path. Have you felt the same way at all since your experience?

Ever, ever so briefly, almost like a fleeting breath.

Please, try to describe it, what caused the surge of energy?

Appreciation, a brief moment of feeling alive in the present with nothing in the future or past. Mostly caused by hearing a song that I could really get into at my present state of being. That or a song that made me feel utterly ridiculous, if anyone knew I was listening to it.

So a since of defying societal standards, invigorated you?

Seems, somewhat extreme, but you could say that.

Since the Bible is pretty paramount to Christianity, how has your time with that varied during this cycle, blurriness to clarity, and then to where you are now?

Oh boy… Now your asking me to back up a ways. Unfortunately I haven’t journaled my experience since it’s start, so I can’t give the most crucial details. =/ But here’s the synopsis:

Back in.. March 07, I began to look at my life, as unacceptable, Work/gaming/sleep repeat, was a waste of a life, but I wasn’t satisfied with any alternatives I had seen thus far, not that I had been searching all that intently, but at this point my desire for truth was so strong that, I finally summoned the courage to quit gaming for a month, and work solely on the intent to understand God, with specific demands like “Show me a sign, God, I need a little something more.” That night I cracked open my Bible, and what would you believe is the first headline I read? “A Demand for a Sign” I believe it was Mathew 16:1-4. Which reads:

“The Demand for a Sign”

“1The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.

2He replied,^[a] "When evening comes, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' 3and in the morning, 'Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. 4A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah." Jesus then left them and went away.”

Initial thought after reading this was “Damn… I can’t believe I just asked to get punched in the face like that.” Now my interpretation of this passage is probably inaccurate to the commonly accepted religious interpretation, but whether there is suppose to be a set interpretation for every passage, or if it was meant to be interpreted by the individual in their present state however they twist the context, doesn’t really matter to me. Verse 4 hit me most of all, “A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign.” – Well, I’m clearly asking for one, and it’s clear to me how I have been wicked and adulterous, so I took away from this that my desire was right but the demand wasn’t. That night I absorbed energy from this synchronicity, to go ahead and pursue it further by reading the story of Jonah. All in all I couldn’t relate directly to Jonah as far as having God specifically tell me to reach out to a set crowd, and defy him, so in hindsight I take it as, God was wanting me to take what I initially took from Mathew, and for the part about Jonah for the present time was the trailing of a voice starting to ramble. From here on I started reading a guy’s blog site dedicated to personal development. There I read all kinds of stuff about levels of consciousness, self-acceptance empowering and disempowering beliefs, courage, and motivation. I suppose the next synchronicity came when I read one night in the bible about the parable of the talents, and the next day at work read on his site his take on that same parable. This put me in a direction where I looked around and had thoughts like “Why aren’t there more prophetic people walking the earth today?” “What would it really look like in this day and age to be a prophet?” Further down this road I realized that what I had learned growing up, is that I was incapable of becoming a person of prophet status. Not that this was a new concept to me, but I realized yet again, but with a better understanding, how much of a disempowering belief it was to live a life following the Christianity I had learned (learned subjectively to save antagonization). From this point I thought a prophet back in the day, was living with no other guidance than what Jesus himself taught them, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, so where is this need to meditate on the bible so much coming from? I realized this was actually a disempowering perspective, because it unintentionally (or at least how I learned it) replaced the power of the Holy Spirit with the Bible. Which is more accurate? Do I really believe my interpretation of the Holy Spirit’s guidance could ever be false? After this realization, I noticed truth everywhere around me, every person I met and had ever met, began reminding me everything they’ve ever taught me, and that, that was a safe source of understanding when filtered through the Holy Spirit. Not really filtered but, taken in with the conviction the Holy Spirit offered. From here on out I had a strong energy pouring into me, in every situation, boosting my confidence, making me grateful for everyone and everything that had ever been in my life, and that was in my life now. I was excited about life. Socially implaced reality check hit me, “You’ve gotta get a stable job, to end up supporting a family.” “You need to go to school to get a good job, to have the credentials.” Blah blah .. crap it set in, and I doubted. Right now the most personal doubt I have is.. if my goal is to live, almost as the status bum, but only someone directly influenced by it could see the “realness” in it, would be the ideal life, in all honesty, that isn’t the best way to live with a family mindset, set for the future. The counter I have to realize to that is, that trusting God, or specifically the Holy Spirit form, is bigger than that, and the future is something I have crappy control over, “Live in the moment, idiot!” hehe

That’s good, we’ll pick up here, on our next session.

Session 2:

Alright, you've explained a lot, but I need more information, in your past state of bliss, what would you say was your main goal, or purpose in life?

At a subconscious level, help the people that asked for it, or that I was drawn to, by intuition or Holy Spirit nagging. =)

Why do you say it was only on a subconscious level?

At the time I still didn't really understand the decisions I was making, so I didn't realize the goals I had been setting for myself through conviction..

Did you have any plans for the future?

Yes, and no.. I realized I was just living by wherever the Spirit lead me, but in another sense I really felt that my future was in Europe, specifically Prague, Czech-Republic, and at the same time, nothing seemed permanent.

How would you describe where your at now, have you completely reverted back to your old thinking, or are you changed in any way?

My overall self-discipline has raised, along with integrity, as far as thinking goes.. since I've tasted something better than the current state, I'm anxious to get back, but at the same time I'm not discontent enough to run after it like I was originally.

Have you done anything out of the norm since?

heh, yeah.. I've started enjoying physical exercise, in the sense that I laugh at myself when i feel everything inside me saying NOOO, don't go in that gym, yet I keep walking, just to take control over my body. I've started a schedule of waking up at 5:00 am every morning, mainly because my days at work are easier going.. although I haven't always been able to get to sleep earlier to compensate so sleep deprivation is becoming a problem. Awhile back I went to the Base Exchange (BX) for absolutely no other purpose than to do something different, and see if I could meet someone. Well.. that was an interesting experiment, as I did meet someone fast.. and thats a tangent to talk about . . . =)

Slightly off topic but I've noticed that I'm able to enjoy a lot of things that I found to be less than entertaining, just by noticing how it relates to me, or what truth is being expressed through it. In saying all this I'm mainly focusing this towards movies i've been watching, but also in people that have easily bothered me.

Well, that is improvement, so at least your not back peddling necessarily, so how has your relationship been going with this other person that you were trying to help through, what was it. . "self-induced depression"?

heh.. nice question, as I haven't taken the time to think it through. . . First off, he's driving me nuts, I've tried to help and feel like I've failed as he doesn't appear to of improved at all, I ask myself the question or others have implied it as well, Should I just let him go and let him hit rock bottom so that he can snap out of it? Part of me agrees as it's the easiest thing, but another side says, I'm just being selfish and need to do something, even if that is turning him over to someone with more experience.

...

thats all i got. . =)

Ok, you seem to be choosing the former by default, but not by conscious decision, shouldn't that be a conscious decision?

*I hate you* hehe, I think I have another question to ask him, before I put the nail in the coffin and send him off to "someone more experienced."

*****Session Interrupted!******