pain
The Real World: Attending To The Here And Now
This is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be an operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month’s rent, of a threatened war or social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of death at the last. This ‘spoiler of the present’ may not even be a future dread. It may be something out of the past, some memory of an injury, some crime or indiscretion, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt. The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been ‘cleared up’ and the future is bright with promise.
There can be no doubt that the power to remember and predict, to make an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter chaos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful development of sensitivity. In a way it is the achievement of the human brain, giving man the most extraordinary powers of survival and adaptation to life. But the way in which we generally use this power is apt to destroy all its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present.
What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week’s meals become ‘now.’
If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
~Alan Watts
Related articles
- Living in the Now (medicinemeninmexico.wordpress.com)
- True Awareness: Introduction To Alan Watts & The Zen Mind (tomazomc.net)
- Alan Watts – Out of Your Mind (promienie.net)
- What’s Wrong With Our Culture (philosophers-stone.co.uk)
- Awareness and the Now (time2dreamblog.com)
Holy
The Parable of the Cage
Once, on the air there lived a bird who loved to fly. The bird was not at all extraordinary or even beautiful, but all of its extraordinary beauty was seen in its flight. It loved to fly higher than any other bird even the prettier ones, as if it were not afraid of ever falling to the earth. And this bird was not afraid of falling to earth, for it never did, so skilled and adept it was at flying. As if flying were an extension of its thoughts, as if it were mate to the air and the air pleased to do its bidding. The bird would wrap the air round its body and wings in such ways that it could perform the most difficult feats with an unmeasured ease. The bird loved flying so much it did not build a nest for the clouds cradled it, it did not mate for the air was its soul mate, it rarely ate for the feel and view from the air sustained it.
Once in a while the bird would plummet to the earth as if it meant to crash headlong into it, but would flick a wing at the last moment and always the air was there to catch it so would soar once more into the depths of the sky. People would gather below to watch the bird and even the dullest of wit could recognize its art. But it was not the dullest of wit that sought to possess the bird and its artful flying, so planned to capture the bird on one of its rare plunges to the earth. A man, the cleverest of all the rest, devised a contraption that he may have the bird for his own use. He also built a cage, a special cage, customized for the bird and its special talents.
One day, everything done and after much stalking and careful observance, the man knew the bird made its plunges only on rainy days, for the bird adored the sun, so loved flying those days most. The next rainy day the man took his contraption and his plan down to the place where he knew the bird would plummet, and stood ready. The man placed his contraption on the ground, painted to camouflage the ground; gate open, painted to camouflage the earth. The bird, fooled by the disguise 
because it did not know harm could come by it on the ground, for it had grown accustomed by the air, sky, and sun, plummeted, but before it had chance to flick its wing to again take the air, it heard a clang and found itself trapped inside walls. The bird tried to escape but could not feel the support of the air in order to gain speed enough to burst through the walls. It would not have mattered, as the man was clever and fashioned the walls much too thick to break. So, the bird lay on the ground held fast by its gravity. Like this, the man carried the contraption, the cage, and its prisoner back home.
How do you interpret The Parable of the Cage, reader?
*Image Credits (all work used with permission through CC license)–
“Caged” by Jeff Babbitt
“The dawn of freedom — digital-art” by balt-arts
“mutation” by Ozge Gurer
“Madalena” by Catarina Carneiro de Sousa
“Prison Planet” by Mark Rain
“A.D. 2050” by jaci Lopes dos Santos
Related articles
- QOTD Khalil Gibran (nikotheorb.wordpress.com)
- A Caged Bird Sings (fieldobservation.wordpress.com)
- how the hell does a caged bird sing? (lifeofthekabmater.com)
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (ipseand.wordpress.com)
QOTD Khalil Gibran
QOTD Friedrich Nietzsche
*Made using Quozio
Invisible Pain in an Imagined Small, Quiet Village
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. ~Khalil Gibran
From The Mind Of A Schizo, Affected:
The incessant noise: it burrows through my mind like some kind of advanced technological precision military weapon. And yet if one were to speak of such an occurrence, should it be vaporised simply because it lacks all the evidence of tangible reality? Yet, how does the similarity end? When the bombs are over and the rubble cleared and the dead found then buried (if they are found amongst the rubble) in pieces?
I imagine, in some cases at a quiet small village in (allways) a “foreign country” (how insane that phrase!! How belittling and dehumanizing to be labelled such a phrase. *Foreign*, i.e., ‘You do not belong here.’ Which means your death is not only justified but righteous, because you are not human, you are foreign. Your stink, your culture disgusts the pure mind of the True American. ‘How dare you dirty our precious soil with your unwanted and uncivilized feet.’ With a “simple” phrase, entire popuations can be annihilated and the annihilator celebrated as victor! This green color be apt for such a thought: the colour of vomit and scum and shit. That is the conditioned, stupefied humanamatons created through slyly placed neuromarketing and micromanagment).
What tangible reality is left them (in that imagined quiet, small village or that sly-built humanamton)? Is not the continuing pain (or equivalent) suffered silently? Wrapped up in the reticence of truth? Lingering long after the village has been re-built and daily routines returned to normal? Is not the memories weaved into stories? What of that? Does that mean that once the visible violence has been swept up that the invisible also ceases to be? That is not to imply that I compare myself to those who were murdered (on both sides) in war. I only attempt (and perhaps poorly) at an analogy.
That pain can be invisible as well as visible.
*Image credits (all artwork used with permission through CC license)–
“On Suffering” by Hani Amir
“~Painfuless~” by Stuart Williams
“The Thinker in the Dark — A5” by H. Koppdelaney
“All the troubles lie on his shoulder” by Rana Ossama
A gallery of the above thumbnails to be viewed (deservedly) larger and on black:
QOTD Paul Williams
But it is not easy to see things as they really are, because it is painful, it is real, it requires response, it’s an incredible commitment. ~Paul Williams
*Image Credits (all artwork used with permission through CC license)
“reality tv” by Paul G.
“Reality” by Nuala
“Reality Ends Here” by Akshay Moon
“Opera II: Night Riders” by Barabeke
“03-KEELE” by Sara Lando
FYI: click on each image for larger view on black
Related Article
Complex States At Being
Emotions can be incredibly complex states of being/mind.
People (particularly in this western culture) are afraid to experience emotion due to heavy amounts of socialization and conditioning, especially in school. You know, we’re taught to sit still, to be quiet, to “use our inside voices”, to line up, to avoid disorder and be orderly, to obey, to submit, to share. To share, but not to cooperate. There is a difference. Sharing does not necessarily imply or guarantee cooperation. In school, sharing is a behavioral technique; used as a means to control the behavior of a room full of pinging (that is, naturally rambunctious and curious-minded) short beings.
Let me tell you a story: a sad story about a little girl who cried.
To get to City Island one can walk across a 2,800 foot long truss bridge, which was exactly what I was doing when I spotted a brief exchange between a little girl and her father. The little girl’s father, pushing another child in a stroller, told the little girl to look around as well as look at all the fish visible in the River below. The little girl was throwing bread over the side of the bridge to the fish, and seemed very happy.
Later, having crossed the bridge, I was sat under a pavilion and saw the little girl and her family again as they were passing by. The little girl tripped over a rise in the structure of the sidewalk and fell very hard. So hard that I winced when I heard the sound. She immediately bawled, as I’m sure that hurt her terribly. Probably terrified at the pain, you know, she ran to her father for solace. . . and he admonished her. He yelled at her as he brushed the dirt from her clothes, “You gotta watch where you’re walking. You can’t be looking around while you’re walking!” He seemed actually angry with her that she tripped, an accident on her part, no intent to spoil his day whatsoever. She only cried harder asking then for her mommy. At this, her father really became angry and shouted, “That’s it! You’re going back to the car you can’t act right!”
Did you see the contradiction?
Just moments ago, on the bridge he was telling her to LOOK around, then minutes later punished her for doing exactly that. These are the kinds of happenings that disturb me in the world. What did that do to the mind of that little girl? How could she possible understand that kind of contradicting information from such a trusted and authoritative figure as her father? What was the impact upon her consciousness? What did she just unconsciously learn? How did that affect her ego? Her sense of self in the world she knows and how will that affect her sense of self in subsequent years?
Which brings me back to emotions and the horrors some humans have undergone. That suffering. What I think not many humans grok is that suffering can be soft, horror is not always large, it can be very subtle. . . like entropy, changing and developing small vibrations over time that then result in the current personality/identity of that child in the form of an adult.
What happened to that little girl is a subtle terror, an event that will accompany who knows how many more and will shape her as a human being. It’s systematic, to get children all to sit still or to behave as one being so it could be easier (or more efficient) for the teacher to educate them. A good idea, sure, but in actuality what happens is that the children become standardized. The spark, the inspiration for creativity and innovation and imagination breaks down because the channels created have no room for them, no means to categorize something as unpredictable as a room full of children all having ideas simultaneously.
This is one way that fear of emotion is installed in the collective consciousness. That fear to really let go and be fully in the space. . .
“. . . and I’m free, free falling.” ~Tom Petty, ‘Free Falling’
*Image credits (used with permission through CC license)–
“I just want to be happy” by bravelittlebird
“cry, baby, cry” by Barbara Pellizzon
“The Girl Who Cried Wolf” by GaelForce Photography
Related articles
- Bill Gates Vs Mother Teresa (harikrishnamurthy.wordpress.com)
- Walking away… (thisspacebetweenus.wordpress.com)
- Traditional dads more likely to raise ‘girlie girls,’ says UBC researcher (vancouversun.com)
- Energy & Consciousness (jilljoy2.wordpress.com)
A Transformation of Consciousness
Heal the world
& remember to hold on–
everybody hurts.
*Image credit: “Transformation of Consciousness” by Cornelia Kopp
Related articles
- The Cost Of Living (nikotheorb.wordpress.com)
- Consciousness is All: Now Life is Completely New ~ Peter Francis Dziuban (evolutionarymystic.wordpress.com)
- Caroline Myss “The Consciousness Movement” (ascendingstarseed.wordpress.com)
- Robert Orth liked Pauline Battell’s blog post POINT OF PERCEPTION PART 2 ~ Message from the Arcturians, 12-24-12 (community.humanityhealing.net)
- “Consciousness” (doulaquinne.com)
- Angelic Human Race (1spiricallove.org)
NIKOtheOrb 