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Veritas
Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured
#5139002 - 01/04/06 02:08 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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I was thinking this morning how very dear certain things in this life are to me. It has been said that having a child is like giving your heart legs & allowing it to run around the world unprotected.
I feel this way about all my loved ones, and sometimes it is scary to think about their mortality. Even in imagination, I feel a deep pang when I consider going on in my life without those dearest to me.
As I gazed at the beautiful cloud formations, the magnificent forested hillsides, and the glistening, rain-wet roadside, it occurred to me that the belief in eternity, in an afterlife where we will meet again, and even in reincarnation, may all be based on the wish not to lose what is precious to us.
When we love deeply, and appreciate the beauty of the world, it can seem impossible that our treasures will someday be gone. Even our most treasured, if sometimes least-honored, self will one day be gone.
Perhaps if we could let them go a little at a time, the loss would not seem so terrible. Remember just once a day that these dear people are mortal, and say goodbye while they are still here.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,066
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5139020 - 01/04/06 02:13 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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our mortality is entangled with our vitality and this braid opens up a narrow but significant gap between a cold nothingness and a dark eternity filling it with warmth spirit and light.
-------------------- _ 🧠_
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: redgreenvines]
#5139064 - 01/04/06 02:22 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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nice.
I have noticed with age that I do not seem to worry as much about losing things or people. Maybe because I have lost plenty already and I'm used to it. Or maybe it's because I really am starting to understand that nothing is ever lost. Or maybe it's because I'm starting to get comfortable with losing myself.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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dblaney
Human Being
Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 7,894
Loc: Here & Now
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: redgreenvines]
#5139066 - 01/04/06 02:22 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Very poetic
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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dblaney
Human Being
Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 7,894
Loc: Here & Now
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5139089 - 01/04/06 02:28 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Remember just once a day that these dear people are mortal
I agree. It's very good perspective to remember that anything that exists [in the space-time continuum] has a beginning and a ending. Attachment will almost invariably cause grief when the thing you're attached to ends.
That's not to suggest that you shouldn't love people with all your heart and being, but don't expect them to live forever (I'm often guilty of this myself).
As Castaneda says, the pettiness of life falls away when you have death constantly by your side.
Don't stop living and loving
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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Veritas
Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: redgreenvines]
#5139215 - 01/04/06 03:01 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Swami
Eggshell Walker
Registered: 01/18/00
Posts: 15,413
Loc: In the hen house
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5139222 - 01/04/06 03:03 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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How did you get a picture of my brain scan?
-------------------- The proof is in the pudding.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb
Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,066
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Swami]
#5139296 - 01/04/06 03:25 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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I have a boob on my brainscan too!
-------------------- _ 🧠_
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MushmanTheManic
Stranger
Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5139709 - 01/04/06 05:20 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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I recently lost my CD collection which I kept in my car. I always had the haunting fear that someone would car-hop me and I'd lose everything. All that music, which isn't cheap, gone. Well... my fears came true. I wasn't car-hopped, but my CD collection is probably laying on some street in Chicago right now. Nothing lasts...
Surprisingly, I wasn't as upset as I thought I would be. Although I lost a lot of music, which I spent plenty of money on, the nagging fear of me losing my CD's was worse than actually losing them. (But, then again, I'm sort of an emotional cinderblock, it takes a lot of effort to make me happy or sad.) Art is not eternal
I've decided this is an excellent opening for me to move onto New Technology. Gonna get myself an nice purdy iPod!
This SHOULD NOT be translated into an analogy of losing human life, which I feel VERY DAMN DIFFERENT about. Unlike music, a human is not replaceable. Human death is always a tragedy.
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Veritas
Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: MushmanTheManic]
#5139873 - 01/04/06 05:52 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Why is death a tragedy? After all, life is a fatal disease: no one has yet found a cure, and it always ends in death.
Perhaps the tragedy is an unexamined, unlived life? I am reminded of the final scene in "Our Town," when Emily (the ghost) speaks to her family, asking again and again "why do we never look at one another?" She wonders if we ever really recognize the beauty of life as we live it.
Mortality adds poignancy to life, and remembering that "all this shall pass" may spur us to live more while we can.
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MushmanTheManic
Stranger
Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5139964 - 01/04/06 06:13 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Why? Because that person is gone, forever. Its hard for me to accept something like that. One of my best friend's father died, he is non-existant, I'll never be able to interact with him, ever again. If you don't think that is tragic, I don't know what else to tell you.
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Veritas
Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: MushmanTheManic]
#5139992 - 01/04/06 06:19 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Tragedy 2 a : a disastrous event.
Why is death disastrous? We all know that we're going to die, that everyone we know will eventually die, and that all humans share this fate. I don't see this as a disaster.
Certainly the loss of someone we love will grieve us, but that does not make it a tragedy. And it seems to me that grieving would be "cleaner" and more natural if we do not view death as disastrous.
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MushmanTheManic
Stranger
Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5141346 - 01/04/06 10:54 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Tragedy n.: 1: an event resulting in great loss and misfortune 2: drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance; excites terror or pity
I hope you can make the conceptual leap.
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rogue_pixie
faerydae
Registered: 07/28/04
Posts: 3,977
Loc: UK
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5141541 - 01/04/06 11:26 PM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Perhaps we love because of the instinctual yearning of our individual perceptions to be re-united with that huge pool of everything that we were born out of.
-------------------- "Whatever you do, you need to keep moving. Because when you stop moving you die (physically and emotionally). Good luck and blessings of happiness and fortune." ~ RandalFlagg RIP
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Veritas
Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: MushmanTheManic]
#5142555 - 01/05/06 09:55 AM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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No need to be snotty.
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Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Veritas]
#5142567 - 01/05/06 09:59 AM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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I like your Angel signature. That's just how I imagine them also.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
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Swami
Eggshell Walker
Registered: 01/18/00
Posts: 15,413
Loc: In the hen house
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Re: Concept of Eternity and Clinging to the Treasured [Re: Icelander]
#5142638 - 01/05/06 10:19 AM (18 years, 2 months ago) |
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Not to scare you or anything, but that is not an angel. Male souls that cross-over have their 'goodies' removed' as there is no longer any need.
-------------------- The proof is in the pudding.
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