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  1. #61
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    "Relationship Anarchy." Hmm..... sounds like the new polyamory.

    Also recently heard of anarcho-capitalism. Not sure why anarchy's the new thing. I get that TPTB suck, but anarchy lasts about three seconds. Then the warlords come in. There has to be a structure of rules for there to be any capitalism at all.

    Back to relationships. I've been married 23 years. My husband and I don't cheat on each other. We also still have sex frequently. In fact, there's no better medicine for stress or depression for my husband than love-making with me.

    My parents taught me that sex was best between two people who love each other. For me, they were right.

    I have many friendships with men who are not my husband. I can often be found hanging out with them when he's not around. They don't push themselves on me, or treat me with disrespect. If some among them are attracted to me, they don't let that get in the way with friendship. Men eventually relax around me and act naturally (for the most part). They are more crude when amongst only themselves as I occasionally witness when they slip, forgetting a woman is nearby. I'm not that way and I don't try to be 'one of the guys'. They'll never look at me that way anyway. But friendship and closeness is still possible and doesn't cause any trouble with my marriage. That's because I also treat it with respect.

    Respect goes a long way. As does truth.

    So I do expand my relationships and interactions. Verbal interactions, especially face to face, can be fantastically stimulating.

    The people I know who don't marry or have families do so out of choice. They know themselves well enough to know the kind of relationships that will work. And the kind that won't.

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  3. #62
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    Philosophy of Hope
    Jean-Marie Guyau 1895




    When we hope for something grand, we draw from the beauty of the goal the courage to brave all obstacles. If the chance of reaching it diminishes, the desire grows proportionally. The farther from reality lies the goal, the more desirable it is, and since desire is the supreme force it has the greatest amount of force at its service. The vulgar goods of life are so small a thing that in comparison the ideal conceived must appear immense: all of our petty joys are shattered before that of realizing an elevated idea. This idea, even if it amounts to almost nothing in the realm of nature and even of science can, in relation to us, be everything: it’s the offering of the poor. To seek the truth: this act offers nothing of the conditional, the doubtful, the fragile. We have something in our hands, not the truth perhaps (who will ever hold it?), but at least the spirit that wants to discover it. When you stubbornly halt before some too narrow doctrine, it’s a chimera that flees from your fingers; but carry on, keep seeking, keep hoping: this alone is not a chimera. The truth is found in movement, in hope, and it is with reason that we have proposed as a complement to positive morality a “philosophy of hope.” A child saw a butterfly poised on a blade of grass; the butterfly had been made numb by the north wind. The child plucked the blade of grass, and the living flower that was at its tip, still numb, remained attached. He returned home, holding his find in his hand. A ray of sunlight broke through, striking the butterfly’s wing, and suddenly, revived and light, the living flower flew away into the glare. All of us, scholars and workers, we are like the butterfly: our strength is made of a ray of light. Not even: of the hope of a ray. One must thus know how to hope; hope is what carries us higher and farther. “But it’s an illusion!” What do you know of this? Should we not take a step for fear that one day the earth will slide away from under our feet? Looking far into the past or the future is not the only thing; one must look into oneself. One must see there the living forces that demand to be expended, and we must act.

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  5. #63
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    Cosmic Orgasm: An Enlightening Story of the Great Mystery of Existence
    Zen Gardiner
    http://www.zengardner.com/cosmic-org...ery-existence/




    Thereā€™s a certain feelingā€”a feeling thatā€™s also kind of an experience and an idea and a way of seeing. This feeling is central to my perspective and my shifting identity, my perpetual becoming. And I always want to articulate it, but I can never seem to find the necessary words.

    Everything is happening. This is all actually here.

    That almost gets at it. I mean, it works for me. Contains the meaning I wish to convey. I could say it that way and it could be that simple ā€¦ if language werenā€™t so subjective and flat and insufficient.

    The problem is that most people would read those eight words and see something banal or uninspired or even meaningless and would move on to another something in milliseconds.

    When really I suspect that those eight words constitute the most astounding and un-process-able and soul-shivering and speechlessness-inducing fact, when seen from a certain non-default perspectiveā€”an almost out-of-body, all-encompassing perspective, the perspective of an infant or a god, a perspective which, as Emerson wrote, ā€œsee[s] the miraculous in the common.ā€



    Heaven in a Wild Flower

    But the only people who would read those words and feel The Fact in that way are the ones who are already in on the secret, the un-swallow-able monolith of a truthā€”that this is all really existing right now.

    The problem is that language can only conjure in your brain an understanding based on what you have consciously or probably more often unconsciously determined certain words to mean. You assume youā€™re absorbing someone elseā€™s ideas when you read, but much of what youā€™re doing is constructing your own interpretation of what the author may or may not have tried to contain within the arrangement of words. And there is necessarily a fathomless gulf between your interpretation and the real, raw subjectivity that the author tried and failed to transpose precisely onto blank whiteness. I would argue that this remains largely true even in the context of ā€œnon-fictionā€ or ā€œscientificā€ writing which purports to deal in objectivity, but thatā€™s a discussion for another day.

    In short, language does not and cannot transmit the meaning that a particular arrangement of words actually had for the person who generated and arranged the words. Language is always, to a great extent, a mirror.



    Bark-Clad Earth-Claw

    Everything is happening. This is all actually here.

    Things exist. Weā€”instantiated, tangible, intricate beingsā€”are weaving and roaming about on something we call ā€œplanetā€ā€”a rock that is both large and smallā€”in an endlessly spacious hollow of existence in which innumerable objects are hurtling through eternity at incomprehensible speeds. Paradoxically, we seem at once to be individual, separate creatures and also attributes of a single process, a great sea of absoluteness that we probably cannot know objectively and from which we cannot be extricated.



    Location: The Void

    You canā€™t fathom this. I canā€™t fathom this. Maybe you and I, if weā€™re brave, can begin to imagine this picture of things, begin to pull back from our personal narratives and self-interested modi operandi to glimpse beyond the veil of egotism, to feel one iota of the terror and awe and ecstasy that this seamless magnitude would surely excite in any who could become somehow a stranger to it and then be re-introduced, who could receive the knowledge of its existence for the first time. To be alive! To live! My God! All is here! All is here!

    .....

    For many, though, I fear that these words would seem only a feathery description of normalcy, of ā€œlife,ā€ a state of affairs long ago accepted as the foundational factoid, the same old, the unquestioned aquarium. Yeah, lifeā€™s a thing and itā€™s pretty wild, whatever, everybody knows that, shut the **** up.

    No, bro, no. See, I donā€™t think you get it. I think if we all really got it, really knew the what-the-****-ness of this mystery in our bedrock, we would all simultaneously stopā€”stop chattering, stop complaining, stop politicking, stop attention-seeking, stop consuming, stop rushing down the streets to our made-up jobs and imaginary Very Important Tasksā€”and for maybe like six or seven hours just peer around, baffled, startled, repulsed, euphoric, mortified. Maybe weā€™d start sniffing each other or making out sporadically or kneeling before the fat, yawning sky weeping tears of overflowing and indeterminate pathos.



    Where are we?

    I donā€™t know what would happen. Eventually we would of course have to get back to doing something because of certain biological imperatives represented metaphorically by the bottom of Maslowā€™s hierarchy. Things would roll onward, yes, sure, I guess. I suppose they must. And maybe they wouldnā€™t be all that different. But maybe the consequences wouldnā€™t be the point. Maybe that moment of collective awe would be the zenithā€”the universeā€™s climactic soaring sighing orgasm of self-celebration and self-realization after untold millennia spent employing biological mechanisms to gain self-awareness and eventually maybe touch itself under the covers at night a little bit. Maybe all events after that fated, impossible moment would be unpredictable. Maybe reality would collapse in on itself, finally liberated to the point of being able to transform into something entirely different and inconceivable. Maybe weā€™d all start laughing and then derive further humor-tinder from the shared joke, igniting and elevating our collective guffaw to the level of spasm and convulsion, everyone on Earth writhing on the ground in unison, shrieking uncontrollably at the unbearable absurdity of embodiment and the ridiculous unknowable aeons it has thus far entailed.

    I donā€™t know. I suppose we probably would get back to doing our necessary and idiosyncratic human somethings. But maybe weā€™d get back to doing our necessary somethings a little differently. Maybe weā€™d all move a bit slower, take unplanned detours. Maybe weā€™d all actually see more of the people we brush past or briefly interact with in the theatre of the day-to-day. Maybe thereā€™d be a sudden widespread surge of desire to live in quaint, remote cabins complete with bonfires, ample libraries, starry nights, loving cat- and dog-friends.



    Love (+ a Cabin) is All You Need

    Everything is happening. This is all actually here.

    Maybe weā€™d all dispense with most of our possessions and give all superfluous wealth to the global poor. Maybe everyone would feel irresistibly compelled to phone their parents and profess profound basic gut-level love as tears gushed deterministically, geyser-like. Maybe weā€™d become way more interested in trying to see things through other individualsā€™ reality tunnels, realizing that each perspective might have something unique, interesting, and/or nourishing to add to our understanding of that which cannot be understood. Maybe weā€™d all become much more empathetic, kind even, realizing every other feeling, thinking animal is grappling with this same existence and the inevitable suffering it entails.

  6. #64
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    Third Density Embrace ā€“ Are the Gods Jealous?
    by Julian Rose
    http://www.zengardner.com/third-dens...-gods-jealous/



    Is sexuality to be dispensed with ā€“ as the price for spiritual emancipation?


    What if I posited that "third density" is where the wandering ethereal spirits of the cosmos most want to be..

    That it is within third density existence that the setting for a final and full awakening is to be manifest.

    That spiritual aspiration which seeks to evolve as an ā€˜out of bodyā€™ state, is a form of elaborate escape mechanism..

    An escape mechanism for those who have given-up on the integration of body, mind and spirit within the temple of the human condition.

    Well, are not these valid posits?

    So let us explore just why we devote so much time trying to be something other than what we are.

    .....

    The integration of spirit and the flesh seems like a pretty profound challenge for struggling homo sapiens. So often these two natural allies seem to negate each other ā€“ one appearing to revel in a sense of liberation when freed from the other. Indeed, much of Christianity has for centuries extolled the virtue of recognising the superiority of the spiritual over the corporeal ā€“ and has recommended living a life moderated according to this dictum.

    Many Eastern spiritual teachings recommend long periods of largely corporeally static meditation in order to make contact with the divine in oneā€™s self and come closer to that same power in the beyond. Well, it may work, but you will probably end up with a body like the laughing Budha ā€“ however at least he saw the joke..

    It has also been suggested that long term devotion to spirit uplifting and mind expanding techniques will cause the human physique to undergo a steady physical evolution. One in which the head becomes the dominant feature and the body shrinks into a mere slither of its former self.

    It is thought, in these circles, that aspiration for unity with Source requires much exercising of the pineal gland and other neglected regions of the neocortex. So that other bodily organs get steadily receding levels of attention and stimulation, until they eventuality shrink into almost nothing.

    We have probably all seen those pictures of supposedly "advanced" humans, with huge triangular shaped heads, bulging dilated eyes and tiny waif-like bodies tapering into skinny and strangely prehistoric looking legs and feet. Well, would you like to end up looking like this?

    The first thing that strikes me is how sexless these beings appear. They seem to be neutered; and that is expressed also in their pinched facial expression and small straight-set mouths. Altogether a very unsavoury mix!

    Whether this is actually "an alien" (as in Roswell incident) or an evolved human does not matter that much, because there exists a school of spiritual thinking which believes that is where we are headed anyway. It is a school which tends to debase sexuality, seeing it not as a source of profound richness ā€“ but as something of a persistent problem.

    Which raises the question: is sexuality to be dispensed with ā€“ as the price for spiritual emancipation?

    Persistent denial of the tactile subtleties of the physical senses, in favour of a pure spirituality, would no doubt lead we humans to lose our sensual proclivity and physical human beauty. Just as indulging in over-the-top hedonistic excesses produces a distorted and unbalanced physique and the loss of our ability to develop higher levels of conscious awareness. We are looking for something which is neither of these extremes.

    Catch for a moment in your mindā€™s eye Michael Angeloā€™s superbly sculptured statue of David in Florenceā€™s Piazza della Signoria. Davidā€™s fine torso, so delicately balanced between male and female, is sublimely expressive of the beauty of the human physique. An expressiveness which would not be so resonant if it did not also suggest both a spiritual dimension and intellectual curiosity. Its sexual resonance is not pronounced, but finely nuanced.

    Now cut to that futuristic and supposedly advanced/evolved sexless being I have already described earlier. Shock!

    Now to be fair, this ā€˜E.Tā€™ like creature (should it exist) might well be the nicest of beings and possibly even very clever ā€“ so I must not pour scorn on it just because of the way it looks. However, the way things look usually reflects, in varying degrees, the way things are. Or at least, has a tendency to express a realised emotional condition or an unrealised emotional condition. And this looks to me to be a distinctly unrealised condition.

    Other worldly states exist; and have their unique adaptations to the conditions in which they manifest.

    However, I believe it likely that most of those reading this essay, made the decision to come (back) to planet Earth. So one should ask ones-self: why?

    Maybe because we retained a memory of some much better time here. A time in which we were more expressed and shared in a life that was generally joyous. Or, it might be that we deeply sensed that the joyous human state could yet be lit-up here on Earth; in ways that are unique, imaginative and expressive of an inherent state of genius.

    We were all, in different ways, drawn back to this extraordinary place, sensing, as we grew up, that we had a mission ā€“ a great task to which we needed and longed to commit.

    The confusion that we found, after reaching a certain state of objective awareness, drove some of us to commit to a life in which we attempted (are attempting) to establish a deeper order and manifestation of that which strikes us as ā€˜trueā€™.

    This commitment has a certain price. A constraining affect on our natural inclination to express and explore deeply felt needs and emotional awakenings. To more fully indulge and share the beauty and bounty of the human condition. But in a world torn apart by dissident beliefs and irrational desires ā€“ none of us can afford to indulge for long in such luxuries. We have to commit ā€“ or die.

    However, the reward for those traveling "the committed path" is that there are often powerful glimpses of the world to come along the way; glimpses of the ecstatic. Windows that briefly blow open but then slam closed again. Fragments of a life that ā€˜could beā€™ ā€“ if the current order of values was reversed ā€“ and humanity started flowering according to the same current that causes plants to break into radiant flower and trees into glorious blossom.

    Do trees and flowers long to be that which they are not?

    It is my contention that our third density state, far from being something to continuously strive to get beyond, is exactly where we want and need to be. A place which acts as a magnet towards which great ethereal cosmic entities/energies are powerfully drawn. They are already deeply curious about the magnetic strength of Earth and the beauty of her seas, forests and mountains ā€“ her abundant flora and fauna.

    But most of all, they wonder about us.


    They sense that there is something truly special about our embrace; our acts of congress; our moments of ecstacy. Yet it is something they cannot directly experience. They both want ā€“ and donā€™t want ā€“ to be transformed into that particular state of sensuality which takes place in the dimension we call third density. Joys which we humans are so privileged to be able to experience.

    I tell you, we have hardly begun to experience the wealth that we have at our fingertips in our quest to unite body, mind and spirit. But united they must be.

    No wonder the gods are jealous. Some, out of frustration, even try to persuade us that it is they who hold the secret of enlightenment! Ha! But who can really blame them for the odd gripe ā€“ after aeons of existence as free roaming etheric pulses of ā€˜the nowā€™, maybe itā€™s difficult to have to admit that you are not, after all, the be and end all of great aspiration ā€“ and that what you really want is to finally experience a bit of gravity based solidity?

    OK, so we have it ā€“ and we are indeed most fortunate for that. But so as to utilise our time on Earth
    to the full, we had better make sure that we keep our heads in proper proportion to our bodies ā€“ and our bodies themselves in a properly fit condition. For it is a very fine and wondrous thing that the unsullied proportions of the male and female physique are so well defined and so pleasingly balanced.

    Witness the subtle athleticism that emerges in the art of the dance; the uniquely proud stance of the Kenyan Massai; the almost hypnotic beauty of practised exponents of Tai Chi; the simple body-sweep of the scythe as performed by the Worldā€™s humble peasant farmers ā€¦ and so on. These are not ā€˜head ledā€™ exigencies, but emanate from the area of the solar plexus.

    When in doubt about where the centre of the universe lies, go to the solar plexus. It is from here that energies radiate out in every direction, feeding all the organs of the body. Mankind will not develop a swollen head and waif-like body so long as the main point of equilibrium remains in the solar region. The point of balance for the human physique as well as the human esprit. Start again from here ā€“ and all will fall into place quite naturally.

    I find that I have been describing manifestations which are all moving in the direction of what we call art. And it this ā€˜artā€™ that is our essentially human tool for creating ā€˜heaven on Earthā€™. The artist is not bent upon raising his or her vibratory level to ever higher states, as the spiritualist is, but is more intent upon pulling down unto himself that which gives fuel to his creativity.

    There is, in this route to fulfillment, a tacit acceptance of the dimension (density) in which we find ourselves. Not an attempt to escape from it. The trick is to get the spirit to become engaged in the Earthly creative process. To harness it to the need to take action. To bring creative equilibrium into life on Earth and to bring down the darkly domineering oppressors of humanity.

    That is the missing ingredient of the purely spiritual aspirant, where a kind of built-in passivity shuns taking action; preferring to remain closed-off to the nitty gritty of life.

    Our great guide throughout all, however, is "intuition". The one force that is common to both art and spirit. Spirit and intuition are like lovers, they intertwine, and at moments ā€“ are one.

    An artisan will take this intuitive receptivity and turn it into a creative action. That is the art of living. Not as ā€˜art for artā€™s sakeā€™ but for the socio-economic and spiritual emancipation of humanity. This is the fuel upon which the new society is to be built. No uniquely spiritual agenda will ever achieve the transformative movement of true change.

    Never mind that the gods are jealous. We must all turn our attention to fully embracing our third density roles and goals ā€“ for their seams are unimaginably rich and as yet, barely touched.

  7. #65
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    I like to concentrate on those among us who are not usually concentrated on ... the ones who don't care about being right, paypal, or followers ... the treasure among "convention's trash" ... and, I am sure, more wisdom in a single conversation ...

    Always moving: A transient way of life
    By Allison Love
    Photographs: Michael Joseph





    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urOmuWEvWbI


    Tattoos cover their faces and bodies -- marks of permanence to contrast their transient lifestyle. Some wear their hair in dreadlocks; others wear worn bandanas around their necks.

    They are travelers -- hopping freight trains, hitching rides, always in motion.

    Michael Joseph first photographed a traveler while in Las Vegas working on a street project in 2011. He spotted a man trying to hitch a ride, and he asked his cabdriver to pull over so he could take the man's picture.

    "He had an interesting anchor tattoo on his face and he had a very distinct look about him for a hitchhiker," Joseph said. "He gave me 20 to 30 minutes but I never got his story."


    After returning home from his trip, the photo of the hitchhiker stood out among Joseph's other images. He continued his street photography, and in Portland, Maine, he met a traveler who recognized the man with the anchor tattoo.

    "I thought, 'How is it possible that you know this guy,' " Joseph said. "He told me that (the man's) name was Dickie and that he was on Facebook."

    In New Orleans, Joseph met another traveler who knew Dickie, who by then had started going by Knuckles.

    It was in New Orleans that Joseph learned about this culture of travelers who ride trains, form friendships, separate, and find each other again. It prompted his portrait series "Lost and Found."

    Three years after Joseph first met Knuckles, the two ran into each other again at a train station in Chicago. Joseph instantly recognized Knuckles by his anchor tattoo. He then learned more about Knuckles' life, and when they saw each other again in New York, Joseph was introduced to more travelers.

    A sort of wanderlust, Joseph said, drives all of the travelers he has photographed. Yet their stories vary. Some are running away from painful pasts, while others are just looking to find people they fit in with. And though some might look rough, Joseph said, they are some of the kindest and most intelligent people he has ever met.



    "One girl was a valedictorian," Joseph said. "She told me: 'I had no friends until I started traveling. No one understood me. I was always bored with everything everybody else wanted to do. I didn't want to go shopping. I wanted to go out into the woods and hike, and nobody understood that.' She thinks she'll go to college eventually and become a teacher."

    Freight-train hopping is illegal and very dangerous. Many of the travelers Joseph has met describe it as a high and life on the road as an addiction. One traveler likened the experience to "magic."

    "They're discovering new places all the time," Joseph said. "They've seen parts of the country that we'll never see. Going to new places and meeting new people is like a high for them. There's a freedom attached to it."

    Joseph said the travelers live very much by an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. "If you treat everyone with kindness, they'll treat you exactly the same," he said.



    Going to new places and meeting new people is like a high for them. There's a freedom attached to it.


    Because Joseph has built up a vast network of travelers, and because they all know one another, meeting new travelers is easier.

    "They know they can be comfortable with me," he said. "In general, they're very open people. It's unexpected."

    Joseph's portraits feel timeless. They are shot in black and white with the traveler standing before a simple background.



    "There's something about it that doesn't distract the eye and makes it more about the person," he said. "I want the viewer to see the face and the person. They have this aged look, this worn look, and black and white accentuates that a little more."

    Life on the road comes with a cost. With the freedom it allows, there is the opportunity to experiment with drugs and alcohol. Many travelers are young and leaving home for the first time. Traveling becomes so entwined with their identity that some feel lost when they finally stop.

    "There are some people who weren't lost in the beginning (of their journey) who might be lost at the end," Joseph said.



    Others, however, are much happier away from the conventions of modern society.



    "They are not to be pitied nor romanticized by the viewer," Joseph said. "You want to see and feel the person who lies somewhere in between."

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