Each society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers
2013/11/18 Leave a comment
Only when conditioning is understood Love can arise
2013/05/10 1 Comment
Sue Vincent:
It is a difficult thing to do, to not give a damn about being accepted or not, and yet harbour no bitterness and still care for and about others.Yet it is possible.
It all boils down to Love in the end. If we can accept ourselves as we are, and Love the whole ‘work in progress’ that we are… if we can Love others without expectation of return or acceptance, so that it is the Love that matters, not what we get back, we can let go of so many of the layers and concepts we ‘think’ we have to conform to.
Me:
As long as there is Illusion, that is, searching for inner security – there is conformity.
Conformity breeds concept. It is so easy to get stuck in concepts.
I for one am afraid of the word “Love”.
Really, love seems to be like a ghost…everybody speaks about it,
but very few – if any! – have ever seen it. Lived it for real. Known the reality behind
the word…
We can of course imagine that we “accept” ourselves as we are, that we give without expectation; but without having tasted the ultimate reality – love – we go on deluding ourselves, thinking that we understand, we “accept”, we give, we this and that…yet everything remains naught but another verbal deception…
The fact of the matter is that very few “manage” to leave behind conditioning. To step out into REAL INNER RENEWAL breaking the chain, is a hell of an undertaking as what we usually do is often changing one illusion for another.
So I say that only when Mind understands wholly and “frees itself” from conditioning and illusion, Love can arise.
About moral autonomy and norm
2013/01/21 22 Comments
Paul quoting Immanuel Kant:
“The single most important quality needed to resist evil is moral autonomy.”
Me:
Moral autonomy can only be understood in non-conformity as to what is considered “normal”. Only the one who is no longer afraid of, and has worked through loneliness, knows what to be autonomous is about.
Paul:
Would it be fair to say normality is evil? That is to say conformity is evil?
Me:
There is no other way I can express it than saying that yes, Conformity is Evil.
Normality is the dream of the lazy, who vehemently refuses to see the obvious
fact that life obeys no rule.
Paul:
I would have to say….I agree. Well said. “Normality is the dream of the lazy.” I like that sentence a lot actually. I think the word illusion is fitting too. “Normal” can never be the same as what is, or “the actual.”
Me:
Yes, there is the Idea of normality but the actual,- or “what is” -, can never fit into “normal”, as it can never conform to any preconceived idea.
Rollo May says
2012/09/29 1 Comment
The creative artist and poet and saint must fight the actual (as opposed to ideal) gods of society – the god of conformism as well as the gods of apathy, material success, and exploitative power. These are the “idols” of our society and worshiped by multitudes of people.
You deserve to be happy
2012/09/22 10 Comments
Never believe what you are told. If a group of people has decided at one point to consider reality in a certain way, it doesn´t mean that their comprehension is right.
We cannot know ourselves properly, bloom and thrive because certain idiots – called philosophers and scientists – have moulded present reality in a certain way to suit them.
You spend most of your life in fear, conforming to patterns and ideas which were invented to control, manipulate and demean you. You live in conformity because you are afraid. You give your life to the system, and the system deprives you totally of your dignity and worth.
Do you want to continue be a non entity holding on to fear…? Is this present emptiness something you are proud of?… Is this constant angst and despondency life…? Who are you giving your life to…?
Nobody but you knows WHO YOU ARE, and your happiness is your most precious secret. So forget what you´ve been told, trust but your well-being and find out your secret – your Joy!
You are worth, you deserve to be happy!
An interesting dialogue about time
2012/09/14 Leave a comment
Richard says:
“I am speaking about psychological time here” was a central issue of yours. I think this derives from Krishnamurti’s point of view who said literally “It is the interval between idea and action. An idea is for self-protection obviously; it is the idea of being secure. Action is always immediate; it is not of the past or of the future; to act must always be in the present, but action is so dangerous, so uncertain, that we conform to an idea which we hope will give us a certain safety.”
Well, to live a real life means to live in the now. You can neither live in the past nor in the future – only our thoughts remain in these tenses much too often. Our depressions stem from the past and our anxieties emerge from future thoughts.
My answer:
For sure, an idea is a means to self-protection – self-protection meaning resistance against “the unpleasant” – that is against the Unknown …So action being so dangerous, so uncertain, we conform to an idea which we hope will give us a certain safety. This very idea we conform to, creates the interval, and this interval – that is fearing the unknown – is time; that´s exactly what I say.
In fact, every form of inner escape, creates time. It is a terrible thing for many to live now. As “Now” means confrontation both with real pain, BUT AS MUCH WITH ABSTRACT PAIN!!! And according to what I see, abstract pain is much more unbearable to people than actual whatever affliction. It is not the object per se which scare us, but our thoughts about it.
To confront fearful thoughts is an unbearable undertaking for most humans, don´t you think?
This is perfectly formulated Richard:
“To live a real life means to live in the now. You can neither live in the past nor in the future – only our thoughts remain in these tenses much too often. Our depressions stem from the past and our anxieties emerge from future thoughts.”
So sad, instead of Now, people live in tenses…
I could also add that depression is constant reiteration of the past into the future. This mechanical reiteration, which is Fear, kills Now. When we give up Time, we give up our resistance, and in that readiness we can confront the real problem – fear.
The curse of conformity
2012/08/17 6 Comments
Isn’t it curious? Everybody is trying hard to be someone, and more often than not, many end up being nobody. That happens because we are the victims of our self-imposed conformity. We want to succeed, but only within the narrow margin of sheer conformism.
As for me, I have no need “to succeed”, cause to succeed in this Zeitgeist is to die. I prefer to be nobody in the range of this cramped conformity, and really be someone, beyond any established norm.
Solitude and the wasteland
2012/05/13 15 Comments
Sometimes it feels like a curse to be yourself, to be honest, to want to live truthfully and live among people whose life is nothing but fear, faking and lying. The curse of eternal solitude.
Genuine contact can never be established with fearful people. It just doesn´t work. In the company of Fear, Conformity and Cowardice, whatever truth, whatever sound self-expression is going to be scorned, reduced and dismissed as meaningless affect, obstructed, ignored, annihilated.
In this society, it´s not so popular to be alive, oh no. Feeling, passion, beauty and love have to be subject of books, vaudeville stuff or items in museums – expressing feelings in everyday life, is emotionally incorrect.
Really, it sounds really twisted, but I have the distinct impression that people refuse to live life.
They refuse to feel, they refuse to express their real feelings. How could you otherwise explain that the moment you say something nice, something amiable, true and sane, they feel uncomfortable, they give you some polite bullshit, but run away like sparrows and never want to see you again…?
In the nearness of most people I feel superfluous. You kind of read their puzzled gaze – you see a mixture of fear, secret admiration but at the end of the day what they tacitly say is:
“You remind us too much of what I refuse to see, so you better get lost!”
I have no problem being on my own, going out to a cafe looking to people, reading or writing, but, like today, I really feel tired of this masquerade. It is beautiful weather and I have no one to go out with, that is, someone with whom I can be myself. I know people all right, but with them “you have to behave right”, and I AM IN NO MOOD TO PLAY THEATER AND BEHAVE…
I want to be myself, and the exorbitant price for this, is being ostracized.
Real people seem to be only in books, in museums, or maybe…in America.
Julien Matei
Mirrors of Encounters 