Spirituality for Living

One of the members of ‘One World, Many Paths’ seemed to use the group as a pulpit. He has very strong opinions. The funny thing is that he actually does know what he is talking about if you give it the test of time and let it play out. It’s just the way he comes across that is uncomfortable. He seems to be after the negative response. I accept he is on a path he believes in. It’s fine, but there is a certain air of superiority I don’t like. How does one deal with a person who brings up negative feelings?

So it seems like we have already sort of begun today’s topic, which is conflict. How to deal with feelings of conflict with another? Good question. It gets right to the heart of the matter actually. It isn’t conflict that is a problem, it’s the feelings you have when in it.

He must feel that he is not listened too. It is almost as if he wants to cause the negativity. I have no conflict with [...] Continue to Seek…

Perhaps more explanation of the third “win-win” option? That I can do.

You have your ego, and your publicly perceived self. For most of us these two things don’t match up. Whenever someone comes into conflict with you, they are dealing with your “public image” which is actually more connected to your natural/physical presence. So often their arguments and negotiation efforts with you can seem to make no sense. You have the place you think you have in the world, and you have the place others think you have.

You lose a lot of power if your inner perception doesn’t incorporate the feedback from others. Essentially, you have a way you are “valuable” to everyone, literally everyone, and you can make this useful to you. Move through that channel to achieve your goal, leaving “no trace” or perceptual disagreement in the minds of the community.

So make no waves all the while doing what you want in the first place? Yes. People have a way they will permit you to do just about anything, but the way [...] Continue to Seek…

Let’s get a bit wild. Let’s say you have a haunting. How many of you follow this research? Ghost hunters anybody?

I’m not a hunter, but I believe in them and I like shows about haunting though I sometimes question the accuracy. The accuracy is specious, but I’m just checking if we have a perceptual model here I can use.

Hauntings are generally viewed as an invasion by humans. Even though there is no physical challenge to their place or well being, the presence of this haunting is still greeted with disturbance. Which by the way creates an astral turbulence, as well as a thought form masking that makes the ghost seem to be the monster you think it is. This is why the entities behaviour often seems to run counter to its appearance.

That happens with living people we know, so I can image how it would happen more so where the physical form is mutable. Yes. We distort our perceptions of living human beings as well.

Ok. So they call in an exorcist, who if they [...] Continue to Seek…

Conflict is not an easy thing to understand. If one can recognize that it is a matter of opinion, and that it isn’t necessary to agree. Most of the ways you get “wronged” are in fact not about you or your well being at all.

I love a good debate. I have learned it is ok to have friends that don’t agree with my ideas. We can argue and still be close friends. It’s perfectly alright to have disagreeing friends, even beneficial which you do need for your own individual well being.

I find though that debate can deplete or misdirect my energies some. It can seem like debate for the point of debate. That would be mismanaged debate.

Sometimes it can be fun to argue if all parties recognize that it is not to hurt and do not utilize personal attacks. Oh true, and fun has its place as well, but there does have to be that understanding.

Any conflict you get into can be resolved in one of two ways, and for the model we can use [...] Continue to Seek…

Most people see conflict as drama and feel it there moral duty to avoid it, but you can’t avoid conflict. You are very likely involved in more conflicts than you currently perceive. It’s only your perceptions that bother you.

I’ve often had people comment on an interaction after the fact that they saw as a conflict, and I just saw it as an exchange. That is a perception that can be changed.

The drama is in our own thinking that some things are more important than what you are doing right now? Yes, that would be the drama.

To say a rather rude statement… stuff happens. It does, and it’s actually good it does. You see all creative activity has its opposite, but its opposite isn’t destructive behaviour. It’s counter creative behaviour. A creative act that runs counter to yours or at least seems to. Each person, and even every living thing, is a nexus of creative energy. In fact, nothing actually seeks to destroy anything. Actual destruction isn’t possible.

We generate or call it conflict because we [...] Continue to Seek…

Too many posts to handle? If you missed out on a great one from 2009, here’s a few of the top posts that you may want to check out:

Native American Beliefs
Posted February 2009 in Native American
Native American religion isn’t actually a unified religion. In a sense, there both were and were not multiple faiths in the United States before the arrival of European culture. Many facets of it have been observed to parallel the now defunct Chinese religion of Bon, similar to Japanese Shintoism. It is basically Asian Shamanism. This [...]
Bushido Philosophy
Posted March 2009 in Bushido Philosophy
Bushido is a diverse body of philosophy, and it is strongly linked to the Japanese religion of Shintoism. Shintoism and Ma’at, the native religion of Egypt, are very similar. They are tied to the forces of nature and the land. Holding them sacred, but also having a sense of divine order and humans connection to [...]
Let Go
Posted June 2009 in Darkness
I value my shadow side, and have a natural inclination toward it. It is sort of [...] Continue to Seek…

Futility is not even entropy. Futility is wasted energy, gradually decreasing. Entropy is gradually increasing energy. Pointing at the supposed inevitability of decay as an explanation for why we should just tolerate a sense of futility is even logically invalid, let alone intuitively a crock.

Nothing is futile if you have the experience? Nothing is futile if you have the experience of self, and in experiencing the world in ourselves we can likewise experience ourselves in the world. There can be no limit to the inspiration if we see the world that way.

The making lemonade out of life handing you lemons attitude? Hmm, actually I don’t have much use for lemons. Give me road kill, and feces, and ruined buildings.

The world shows us where it can change. Whenever anything “breaks” there is always room for growth. If you embrace the fact of “mortality” (and I don’t mean in a morbid, depressive sense), you can see the pattern behind all these surfaces that gives us the wonder of origination. The power of rebirth. We can have [...] Continue to Seek…

Welcome. We are getting crazy here.

Hmmm, deadly fire filled paint cans that can go the moon and blow you up in the process. That’s nuts. If you wanted to do that then given time and resources you would. But that is the balancing factor, desire. Those instincts that say “this is good for me” and “this is not” rather than the media telling you. Reflection Island here in Second Life exists, because I had a “crazy idea”.

That is the life-engaging spirit which keeps people going and feeling alive, and I think futility is the opposite of this. I totally agree.

People may be materially fulfilled, but if they are lacking in that creative spark, they will likely be spiritually unfilled. And material fulfillment alone leads people to try to beat others to death with a spoon, just because it’s something to do. “Coming to a Theatre near you very slowly…”

Yes, how scary would Michael Myers have been with a spoon instead of a chain saw. Very scary if you could do nothing to prevent him [...] Continue to Seek…

The biggest source of futility is actually “trying”, and people try a lot. It’s huge in about every social circle.

Futile is what logic is when you try to use it in place of creativity. That’s true. Logic is a form of trying, and usually very trying, especially if it’s supposed to replace experience. When you have the experience, you don’t have to “make it logical”. Everything has its own order or “logic” to it, readily available for the reviewing “after” the fact though. There is a reason why that’s a saying. It’s always after the fact, not before. If it’s a priori, it’s futile.

So it’s like saying you don’t like something when you have never experienced it? It’s exactly like that, or like saying you don’t believe in something because someone told you you shouldn’t.

They say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So we’re all insane. We are all at least a little bit insane. It’s how the system wants us to be. It’s considered common wisdom. “That’s just how [...] Continue to Seek…

We need to feel like we matter. A well respected psychologist by the last name of Maslow said this. He was the first to look for a model of healthy, high functioning mentality.

They think “mattering” is something you have when you have money. Yet we live in a system that can only really function well by invalidating the individual, and then medicating them and making them pay for it when they get depressed.

If people feel like they make a difference, the money isn’t so important. Indeed. Volunteer services don’t really lack for personnel, and it can be surprising to see who volunteers.

There isn’t enough medication in the world when you feel like you don’t matter. And we get the “you don’t matter” message constantly, even from people who mean well. Because they think they need the system to be stable in order for them to survive.

Just another brick in the wall. Yet bricks make the whole wall stand. Indeed.

Society sends it out all the time. It’s what advertising is all about: Use this product [...] Continue to Seek…

Guided meditation for relaxation and peace recorded on Reflection Island in Second Life.

Join the group ‘One World, Many Paths’ to attend Vampirekiss Fairey’s Events in real time and subscribe to One World Pod.

Also connect with Vampi online at deviantART.com.

Podcast music provided by Magnatune: Sounds for Meditation, Satori

Enjoy friends,
Dragon Intuitive

What do you feel is futile, friends?

Avoiding change. Yes, and having a sense of futility usually comes from an effort on your part to avoid change, very good.
Pretending Second Life isn’t real. If Second Life isn’t real then real life isn’t real, and if I go somewhere I will see a bunch of flesh “avatars” going about many different things. We’re just digital in Second Life is all. We can maybe be a bit more creative, but a lot of what we make here we could make in real life.

So, what is futile?

Teleporting in Second Life. Hmm, it would seem that way sometimes, I’m sure. But you keep doing or trying to do it anyway, because there is an intention and an experience you seek.
Anything that you don’t experience? Oh, indeed. Anything you don’t experience is indeed futile, but once you have your experience, which can come much later than the experience itself, it ceases being futile.

So why do we experience a sense of futility, ever?

Perhaps when the interest is fading? Very good. That’s [...] Continue to Seek…

We are drawing nearer to the source than we ever have before as human beings. It’s causing some to have crisis of faith, others it’s been validating for.

Crisis, because they are scared of the truth? Yes.

So with this view, nothing is futile with the proper inner state brought to any act? Yes, but perhaps more clarification is in order.

Native Hawaiian doesn’t have a word for futile. Because you don’t live a life that allows futility. It’s about the spirit of anything. It really is all about the “principle” of the thing, and if we live at surfaces we can become very distracted from principles.

Ah, not pointless commercialism? Commercialism is futile, but it’s not against the rules for us to make nice things for ourselves. Spirit doesn’t judge us badly for having computers.

But can we make futility commercial? I can hear the boardroom meeting now. Actually it’s been done. The current popularity of “emo” music. But the psychoanalysts do actually have some things right. These principles aren’t so much things we can arbitrarily create, they have to [...] Continue to Seek…

Responsibility. Are we responsible for anything beyond our direct human connections?

I don’t see how we can be.
Well, doesn’t that include the cosmos? We do chant for the sun to rise.

Our direct connections do include the land we live with, yes, but most people feel ill equipped to see the land as something you can communicate with even though we do all the time.

Yes, and beyond. We do have direct connections to those who have passed and live on in our memory. With deeper insight you can come to see that it isn’t even your memory. Do you have to create these memories that you are in contact with?

And those whose paths have crossed ours, but do not see anymore either. Indeed. Just because you don’t see it now, doesn’t mean it isn’t a part of your pattern. Your “footprint” in life.

I always wondered what makes some people easier to remember than others. Especially once they have passed away. Well, it can be said to be their mana. Some mana is shadowy, and some bright [...] Continue to Seek…

We are going to talk about futility. It has been on my mind a lot. I would start by asking, what isn’t futile?

Breathing? Is if you’re submersed in water.
The soul? Hmm, good response, and will go into that later.
I’m thinking of dishes and laundry, and how you get them clean and then dirty them again.
Hmmm, eating and being hungry again. Cycles, yes.

So what else isn’t futile?

Chocolate ice cream? Even the most pleasurable food is only a temporary fix. It‘s really a brief moment of experience in the total venue of your life.
Enjoying a walk in nature? Meditation. Practices are all futile are they not? That is if it’s a practice and not a being and doing. No matter what you do, from meditation to religious services, they are all just passing phases.
True unconditional love? Ah, another good response, and I will go with that one.
The word try …. Fuuuuutile. Anything we say we will try is just announcing that we will assign a great deal of drama to the action or non-action.
I admit I sometimes [...] Continue to Seek…