So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
Jesus Christ
All the commandments...summed up in this single command: You must love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus Christ
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
Alan Watts
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Alan Watts
I fear these books I have in my room.
I fear they will never be read, as they should be. I am a scattershot reader, because I am a scattershot man. Something must demand my attention in order for me to focus my mental facility upon it.
OS helps immensely. People bring up things, and I offer my observations.
These books , though! Why can’t I plunge into them like I used to, devouring them, writing notebooks on their content? Copying…
Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it.
Alan Watts
Maybe the answer is that OS is an immediate experience to me…someone comes on with a thoughtdream or an analysis of present socio-economic-political reality, and I react, in immediacy.
But the great writers of the past did not operate like this. They secluded themselves for months or years and wrote our what was in their mind.Now I can access their prolonged effort effortlessly, and glean their theses. Their outlooks, their points-of view.
Today I uploaded two books I could never find anywhere (except maybe ebay) in the physical universe and am grooving on them. They were written in the 1920’s. Rather prophetic stuff.
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Martin Luther King is available in his (virtual ) reality right now, as we celebrate his birthday.
The town library is closed, out of “respect”, but I imagine he would have seen a bitter irony in that.
Also no mail. No one communicating….
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What brings our world together, now, except the immediacy of human contact? As good Eastern-saturated starlings we know that the here/now is the only reality that ever was or will be. Even Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within”, and upon inspection, I find “within” to be a realm ruled by immediacy also.
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The world needs a new philosophy like a cat need mittens, so I shall not try to manufacture one out of the Immediacy , the Presence, that I belive is God, or at least God-soaked. I could, I suppose. But better thinkers than I have tried, notably Bergson, Whitehead, Jesus (in most of his sayings), Buddha, and Alan Watts. These are only the ones I in my limited knowledge know of.
A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.
Alan Watts
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Often Immediacy makes a guy full of creative fun, for what else is the Ultimate but Creativity?
faith is a state of openness or trust.
Alan Watts
Immediacy speaks subtly to me. Echoes of the past mix with expectations of the future. It is hard to focus on Now…
Right now? I am on a small bed covered with books. They all need to be profoundly interpreted, with the pragmatic injunction of “what works…?”
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The books on my bed will be different tomorrow. What works will ..change..evolve?
I hope I am evolving.
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No work or love will flourish out of guilt,
fear, or hollowness of heart,
just as
no valid plans for the future
can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Alan Watts
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Comments
Some good quotes here. Alan Watts is a high-watt bulb. I am sure you are evolving, What's the alternative -- devolving?
You keep us posted on the answers to "what works" if you come up with anything better than "not this."
Hello Hello... I am out here.. are you? Keep sending out your thoughts to the universe James, I will be reading and sending back.
No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. Alan Watts"
Smart words to live by. I wouldn't have had the 3 month engagement followed by 10 months holding on to a dream, and looking like a fool while passing up other opportunities if I'd known this then. That's when I learned to not trust myself.
" But the great writers of the past did not operate like this. They secluded themselves for months or years and wrote our what was in their mind."
They so didn't have the internet or, in some cases, public libraries. Nothing else to do BUT write.
Maybe, you will grow to be a great philosopher of our time. Stranger things have happened. At least you keep asking questions. Mine are unanswerable.
The whole idea of the western religious tradition is that it was supposed to add onto itself with the times and each prophet that appeared in each major age/society.
But, all of that was choked off and then killed by the Holy Roman Empire (er...Catholic Church...excuse me),
Great that you bring up that particular bit of the Jesus story (his only story of preaching to be recorded in that book you fear will collect dust) and also Marin Luther King as Jesus was gathering a massive group to attempt to put up a large enough piece of resistance so that they would release his friend from jail, who had been put there unjustly...much like so many of the early Civil Rights Marches in Selma.
And, like I said, I have had that piece that I wrote about MLK in my head for months...you can have the secluded place and feed your need for immediate gratification because whether or not you are evolving, your computer is...
(and, online libraries are open today, and as I pointed out, a massive collection of Kings writings were released to the public today for the 1st time. There's plenty for you to read if you'd like, and I think MLK would be happy with people who are choosing to honor his message and what he stood for as opposed to paying him tribute since the bible he believed in so deeply warns very strictly against this, and the commandment against it even bats lead off in the still very relevant team of 10 (I think Coveting your neighbor's wife is the DH or something)
"We're born, we suffer, we die." - Clint Eastwood
" Maybe the answer is that OS is an immediate experience to me…someone comes on with a thoughtdream or an analysis of present socio-economic-political reality, and I react, in immediacy."
I agree.. Mary/ Romantic Poetess said something to me and I created a blog about it. Little things create big things and that is a good thing.
Thank goodness for expansion!
HUGGGGGGGGG
That still DOES not diminish the significance of the fact that YWCA is being uncharitable when
(a) they ask for consent letters as condition for letting middle aged people get shelter there, (why wd middle aged people that are their own guardians need consent letters from parents for god's sakes? Is that how YWCA functions in the US or Europe? why then is that rule there in India?)
(b) and second, even though their rule book says they work to empower "women and girls" in Lucknow India, they took my money, but later refused to accept my Form or give me the seat saying am over forty and not qualified to get a place at the YWCA, am too old for them. And am pissed off that my blog is messed up and they are not letting comments from being posted there which is gross violation of rights of people too!!
This cannot be a technical fault, otherwise it wdnt have worked here or anywhere else am posting right now, comments went thru in all the posts I commented. EXCEPT in my blog. Jim, do you think that's FAIR?
I disturbed now, shall read rate your post later Jim.
Point is how do you define evolution in your mind? What kind of changes would you classify as evolution? And do you consider evolution for the better and evolution for the worse as two distinctly diff course of change? In that case, you cd ask a diff question. From the time I have started reading you, correspoding with you, I have followed your thoughts and I think I see change, slight change, nothing fundamental to what I take as the essential Jim Emmerling, and that change can be said to be for the better and the change has been consistent. Have you noticed any evolution in me? Or any change? I had said I wd read your post later, but cdnt help reading it rt now. Alan Watts is not saying anything extra ordinary, and his writing did not resonate with me. You have said the same things yourself and we all know these things in our hearts already. No new perspective there. I am reading a lot of history right now and am in a certain state of mind so maybe I talk this way. There is a book edited by Steven Hitlin on morality and law, that I read for work recently, with some very good pertinent essays in it on how humankind thinks, adjusts with the world around, you might want to give it a read when you can. Or any book by Mirecia Eliad? You might like ME a bit. Have you read him before?
they sit at home at their computers cranking out blog posts
we can use a new philosophy
remember those kittens who lost their mittens
they are still crying somewhere in a nursery
rhyming away so that when they grow up
they will want to be romantic poets and tesses
rated with love for your brilliance
Even if you never read a word of those books, you've still absorbed something of their essence, their most essential truths. You don't always have to tear something apart to understand it. The funny thing about some of the greatest writers ever is, as Phyllis pointed out, they didn't have libraries and the internet and a bottomless well of instant information at their fingertips. They didn't have all the books and ideas we do now, to inspire them. It's amazing to me how they thought what they did, how they came up with such big ideas and truths, that are still relevant today, when their worlds were so very much smaller and more contained than ours is. How did Shakespeare do it?!
What they wrote mainly came from within. They had no alternative. We're no different. Maybe we don't give ourselves enough credit for what we know; we're so used to turning to external sources for answers that we forget how to look inside ourselves. All we need is faith like a grain of mustard seed...
Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.~John Lennon
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.~John Lennon
You are amazing, James.
Truer words were never spoken.
as Emmerling remembers anyone
in deadly earnest, evangelistically,
with wild humor?
We could start by asking:
what is the keynote of
all this suffering
genius' work?
It would be fit
to so get lost
in OS hell.
best to you dear emmerling,
-ume