Spirituality for Living

Nature can be a good parent, but nature can’t help us discover human nature very well. That’s supposed to be our human parents’ job. Nature also teaches us to respect life in general if we are receptive, and in general we were when we were happy. When we were happy there wasn’t any elsewhere or later. Elsewhere and later didn’t matter. What mattered is where we were and all the possibility there. We didn’t forever want what we didn’t have, want what we couldn’t see. Honestly even in this day and age, a child doesn’t make up things to want. Their desire is still pretty immediate and though adults rationalize why they can’t encourage that child’s desire, it’s usually easier to get what they want then to get what we want, and much less harmful. The adults keep thinking up the ‘dangers’ in everything, and they danger their child into juvenile anxiety disorders, bulimic teen girls, psychotically aggressive teen boys.

Even poor parents (and I’m rather poor) can indulge their child’s desires which are in the moment. The parent can introduce a new moment. I would often take my son to a park when I was low on funds. He tended to be happier being allowed to run wild in a playground than if I bought him the toy he was eyeing. Then later when I can buy the toy I do, and he’s just as happy as if I had bought it in the prior moment. He was happier with the park, but one thing I swore was not to teach my child that we ‘can’t’. So I didn’t get all caught up in the moment where I can’t get him the toy and neither did he. Our children learn most from our behaviours. If Mommy or Daddy seems scared or worried all the time, then the world must be a scary and sad place. Mommy and Daddy are wrong.

Most parents’ behaviours are more selfish than the childs. My Dad once admitted to refusing to take funds from his drinking allowance. He “needed” to drink to handle his stress, and I was selfish because I might ask him for something. I learned to ask him and anyone else for very little. Hell, I had to be sure I didn’t eat too much because that would make Dad feel guilty. Then he would get angry, and I would suffer. What I know of happiness I learned from sorrow.

What surprises people is that sorrow can teach about happiness. When the natural order is diverted it makes itself much clearer. When we are physically injured we become very aware that our flesh shouldn’t endure deep gashes. Of my family now, though I was seen as strange and crazy in my teens, I am now seen as the sanest in ways, which just makes them see me as all the more weird. Situational ethics are inherently flawed and poor guides.

The end seems often justified, but the means to the end is still not justifiable? Yes, I do agree. But I saw idealism challenged in the light of a life lived by situational ethics, and much of popular idealism is really just a romanticised face in ethics, as bad or worse as those who live according to a situational basis. Happiness isn’t immaturity, nor is it foolishness. Happiness can be challenging, but people are too into being “emo”, being “grown-up” and into taking the mass psychosis seriously.

Yes, but it is better than being terrorists at least? Ah, the terrorists are like those they terrorize. They don’t terrorize for fun. They terrorize because they believe in punishing the sinner or infidel. It’s quite moral in their view.

Some terrorize for the sake of creating chaos, for the enjoyment of destroying a set structure? None comprehend chaos so they terrorize to oppose, and opposition is another form of service. It is a radical reaction to a system that made them what they are, and as poorly considered as the people who choose to support what the terrorists oppose. You aren’t free of what you fight, and no amount of struggle will help you be better. The idea that you must fight to be better puts you in the state of mind that “happiness” and “being good enough” aren’t really possible, because you know on an instinctive level that right now you are ok. You are good enough.  And right now, if you can just have your right now, you are happy. If right now you have this moment, just live it, just be how you are, and be ok, be good enough, then when another moment arises would you choose to break this happiness? If you are good enough right now, then what next? Will you be good enough then? I bet you will and even after that, and if you have your moment right now when the next moment comes, will you run from it? Will it be scary?

Eckhart Tolle runs this theory and he is good reading for research. I agree with Eckhart in general, but he waxes a bit obtuse. I’m not sure he can avoid it.

Yes, but that is because he is relatively shy. Yes, so he is no avatar of his principles which don’t mean his principles are wrong, but many I fear take his principles as gospel which flies in the face of his principles actually.

But the basic is good. If someone who is not really aware and just starting on their journey needs to know more then it is a good starting point. Yes, he’s a good source, but if they stop there declaring they have found the one truth then it’s flawed.  Happiness can be in reading a good book. Just reading the book, and not reading the book and thinking about 100 other things you really should be doing instead. Just letting you have the moment of reading that book.

That’s what I used to do in summer vacations as a kid and I loved every bit of it! As a young man I did the same. It alienated my father, and gave him more fuel to attack me emotionally with, which just made me seek the solace of books more.

Isn’t it better to self explore than read a book to find this? Yes, and in fact Eckhart says this. He criticises writing even in his own first book.

The message is beyond the words, but the words can point at the message. Even Zen teaches this. People’s paths are very different, and yet still emerge from the greater field of being. I read a book because at times being in that place is satisfying to me. And sometimes a movie is better than a book. I find principles I have studied for decades are now understood better by people because they saw ‘What the Bleep Do We Know!?’.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~

Buy the Dragon a coffee.

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