Daily Meditations

[Daniel]

Lureen: "I thought you were gonna call"

The Five Stages of the Soul

"The Wise have said that we repair the past and prepare for the future by living in the present. A committed contemplative regimen is what matters now:
cultivate attention and mindfulness; give up what has to be given up; prune what has to be pruned; strive without embarassment or apology to be virtuous; be discerning - choose wisely; struggle; and eventually you will surely find the means you need to live each day in the way you were meant to live it, and to become the person you were meant to be. Herein lies the ultimate struggle of mind and heart."

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

"Sound can create a world as real as that of the clock, the field, or the street."

"Though beauty is autonomous, there seem to be occasions when human presence can become congruent with her will."

"Time becomes restless in us. The human heart is full of quickening.

"For Aquinas, beauty also included the notion of integrity (integritas)."

The plaintive tone (or human whine) can deal damage with merciless strokes of voice. To speak in such a tone is to create disharmony.

Whatever this disharmony, whether productive or not, it does require a temporal dissatisfaction. To be out of harmony is to be dislodged from the beauty and power of the present moment. Our consciousness is brought painfully to the past or the future, whether that tone laments the past or bemoans the future.

To escape that sound and its false or painful reality, we must instead seek beautiful sounds and human experiences, and perhaps most importantly of all seek out our own integrity and personal power.

[Daniel]

Terry Pratchett Good Omens

"God does not play dice with the universe. He plays an ineffable game of His own devising which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e. everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch dark room with blank cards for infinite stakes with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules and who smiles all the time."

[gattaca]

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've gotta stand it." (from the short story)

I ponder this one line constantly, and find myself mourning what it implies.

[Daniel]

Sometimes, despite great differences, friends can find a way to love one another.

[Daniel]

"Ennis, his chest heaving, does not turn away from Alma, but can still smell Jack -- the intensely familiar odor of cigarettes, musky sweat, and a faint sweetness like grass, and with it the rushing cold of the mountain." (from the short story)

Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Intimate Relationships

"An enchanted love is holy ground where the meanness and the assaults of the world are not escaped so much as transformed by the power of love and forgiveness."

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

"Frequently, the imagination can bring completely new eyes to a situation."

"Nothing is said directly in a creative work; it is obliquely suggested."

"Faith is attraction to the divine."

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

"Those who believe in God but who do so without anguish, uncertainty, or doubt, actually believe only in the idea of God, not in God Himself."


"Meanness and the assaults of the world..." Can there be any better description for the death scene that Ennis imagines? Ennis has grown up with cruelty and learned to hide his emotions deep within himself. Now that a loved one has died, his memories of cruelty resurface and his imagination paints a scene of cruelty onto a situation already too painful to bear.

But what should he do now? His world has been shaken but no specific thought has risen to the top. As is often the case when a person is left confused and despairing after a tragic event, Ennis seeks aid from the divine - simply to know it, and share with it his grief, and perhaps for a short while understand the higher reasons for the tragic event.

The divine, however, may be experienced in many ways. Ennis seeks out both a source and target for divine compassion. Children often learn the most about God from their parents and associate the nature of the divine with their parents' nature. Ennis has lost his parents, but instead seeks out Jack's. This is an act of Faith, and one of the few that Ennis actively engages himself in.

While at the Twist ranch, he discovers the nestled shirts and in a dance of memory and revery loses himself. He struggles to smell the familiar scents and remember forever a presence passed on. In the end, however, he attempts to make amends with Jack's eternal spirit. If Faith in God is difficult, faith in one person as a spiritual, eternal being may be downright impossible. The struggle itself reveals faith and devotion, love and sincerity, hope and repentance.

[Daniel]

I have forgotten who said this, but I believe it was an adult film director. In any case, it's a beautiful concept and one I fully adhere to.

"Gay, Bi, Straight - these are just titles.
If you're going to love someone, love them."

[Daniel]

Ennis: "Where's the powdered milk 'n' the spuds?"

Enchanted Love: The Mystic Power of Intimate Relationships

"In the end, the struggle of mind and heart comes down to a small margin of choice. If the truth be told, we don't really govern many of the forces which shape our existence [....] We don't pick our parents. We don't choose our bodies, our talents, our temperament, or most of the other seminal elements that determine our fates."

The Five Stages of the Soul

"In both men and women, the separation of essential aspects of our humanity is the cornerstone of the fallen self."


The shortest distance in the world is the one between you and yourself. The space in question is tiny. Yet what goes on in this little space determines nearly everything about the kind of person you are and the kind of life you are living. Normally the priority in our culture is to function and do what is expected of us. So many people feel deep dissatisfaction and an acute longing for a more real life, a life that allows their souls to come to expression and to awaken; a life where they could discover a different resonance, one which echoses their heartfelt dreams and longing.

So much of the pain that is experienced seems to be self-inflicted. Ennis yearns for a dream-life, a wonderful relationship, opportunities to truly pursue happiness. The happiness which has already been denied to him so many times. Death relieves us of happiness, perhaps because it is misunderstood or improperly defined. With Ennis, his romance begins because of the death of his parents. He encounters death high on the mountain. And the romance ends with death - the death of a loved one whose momentary presence miraculously lifted spirits and drove away most of his fears and worries. In the end, though, Ennis realizes that the fluency of life - its continual flow, balance, and flight required a spiritual honoring and a mental and emotional release. Death is a transitory state and it opens doors wherever it occurs for human love to ascend and divine love to descend.

[Rayn]

I am not certain if I should go into more detail here, as I am unaware if this is the correct forum for a Statement of Belief or Testament.  

There is a thread that you also may be interested in, Daniel. It's "What Religion are you..."  It's interesting to me to see where each person's background has formed and where they may be going.  I thought that might interest you if you haven't seen it yet. 

I want to read all the writing here, but I must sleep now, but say before I do, I find nothing harmful or offensive here at all.  I send you en-courage-ment.... courage... from the French "corage", meaning heart.

Peace,
Rayn

PS: I haven't reached the sea in this life yet, but I've a good, strong boat and the wind is in my sails.  Enjoying the journey...  R

[Daniel]

Sorry I have not had time to do or post any more meditations lately... I am eventually going to get 365 of them for you... lol.  I've been working on my book, recently, and it is actually more than 90% done now (at least the first draft, pre content-editing).

[Rayn]

I thought this appropriate for this thread here....  I wrote it for another topic, but it's general enough to go anywhere, especially here.


Quote from: Tristann on July 23, 2006, 10:57:10 am
"Someone once said, "who said that the great love of your life has to last?". How true. Hollywood tends to make us believe in the 'happily forever after', but no one made that rule."


Yes, right on Tristann, love comes in many forms to many couples and while it's different for each, it 's also the same in many ways too.  Anyone who has loved, can understand others who have too.  Anyone who has known love is lucky to have experienced the abiding joy, unforgetable bliss and the sorrow when, like all things in life, it comes to a physical end.  But while it ends, it is not destroyed.  It lives on within us, in memory, in personal history, in stories and poems, in paintings and sculpture, in music and much more, in our cells, in our genes: though all this, we give it to the next generation to continue the great adventure.  Love is a mystery and a great adventure into the heart of humanity where we find both the destructive and creative forces within the Mind and what we do with those forces defines who we are. 

Peace,
Rayn