Our existence, the world showing up for us and holding up a mirror

The world doesn’t just exist, it shows up for us. It appears as the pure experience of the present moment. And one of the most amazing things about the world is that it changes – from age to age, generation to generation, over the course of a human lifetime.

We can not ignore the world. We live in it, and we have to face those things that happen in that world. Today it would even be very difficult to live on a desert island just to live on our own without any interruption or interference from other human beings.

We are here and though others can ignore us, we can not ignore them nor deny our own existence. We have our fleshy bodies within it our brains which enable us to think and reason. From the moment we are born we are confronted with the world and shall have to learn to live in that world. From that first step on earth, time does not let us on our own but however we want, time binds us to itself. It makes hours, days, months and years go by while we have to hold in it and come to the realisation that we are getting older. However, we turn it or turn it and look for the ‘why’ we are here and the ‘how’ we can make it true here, we are pulled in all directions to do this or that or to be here and there.

Sometimes we even wonder not only why we exist, but also why this world and this universe exist. Lots of people also wonder what there would be in outer space. In the darkness behind the horizon, stars and planets get us dreaming of other planets and perhaps also about other living beings. Why should we be the only intellectual beings?

When we see time passing, we often feel as if we are running out of time. Looking at how glaciers melt and how waters rise, but so many in the world do not want to believe climate change is a serious business and that we are heading for an unseen natural disaster if we do not act quickly to combat global warming.

If nothing existed there would be nothing to contemplate existence and no existence to contemplate. Now we have to think about a lot of things. In fact, it happens that our brains don’t let us rest easy and get our heads spinning with all sorts of (sometimes foolish) thoughts.

Why did anything happen?

Why didn’t nothing happen?

Why did all those planets came into existence?

Why does anything at all exist?

What does it mean to exist?

Why did man came into existence and why does he thinks he is superior to all other beings?

Why are we here?

What is life all about? or What is the purpose of existence?

Is that what we think to see realy there? Or is it just an illusion?

Philosophers through all ages have tackled this most fundamental question of existence. Many persons came to practice or investigate the systematised study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. There was and is the searching, the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience. We know of major Eastern philosophers, like Buddha; Confucius; Dai Zhen; Han Feizi; Laozi; Mencius; Mozi; Nichiren; Nishida Kitarō; Wang Yangming; Xunzi; Zhu Xi.

But in the West, they did not have to undercut and could in turn make others think and philosophise with a variety of thoughts. There were many Ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle and his followers, who brought a whole movement into being,  Aristotelianism. Epicurus and Epicureanism.
The Western world provided lots of major Western philosophers, like Peter Abelard; St. Anselm; St. Thomas Aquinas; St. Augustine; Noam Chomsky; Jacques Derrida; Duns Scotus; Michel Foucault; Jürgen Habermas; Martin Heidegger; David Hume; William James; Saul Kripke; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; John Locke; John Stuart Mill; Friedrich Nietzsche; Hilary Putnam; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Bertrand Russell; Jean-Paul Sartre; Socrates; Benedict de Spinoza; Bernard Williams; Ludwig Wittgenstein, and so many more who request our attention.

Some of those philosophers from the east and west will tell you that everything that we experience as real is an illusion. Especially in Eastern philosophies, we find ‘masters’ or ‘teachers’ who will say this is all a dream.

Could it be that we are part of a dream or living in some surreal universe?

And is there some Being managing it all?

Is there a Creator or Manipulator? And are we just His toys?

We may see all this physical stuff around us, but in which way is it real, or do we get to know how it really is?

Over the years, mankind had to change its views about so many things. More than once, man had it wrong. More often there were groups of people or organisations, who wanted to have control over people and made it a rule or doctrine that people had to believe. The Roman Catholic Church was (and is still) a master in that.

Many people have high ideas about themselves. Sometimes it happens that they suddenly become confronted with themselves and have to come to see that their thoughts and emotions are ‘nothing’. It is all, they will say, the play of pure consciousness. John Locke considered “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind” man’s consciousness.

Pure being is all that really is. Everything else is an illusion created in an ungraspable field of consciousness, awareness and sentience. Some philosophers regarded it as a kind of substance, or “mental stuff,” quite different from the material substance of the physical world. From such philosophers’ ideas many started to believe we exist out of more than one element. They managed to have several people believe that when they die that there is a spiritual element (the soul) that will go to other places (like purgatory, hell or heaven) and another physical element that will transform into another body (incarnation and reincarnation). That reincarnation, also called transmigration or metempsychosis, in religion and philosophy, would be a rebirth of the aspect of an individual that persists after bodily death — whether it be consciousness, mind, the soul, or some other entity — in one or more successive existences. Depending upon the tradition, these existences may be human, animal, spiritual, or, in some instances, vegetable, depending on the way one lived before.

The French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher René Descartes for instance as one of the first to abandon Scholastic Aristotelianism, formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-body problem. Because he promoted the development of a new science grounded in observation and experiment, he is generally regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. We all know his expression

“I think, therefore I am” (best known in its Latin formulation, “Cogito, ergo sum,” though originally written in French, “Je pense, donc je suis”).

The medieval English logician St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033/34–1109), is at the heart of Descartes’s rationalism, the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge, knowledge about an existing thing solely on the basis of reasoning from innate ideas, with no help from sensory experience. Descartes has an innate idea of Allah Al-Aliyy or Most High God, being The Sublime God as a perfect being. For him, it is clear that God necessarily exists, because, if He did not, He would not be perfect. It is That God Who presides in the great assembly (Psalm 82:1) of human beings, who often think they are greater than others.

Jim Holt, the American journalist, author in popular science and essayist, who often contributed to The New York Times, wrote the nonfiction work and NYTimes bestseller for 2013, Why Does the World Exist?, presented the central question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’, which lies in the domain between philosophy and scientific cosmology. Also the English cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees looked at the big-bang theory of the origins of the universe. By examining the nature of existence itself Holt was following in the path of the philosophy called ‘Existentialism’, which stresses human existence in the world concreteness and its problematic character. for those writers ‘Existence’ is primarily the problem of existence (i.e., of its mode of being); it is, therefore, also the investigation of the meaning of Being. Going back to the intitial thought of previous philosophers

What is Being?

What does it mean to be?

To be is the question!

What does it mean to exist?

What is the nature of being?

For the German philosopher, counted among the main exponents of existentialism, Martin Heidegger, the human subject had to be reconceived in an altogether new way, as “being-in-the-world.” Because this notion represented the very opposite of the Cartesian “thing that thinks,” the idea of consciousness as representing the mind’s internal awareness of its own states had to be dropped. With it went the assumption that specific mental states were needed to mediate the relation of the mind to everything outside it.

Man philosophers had the above questions, bringing them to think about their own being and the being of others around them. Those people thinking and writing about those life questions bring the deep contemplation of what it means to be human. We think no other living being is concerned with such questions. Even pets don’t wonder what their role in the family might be (we think). Even though plants and animals have sentience, we suspect that they have no thinking capacity whereby they would ascertain their essence in this world.

On the other hand, it can well be that one of the reasons that other creatures don’t worry about the meaning of life could be that they don’t seem to have any choice about how to live it. Dogs and cats just live the way dogs and cats live. They respond to circumstances the way dogs or cats generally do. Sure they may differ one to the other, but generally speaking they act more or less predictably like dogs or cats.

But human beings can also be very predictable. We also could say human beings act in a similar way. Many people around us are also very predictable. Though we can notice that even when the majority lives a standard way of living, we can find people who follow a totally different course. There are human beings who stand out and surprise us. We also find several people who do not want to follow the tract the majority follows. They don’t live an ordinary life. They live an extraordinary life, that is remarkably new and different from the norm. And sometimes these rare human beings discover a way of being that eventually becomes the new norm.

Martin Heidegger was convinced that the history of Western thought has failed to heed the ontological difference, and so has articulated Being precisely as a kind of ultimate being, as evidenced by a series of namings of Being, for example as idea, energeia, substance, monad or will to power. He recognised that most of us live as ‘the one’, or that we do generally what ‘one’ does or what would be the general norm to do. Though we are often concerned with what ‘one’ tends to be concerned with.

He spoke about “Dasein” or “being there”, the most fundamental a priori transcendental condition or mode of being not so much to be seen from the point of being there but from the perspective of how the being essentially unfolds. As Heidegger puts it:

“A being is: Be-ing holds sway [unfolds]”.

The hyphenated term ‘be-ing’ is adopted by Emad and Maly, in order to respect the fact that, in the Contributions, Heidegger substitutes the archaic spelling ‘Seyn’ for the contemporary ‘Sein’ as a way of distancing himself further from the traditional language of metaphysics.

We all should be aware that somehow we come on this planet and have to make the best of it. We receive an overdose of information during our lifetime and are fed an untold number of knowledges and rules, with which and by which we try or must try to live. Through all these influences we have to go through, we have to try to build our lives and live a generic human life.

Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, a human being could, if they were heroic enough, choose to live a different kind of human life and could come to live a profoundly authentic and original human life. The American lecturer, poet, and essayist, the leading exponent of New England Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson called such human beings ‘representative’ because their lives represented new possibilities for being human.

I do not think “Life is But a Dream” even when we may dream that we live or imagine our life to be a certain way. When we are dreaming it can well be that we are not aware that we are asleep. But also when we are awake it can happen that we wonder if we are dreaming, because what we encounter seems to be so unreal. How often does it not happen that we must come to the conclusion that we were in a dream-world. And that dream world was not always to our liking. More than once the dream world that comes into our mind, is one that can cause fear, but luckilly there is also that dream world that causes joy, surprise, and myriad other emotions. Dreams take us, seemingly, to worlds we’ve been to and worlds that we have never experienced. In them we re-live what we lived before in that world we should recognise as the real world. But we should be aware that very often we are deceived by the real world around us. Often we do not want to know that this world has played tricks on us.

Every day we have doubts about certain things, often which we should recognise as facts. There and then we once more are confronted with those questions that come up into our mind so often. Oh, so often we are troubled, and question our own self and all the things we see happening around us. Then we might ask

What is our role in this all?

What happens when we become older?

As time passes we start getting in contact with other peoples and other cultures. Mostly how we grow up is decided by our parents and our surroundings. The culture of our homeland, the religion of our parents, and the friends we hang out with, all influence us and mould us in a form we do not mind or which bothers us. In case we do not like the form in which we are moulded we get frustrated and come into a stressful position. sometimes people would love to have been born in an other place or have lived in other circumstances. But the choice is not up to us. We are dropped in a time and place and have to find our way in it.

We have no memory of a previous life, because there is just not such another life.

Could we prove that we have ever lived if we did not have our memories?

No, there would be no way to prove it. There is not one person who ever could recollect and prove some previous existence. Even for those who are born, when young, their memory is too short and after some time they shall not be able to tell what happened in those first years of life. When you would ask a toddler to prove he lives, he would not be able to do so, because he has not enough memory and not enough knowledge. The very young cannot prove they live because they do not have memories. Memory starts to develop a bit later than the first few years of life. Memory is an essential component to the human mind, so important that we cannot say that we exist without memory. Knowledge and memory are two requirements to realise that one is alive and can be. In other words, our very existence is hinged on our capacity to remember. Without our capacity to think, or to have thoughts, we can not remember nor can we analyse. And to be able to know we live we need to be able to think, consider and to review.

Memory, as the encoding, storage, and retrieval in the human mind of past experiences, is unconditionally linked to thought and being. Without awareness, there is no knowledge of being. We can notice this when people have reached an age when they start to suffer from dementia. It is then as if their thinking but also their “being” falls away.

Memory is both a result of and an influence on perception, attention, and learning. It is those thoughts of past events and influences that help shape us, making us who we are. With that awareness and understanding of that event and of that personality we are confronted with, we ourselves are presented with a mirror, in which whether or not we will accept, love or hate that reflection. But dar we will recognise that this is that “I” that we wish, desire or curse.

+

Preceding

With Positive Attitude

There can only be hope when there is a will to be and say “I am”

I and Thou

Our existence..

Leap

To come to live in the peace of fulfilment of our own Divine Identity

What is Existential Ergonomics?

On the Anxiety of Non-Being

Running out of time

Why does the world exist

Our real self ever perfect and free

Life’s Purpose

Modern Living

Quandary of Reflections

Existence in the non-existent and non-existence in the existence

Human experience maintained in a fragile existence

Soul-searching

Vivamos Videre, the more we live, the more we are a witness to life

++

Additional reading

1. Immortality, eternality – onsterfelijkheid, eeuwigheid
2. Onsterfelijkheid – Immortaliteit – Immortality
3. About The story of Creation 1 Existing cosmologies
4. Genesis Among the Creation Myths
5. Creator and Blogger God 1 Emptiness and mouvement
6. Creation of the earth and man #14 Formation of man #6 The Uncreated One, neshemet ruach chayim and nephesh
7. Jesus begotten Son of God #11 Existence and Genesis Raising up
8. A Living Faith #10: Our manner of Life #2
9. Ability
10. Ability (part 2)
11. Ability (part 3) Thoughts around Ability
12. Ability (part 4) Thought about the ability to have ability
13. The Opinionated Truth
14. God make us holy
15. Two states of existence before God
16. Self-development, self-control, meditation, beliefs and spirituality
17. Wisdom Quote #21…..seeking within with Carl Jung!
18. Living in this world and viewing it

+++

Related

1. Who am I to…?
2. Spike the obit
3. Awareness is All
4. Trouble being myself
5. #being as details
6. Conditioning and Consciousness
7. Becoming
8. What Descartes Proved
9. The ABCs of Python: The Identity of “is”
10. When I sleep, I think, I dream [A philosophy post?]
11. Wisdom Collection Collection 26. Human thinking is a creation process with devastating results. Thinking is separation of myself from my source.
12. Mind and language essays on descartes and chomsky
13. Therefore (Quote Series)
14. Essays on the philosophy and science of rene descartes
15. Descartes proof for the existence of god essay
16. My favorites: philosophy ideas
17. I remember therefore I am
18. Descartes, Perception, and Society
19. Strange nonsense
20. Perception and Reality
21. How Ego Disrupts the Cosmic Brilliance of ‘Is’
22. I am
23. What is Left to Doubt?
24. Life is But a Dream
25. In here and out there
26. Confusion of knights
27. Awareness, Consciousness, Experience, Mind
28. Interlude: Descartes’ Role
29. Descartes
30. Consciousness, Personhood
31. St. Borges of Canterbury
32. Spirituality of the Left
33. Breakthrough
34. The floating consciousness
35. Useful Heideggerian Concepts
36. At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell is a biography of existentialism
37. Martin Heidegger, the Standing Metaphor, and the Politics of 1935
38. Time and Being
39. Heidegger and the Question of Being
40. Existential Reflections: The Shadow Side of Human Existence (2)
41. Second Principle- Freedom in Being
42. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
43. The ‘Man for All Seasons’ and Ontological Exigency
44. Martin Heidegger Quotes
45. Religion, Consumerism, and Absurdism: Modernity and the Quest for Meaning
46. Two reviews of The Early Foucault (Polity, 2021) by Colin Koopman and Jasper Friedrich – and a note on Heidegger
47. [Reflections] Why Does the History of Philosophy Matter to Philosophy?
48. Modern Transcendentalism
49. Ralph Waldo Emerson
50. American Voices: Ralph Waldo Emerson
51. Transcendentalism literary origins in america and influence essay
52. Living in Subversia
53. Ernest Holmes and the Science of Mind Part One: ‘Ye Are Gods’
54. What are the main features of Shelley’s Transcendentalism ?
55. Autumn, Concord, and Transcendentalism
56. Transcendentalism : An American Movement
57. Self-Awareness, Self-Reliance and Non-Comformity

Realisation is earth shattering

+

Preceding

Truth is not a Philosophical discussion

BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts.

Realisation Is Earth Shattering

All that we hope for is an illusion.
All that we fear is an illusion.
We over-estimate how many sane people there are.
😀

Illusion: an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.

If we cannot discern that perception, in the very first instant, is pure consciousness without comment, but instead go straight into judgement, then our perception is biased because it is based on memory – old programming – our dream-world – our normal.

The very moment that we interpret perception, we are in our illusion. Justifying this illusion is delusion.

Delusion: an idiosyncratic belief maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument.

How do we prove that we are sane?
And who are we going to prove this to?
To ourself, or to someone else?

There is no way we can prove we are sane.

From the perspective of pure consciousness,
everyone is both Buddha nature and irrational.
Met anyone normal?
😀

Sane: reasonable…

View original post 77 more words

Dear 2021,

So many might be cross with 2021 and by taking on such a negative view on that Corona year miss out on all the blessings they had that year.

It is true many of us would have wished it would have gone differently, but no matter what came over this world, a naughty virus, limiting us in many ways, it also created many opportunities.

Let it be known, in a few years time everything of 2019, 2020 and 2021 might be forgotten as in a sealed book somewhere up high in the bookcase or in a bookshelf in a dark corner.

The good things of it we carry with us with pleasure and hope soon to be relieved from that virus, but in the meantime, we shall not let us bring down.

 

+

Preceding

Let’s count…

Musings of a Bookworm

Before I start I have to thank Deepthy from Random Specific Thoughts for coming up with this idea and then letting me borrow it for a post. You should definitely check out her post here.

So here goes…

Photo by Sindre Stru00f8m on Pexels.com

Dear 2021,

The things we experience in life change us, they shape our understanding and the way we view the world. And so, for me 2021, a year that can only be described as a rollercoaster of a year, wasn’t all bad.

Of course at times I wished things were different, and, to be perfectly honest, I still do. However that isn’t your fault 2021, it’s not the actual events that cause these feelings, it’s my perception and the experience I have of them. This may seem like an odd thing to say, especially taking in to consideration the pandemic and all its effects, but…

View original post 237 more words

Your Ego Is Not Your Enemy

 

The self and the other in times of insecurity

In these times of insecurity, we can see that lots of people are not sure about themselves and get lost.

Insecurity, primarily due to social and economic instability, but also exacerbated by a weakening of the perception of ethical principles makes man feeling very bad these days.

The perception of ethical principles that underpin the law and personal moral attitudes, which always give strength to the rules that govern society, have so much weakened or moral and ethical values have been placed in the cupboard and are way forgotten.

People should know even when churches may be closed, it are those institutions which can bring some light in the darkness. Modern thought has developed a reductive view of conscience, according to which there are no objective references in determining what has value and what is true; rather, each individual provides his own measure through his own intuitions and experiences, each possesses his own truth and his own morals. When each individual has and keeps to his or her own morals we shall come to see chaos.

People have forgotten that the Creator has provided a Guide for life. Whatever the situation may be, man should be able to find answers to his questions and find solutions for the crisis encountered. All those who feel depressed, feeling down by the present Corona situation, should know that when everybody would keep to the regulations prescribed by the government everybody would soon find it much easier to cope because it would not take such a long time as it has taken now.

Because there are so many people who do not know the Scriptures or have forgotten or abandoned the Gospel announcement, they no longer identify themselves in a community of brothers and sisters where agape love is the most important rule.

Many environments, even in traditionally Christian societies, are reluctant to open themselves to the word of faith and have placed the “Self” or “I” in the first place, giving not much place for protecting the other. today we can see a lot of people who pu their self interest at the beginning of their activity line. They are not concerned what their presence might do on a shopping street or in a shopping mall. One can wonder why they were not able to go online to buy the goods they so urgently do need to have.

Whilst a lot of worry circles around, many do not seem to worry about the effect of their presence on the streets or in the shops. Is it out of ignorance or out of selfishness that they are not concerned about taking more precaution measures to avoid spreading the coronavirus?

When one could place the “self” more aside and give more thought to the “other”, especcially to all those working in the health sector, for sure all the measures the goverment asks to follow would be so much easier to follow and would not feel as a limitation or restriction of our liberty.

So many people are complaining that they would be not able to celebrate Christmas. Why and how does it come they would not be able to have some sacred time together with their own household members? How does it come they can not make it cosy and pleasant for their own little bulb?

If they want to go to church, why can they not enjoy the virtual church service their church may be offering? Or is their church insisting, contrary to the governmental advice, to come together in the church building?

Each sensible person should know it is his or her duty to do everything to protect the other. Under duty of gratitude towards recognisance, each should muster the brotherly love to work for the good or welfare of the other and as such keep to the safety measurements.

+

Read also:

1. Tinderbox for domestic violence
2. No time yet to relax the CoViD-19 restriction measures
3. Just to remember for the coming Winter holiday period
4. Challenges of the Post-Pandemic period
5. What ethical principles do we need in the Covid-19 pandemic?
6. Turning Your Home into a Sacred Space

Kindness to Yourself

+

Preceding

Looking forward to a year full of Kindness

++

Additional reading

1. Created in the image of the Elohim to use their likeness properly
2. Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair
3. He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass
4. Call to help others
5. The truest greatness lies in being kind
6. Kindness
7. If you want to go far in life
8. Be kinder than necessary
9. Spread love everywhere you go
10. When we love we do not need laws
11. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
12. A man who cannot forgive others
13. If there is bitterness in the heart
14. Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness
15. For attractive lips, speak words of kindness
16. The first on the list of the concerns of the saint
17. Looking for True Spirituality 5 Fruitage of the Spirit
18. The Nazarene master teacher learning people how they should behave
19. Matthew 12:33-37 – The Nazarene’s Commentary: Judgment Day
20. Be sound in mind and be vigilant with a view to prayers
21. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience
22. International Day of Happiness!

+++

Related articles

1. Emotions don’t have a voice
2. It is what it is
3. The Protection of Peace
4. It takes Strength to Be Kind
5. More Blessed to Give
6. Kindness from Strangers
7. Just Be Kind
8. How To Free Yourself From Self Blame (especially if you’re an HSP)
9. Quitting to-do list

My Journey back to Love

static1.squarespace.com

I met up with the person who told me I need to be with a man again. He looked happier this time which is good. I am happy for him. He continued to ask me different questions to see if there is any guy interested in me these days. I am not looking for one. I avoided mentioning any name and gender of my new friends but eventually after asking for a while in vain he finally asked me if there was any boy. Pretty much half of the time we were talking about it. To me he was forcing his opinion on me even though he said he wasn’t. I wish I was better then I would have been able to defend myself better.

cdn-images-1.medium.com

I care about him. He seems to have said all these things wanting what is best for me in his perception. He was…

View original post 470 more words

A World Made of Sentences

We can talk and talk, and for that we use sentences. We order words and do hope the one opposite us, listening to us can understand us.

We try to bring our knowledge into the open, and try to convey others of thoughts. All of our knowledge about anything we try to construct in any language known to us and can only be found in sentences.

Without language there is no knowledge (at least of the common type) about anything. {A World Made of Sentences, Part I: Sentences and the Perception or Reality}

We have our feelings when we see things. Those feelings we like to express and therefore we use our body language and the spoken language. It is just not for nothing, but has often a serious meaning for us to be able to express ourselves.

We should realize

Language does not act like a mirror, reflecting to us a perfect depiction of reality, it acts like a filter, it makes us see reality in particular ways. The way language is constructed and the popular usage of language at any given time in history and in any given culture on earth will create a different perception of what is real. {A World Made of Sentences, Part I: Sentences and the Perception or Reality}

Jeff Carreira does not see reality as it is. He writes

I see reality as an American male at the beginning of the 21^st century sees it. Some of what I am seeing may be objectively accurate, much of it may not be. And I think it is very, very important to know the difference. That is why the contemplation of the relationship between our perception of reality and language is so important. If knowing what is real is important to us then we have to deconstructed how our current perception is being shaped by the sentences in our heads. {A World Made of Sentences, Part I: Sentences and the Perception or Reality}

We are often confronted with the problem that we are not good enough in expressing ourselves with words, placing one letter after the other in a certain order.

many of us who have tried to share our mystical revelations with others have found the language we commonly use woefully inadequate for the job. Many, many people have ventured out into the further reaches of human experience only to find fewer and fewer people that they can share that experience with. The language we have is just not adequate to allow us to share the mystery that has grabbed a hold of our hearts. {The Language of We-Mysticism}

How often do we not find that the language we are used to is too specific, too rigid and to literal and when we try to express ourselves with it the listener sometimes may understand it differently than we wanted it to come over. We have grown up with one or an other language and got it rooted in our current level of thinking. Constantly it is being fed and continually words come and go, some even changing of meaning (by time).

So many of us would love that our feelings are expressed so clearly that nobody can misunderstand them.

Our goal is not to speak about our experience, but to give our experience a voice. We are not looking at our experience and describing it. We are allowing that experience to take us over and speak through us so that even we are amazed at what comes out of our mouths. When this direct communication happens in more than one person simultaneously a spontaneous process of divine discourse unfolds. The higher mind … now has control of the conversation. It is thinking out loud though the voices of the individuals. It is spiritual improvisation of the highest order.   {The Language of We-Mysticism}

Please do come to find out how Jeff Carreira looks at language and thinks

Our language conditions our perception. It shapes the way we see things.

… Language chops reality into distinct pieces and creates distinctions. The distinctions that exist in any given language are those that are important for the people using that language. Our languages have evolved to organize and optimize human perception and human behavior. If circumstances change, or if you change your circumstances, the language you had before may no longer be optimal. In fact, your old language may have become a detriment. {A World Made of Sentences, Part I: Sentences and the Perception or Reality}

When we begin to suspect how much language might be influencing our perception of reality our fundamental conception of what is real and true starts to unravel. Have we been wrong to assume that language is an accurate reflection of reality? Is there even a ‘reality’ out there to be reflected back to us in the first place? In our journey toward deeper truth even these assumptions must be dragged into the illuminating light of inquiry.{A World of Sentences, Part 2: Language and the Reality of Reality}

Continue reading:

• The Language of We-Mysticism
• A World Made of Sentences, Part I: Sentences and the Perception or Reality
• A World of Sentences, Part 2: Language and the Reality of Reality

+++

Further reading

1. Let’s talk about language (and this bird)
2. Language, Learning and Logic
3. Language Matters: Communication at The Heart of Successful Collaboration
4. An emic exploration to language barriers
5. Economy of language, Eros, meaning, the public, and its problems
6. Pay attention to actions…
7. What’s your voice vibes?
8. Turn to the Webster’s
9. Some skepticism
10. #36alive 194: 5 Reasons To Learn A New Language Today!
11. Words
12. What is disrationalia?
13. Descriptivists vs. Prescriptivists
14. English Grammar in Ruins
15. British schools: kids, commas, and tests
16. Queers, language and the nature of reality
17. Japanese Notes – how to express a position in Japanese?
18. Paying attention…are you?
19. A Baptist Shouts “Learn the Language”
20. Body language
21. It’s Not What You Say That Counts; It’s What You Don’t Say
22. Seven Tricks For Reading Body Language Like A Pro
23. Body Language of Modi and Trump
24. The Handshake Analyzed ‘Round The World
25. Body language expert analyzes G-20 world leaders
26. Putin Exposed the Plot to Destroy America and Pedophilia & What Body Language Reveals [videos] ~ July 9, 2017
27. World Leaders May Lie, but Their Body Language Tells All

+++

Lessons I have learned

Panic-attack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The lady who had had her first ever proper panic attack a year ago, when she couldn’t breathe, and rapidly became hysterical in her bathroom away from her kids, knows how she can be challenged being a single mum to four kids, that being a pretty time consuming.

The challenges have been huge and diverse in the last year.

For this Cornish woman her husband is the unsung hero in her tale. He helps her get dressed and use the bathroom, wash, cooks, cleans, does most of the childcare, and pretty much has an elderly person for a wife in return for his efforts, a lot of the time.

Have you any idea what it’s like to have to get your husband to help you with toiletting? Or how awful it is to have to get your eight year old to put your socks on. To have to call your son to watch you get up the stairs in case you fall? Or to have to call your teenage daughter up to your room as you can’t open the curtains? Or to train your two year old to pass everything at floor level up to you, as you can’t bend down? How guilty you feel that you aren’t like the other mums, instead your children also help care for you? {Crossing the line.}

Let us look how she now fulfils all the needs and requirements when she as a seriously ill woman is doing the job of 2/3 people.

What can a person do when she is in severe pain everyday to varying degrees and when the  kidneys are not working properly, the immune system at about 40%, her pericarditis playing up (swollen third chamber of my heart) each day she spends half hour getting her back, knees, hips and knees moving before she can focus properly.

Like many chronic pain patients she has become highly skilled at hiding her pain over the last 24 years, and very few people will see or experience the vulnerable and broken person, that exists through the cracks.

*

To remember:

it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks

We are all in charge of our own destiny and happiness, + must own our decisions, as they are ours alone to make. Whether that’s, medication, lifestyle, parenting, a job, relationships, moving across the country for a shot at happiness. Own it. 

+

Preceding articles:

What would you do if…?

What would you do if…? Continued trial

What Are You Seeking?

Though disabled in the eyes of society able to do great things

I will not be defined

Fibromyalgia & ME/CFS Awareness Day

See the conquest and believe that we can gain the victory

The Goal

Cosmina Craciunescu looks on Positivism

A quadruped amputee not stopped from wanting to achieve her dreams

+++

Related articles

• Bromsgrove mother relives her agony after losing TWO sons to heroin overdoses
• Expect the best, but Prepare for the Worst.
• On Depression, Anxiety, Family and a human gem named Garnier: A personal account
• Spring fever
• Can this app change schizophrenia treatment?
• Part of living
• Are You a Wanderer?
• I shed seven stones to get rid of my teenage fat tag
• For Mom / For Her / For Us All
• ‘I still can’t forgive my mum – 16 years after her suicide’

You've gotta have Gumption....

I’ve been debating for a while where I’m going with this. The cold, hard truth of the matter is that I’ve had very little time for anything other than being mum, and trying to keep my body working as best it can. I can’t remember the last time I was able to read a paper, or watch a full film.

Turns out being a single mum to four kids is pretty time consuming, who knew!?

The challenges have been huge and diverse in the last year. How do I fulfill all their needs and requirements of me when I am one, seriously ill woman doing the job of 2/3 people? The logistics alone have been a nightmare, getting everyone where they need to be and collecting them, making sure they have all the kit they need for the various activities they do, homework, food, washing, teacher appointments, councilling, sports, friends…

View original post 1,011 more words

The natural beauties of life

When we look around us we should be able to see all the beauty of nature. But many of us live in cities where we are surrounded by buildings and not much green.

The beautiful nature is given to us freely, but not many people do respect that free gift as such. We, as human beings are also not so keen to use it properly and to take into account that many after us still have to be able to enjoy as much as we did or even more. Often terrible things have to happen before we as human being want to think about what is going on or what our responsibility should be for making sure lots of people can enjoy those treasures of earth.

In many Asian countries several people are already seriously feeling the effects of the industrial revolution and the technical progress of the last two centuries. People may be happy the world advanced so much and that we do have a lot of gadgets which make life so much easier. But in many poor countries, those people do not enjoy such modern domestication? Several families by powerful storms found their riverside home destroyed already more than once. Millions have already lost more than the modest roof over their head. Millions spend their days collecting cow dung for fuel and struggling to grow vegetables in soil poisoned by saltwater. They live on borrowed time in a vast landscape of river islands, bamboo huts, heartbreaking choices and impossible hopes.

Government representatives and scientists on Tuesday March the 25th opened a five-day meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to finalize a report assessing the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems, options for adaptation, and the interactions among climate changes, other stresses on societies, and opportunities for the future.

The meeting, the culmination of four years’ work by hundreds of experts who have volunteered their time and expertise to produce a comprehensive assessment, was to approve the Summary for Policymakers of the second part of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, checking the text line by line.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) wants to achieve a stabilization of green-house gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

All of us should be aware that limiting the effects of climate change is necessary to achieve sustainable development and equity, including poverty eradication. At the same time, some mitigation efforts could undermine action on the right to promote sustainable development, and on the achievement of poverty eradication and equity. Consequently, a comprehensive assessment of climate policies involves going beyond a focus on mitigation and adaptation policies alone to examine development pathways more broadly, along with their determinants.

We all should also know that we have to take a collective action because we are speaking of problem at the global scale, because most greenhouse gases (GHGs) accumulate over time and mix globally, and emissions by any agent (e.g., individual, community, company, country) affect other agents. International cooperation is therefore required to effectively mitigate GHG emissions and address other climate change issues.

Social, economic and ethical analyses may be used to inform value judgements and may take into account values of various sorts, including human well-being, cultural values and non-human values. But all people should be informed how much they themselves also can contribute to the global effect, even when their personal impact may be very small it is important that everybody does his or her own bit for the protection of the earth.

Awareness and appreciation for the environment is very important, so we should help to get others to be more conscious of the importance to safeguard the earth’s future and the future of our children their children.

We would like to present a website where the beauties of nature are nicely presented, but where one is not afraid to see behind all that beauty the danger of vanishing worlds. We have evolved far away from the snapshots that have served as surrogates, except perhaps for one surrogate which continues to grow, namely the extended reach of the body’s comprehension of the world.

Doing so more insistently than did other forms of mimetic representation, photography seemed to stand in for the direct, bodily experience of the individual, its lens becoming the roving eye of the beholder. Most obviously one sees this in travel and expeditionary photographs of the nineteenth century, for which skilled professionals travelled forth from Western Europe and the eastern USA to record and bring back views of sites as various as India, the American West and the Middle East. {Oxford Companion to the Body }

Photography, you could say, is the visual medium of this modern world, where events can be captured for the future, but were stories of the past can be a witness of the things human beings did or because they did not want to see, refusing to hear the signs have been lost for the next generations.

As a means of recording, and as an art form in its own, photography pervades our lives and shapes our perceptions…

A private photobook collector and trader, living in the Netherlands, who has sold many photobooks online (Ebay.nl, Marktplaats.nl & Boekwinkeltjes.nl/Bint) and therefore has also set up a devoted website (see http://bintphotobooks.googlepages.com/)& his Blog (see http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.com/) brings us a variety of artists worth viewing.

We do know that:

“Perception is relative and selective”…If the presenter does not clarify a message, then the receiver imposes his own meaning drawing from his/her experience, needs and expectations.

On his website we can find many beautiful photographs which clearly tell a story which has to be heard by many. Therefore we also like to introduce you to it. Our world is much to important to have it been destroyed by the greed of our consumerism.

The one looking through the lens may capture a whole story in one click and make it easy for others to see that what is behind the picture. Every photographer may put his own statement in the way he looks at things. Behind the pictures may be told also a whole story and the writer of Bint photobooks may carry us away along the threads of reality that often stay hidden for those who live in the cities of the Western world.

In Kadir van Lohuizen: Putting stories into perspective for example we can learn that the celebrated Dutch photographer Kadir van Lohuizen feels that there are many big stories around the world that need to be told and that it is his responsibility to tell them in the right way. He brings us with his camera from the North to the South, from Greenland to Kiribati and Fiji, close to Australia, passing by Panama but also showing us the problems of cities in the United States, like Boston, all places where they feel the rising seas. On the net we also can find some other interesting photographs of professional photographers, like Mitch Zeissler, and non-professional photographers, who do have a very good eye, like Cindy Barton Knoke who is willing to share that what she encounters on her many travels. Having such people willing to share the beauties they managed to see others are allowed to enjoy them too, which is great. This way people who are not in good health or do not have the money or no means to make such trips to faraway places can receive their dreams by such bloggers.

Having lots of people living between the structures of living quarters and offices, often confronted with the fumes, dust and pollution, they may value such beautiful countrysides, animals and by Cindy Barton Knoke also beautiful art, which give richness to the world. Those living in countries with wide fields, like in the United States perhaps do not see any sign of pollution in their region, and do think perhaps everything is exaggerated, but when they can see and hear the witnesses of those who can move around, come in different places or do scientific work, they perhaps come to believe that it is really time we do something to protect what we still have. In Belgium we are confronted with pollution and climate change nearly every day, so perhaps the Belgians do feel the urge to look for solutions more than some other citizens.

Icebergs in a channel between Greenland’s Eqip Sermia glacier and Ilulissat Icefjord, the most active glacier in the Northern Hemisphere and so many other pictures Bint presents with his article on Kadir van Lohuizen is only showing us the figurative and literal top of the ice sheet melting as a result of climate change.

In 2012 van Lohuizen started project looking into consequences of sea-level rise in the world. Therefore he went to different regions that have been or will be affected quite soon by the rise and researched where people will have to relocate.

The 50-year-old photographer said he started the project after visiting a delta area in Bangladesh around three years ago, where he was struck by the apparent impact of rising sea levels and noticed that Bangladesh expects to evacuate 30 million people by 2050 due to rising sea levels.

He is also aware that the issue is more urgent than most people assume

“it’s very much knocking on our doors.”

The world has waited already too long before taking the matter seriously. Like in most places, there has to happen something serious before people do something.

“Too often we start to think about the problem when it has happened, but not before.”

Bint writes

Aiming to raise awareness in the general audience, Kadir hoped that the message would also reach politicians and policymakers.

and gives the word to van Lohuizen who says:

“It’s going to be the biggest problem of the century. It’s not just islands disappearing but also sea water seeping into the mainland, causing soil to become saline, rendering people unable to grow crops and having more difficulty accessing clean water.”

We better make sure others get to know the beauties of nature, but also show how endangered the species and our own environment is. We clearly have to share the message of the importance to keep our world in good health.

The “burning embers” diagram above was produced by the IPCC in 2001. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)