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Harming None
The topic is indulgence. At first, I want to start by distinguishing between indulgence and compulsion. Compulsory behaviour is actually very common. A lot is even considered normal thus “common sense”, but it reflects a degeneration of human awareness on all fronts to my view. An abdication of personal responsibility, and an excuse to not reflect…
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Profound Wisdom
There is wisdom in what we were born as, and there is wisdom in what many of us on deaths threshold realize was true of life. The confusion tends to be mostly in the middle, while we are busy being “good grown-ups”. As a Hospice volunteer, I did see some realizations and some denial. Oh,…
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Trinity of Experience
Indulgence is part of a trinity of experience we live with. The trinity being compulsion, abstinence and indulgence. We tend to go round and round in circles on this cycle, not actually having a lot of fun. I am a great respecter of nature, personally, and human nature I include in that. The majority of…
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Greater Good
Greater good. That’s an interesting notion. What greater good, that we all have in common, is truly and fully encapsulated by the teachings of any one path? Is that even possible? I would say the good we all have in common is the very thing that is so often derided the “lesser” good. We all…
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Indulge
Abstinence can be freeing in a way. It leads to greater indulgence, and allows for informed choice. Abstinence lets you really feel and understand your own being, and how you are letting it reflect in the world anyway, but it needn’t be compulsory. Rather than “never do this” and “always do that”, maybe it can…
Category: Indulgence
If one cannot indulge their own feelings, how can they indulge any other? If your path doesn’t offer you any freedom, how can you tolerate freedom in another? You cannot give what you do not have, and if yours is a life of ill considered abstinence then what can you give anyone? If in the process of considering your desires you come to realize that whim doesn’t serve you, and you want bigger things, then how is that unwise?
In indulgence you learn a profound lesson about choice. You are making a choice about who you are, and are lessened by any self rejecting choice.
“This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.” Walt Whitman ( Poet, 1819-1892)