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BrendanFlock
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: Green7Alchemist]
#24325462 - 05/16/17 08:34 PM (6 years, 10 months ago) |
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Yup, indeed,,
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BrendanFlock
Stranger
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: BrendanFlock]
#24325464 - 05/16/17 08:34 PM (6 years, 10 months ago) |
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Aaaaaaaaah,
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RJ Tubs 202
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: BrendanFlock]
#24341909 - 05/22/17 11:41 PM (6 years, 10 months ago) |
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The Dalai Lama meditates about his death every morning, and finds it very helpful.
Without a vivid awareness of death, we get caught up in a lot of unimportant stuff.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: Jokeshopbeard] 1
#24347780 - 05/25/17 12:57 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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The above would not be my reaction if I had to live my last day. I would simply redouble my ordinary efforts to BE HERE NOW. That is the end result of spacio-temporal existence, the dissolution of existence in essence, the setting of the individual mind and the dawning of the Universal Mind. I would not want to be distracted from the involution of my awareness, away from the life of the senses and social interactions. The Tibetan Buddhists suggest saying goodbye before retiring to die. The presence of grieving and emotional drama from one's loved ones just further exacerbates the difficult detachment from this world in dying. But that's just me, it is not the way of the warrior (road warriors included) whose moving center is likely to be as energized as it ever was. So, I won't be dancing my ass off or speeding down the highway. I will want to enter into the ONE, hopefully in a state of equanimity, if not ecstasy. If this sounds obtuse, I am thinking of the centers in our psychophysical/pschospiritual/ps ychocosmic selves as George Gurdjieff described them. We all need to be true to our individual constitutions, so I would not go out in a blaze of activity. I would hope to go out serenely, in stillness, like a Buddha in the full or half lotus position, with just a hint of a smile on my lips. The mudra of the right palm facing outward is the Abaya mudra which means 'Be Not Afraid.'
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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oontribe
Registered: 01/14/15
Posts: 3,570
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Markosthegnostic may i ask you if you don't mind, what's your religion or what do you believe in?
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Jokeshopbeard
Humble Student
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: oontribe]
#24350611 - 05/26/17 02:20 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Great post Markos.
I probably should have highlighted in OP that I mean 'Live each day as though it were your last' more along the lines of how we save for, and consider, the future. It's such a social norm to ensure that we have adequate pension, savings, assets, etc and to worry about it if we don't.
I'm fine with the living dangerously bit; it's all I've known for the better part of my life, and brings a lot of enjoyment and excitement to my time here. But making efforts to ensure that I'm 'financially secure' - that's the bit I'm really juggling at the moment.
It makes good sense of course, but I feel life would be so much sweeter if free of the burden of considering such things..
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: oontribe]
#24351831 - 05/26/17 02:45 PM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
oontribe said: Markosthegnostic may i ask you if you don't mind, what's your religion or what do you believe in?
I have faith, but I do not have 'beliefs,' which if you looked at my posts I endeavor to always write with apostrophes around the word. Beliefs are thoughts, composites built of words that convey an idea or a theme. Beliefs are illogical concepts constructed with the logic of syntax and grammar, but the ideas may themselves contradict logic or natural law. Beliefs can be deconstructed.
Faith is an attitude, a contemplative attitude. I can say that I have faith in God, in Ultimate Reality as being the Absolute Cause of everything (as in Aristotle), but having faith is not saying that I am confident that everything will be alright with me personally. Faith is a simple acknowledgement of The Eternal co-existing with every temporal moment. It is theologian Paul Tillich's "Ground of Being" in his book The Eternal Now, it is the message of BE HERE NOW, or of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, in modern literature. So Faith is an acknowledgement of Eternity. When Faith becomes more tangible, palpable, some Christian theology refers to it as assurance. I prefer to think of it as gnosis, a particular form of knowledge wherein the blindness of faith acquires the vision of Presence. The Intuitive Function develops to the degree that the Presence of Eternity is experienced.
If someone asks me, for example, if I 'believe' that Jesus walked on the waters, (Matthew 14:22-33), I would have to say yes, metaphorically, but no literally. I would read that as Hebrew midrash, a literary illumination of a spiritual truth not intended to be understood literally. I would try to explain the Hebrew exegetical method for interpreting scriptures known as PRDS or Pardes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardes_(Jewish_exegesis) . Walking on the turbulence of existence is just one possible interpretation of this passage, but much of these stories were appropriated from the Egyptian Coffin and Pyramid texts and they had their own meanings. Miracles are midrasnhic for the most part. The miracles in the New Testament are sometimes synchronicities, but none of them are as far out as the theophanies in the Tenach (OT). There is the additional misunderstanding that having a 'belief' in mind, an idea, is automatically salvific; that 'believing' a dogma, regardless of the condition of one's inner and outer life, is going to get them to Heaven. This is like the death-bed conversions of mass-murderers who 'believe' that the horrors they perpetrated are magically rectified by saying a few words.
When Romans 10:9 says "If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved," I have to qualify that with 'Yes, but...' because the resurrection (again, for example) should not be 'believed' to be a physical body rising from death and ascension rising in the air as depicted in the gospels. Resurrection is a transcendental moment that is merely depicted that way midrashically, and mythically. But without intelligence and sophisticated abilities to think, the ancients portrayed the Mystery in storybook form. 'Beliefs' have remained childish in otherwise adult minds even today.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
Edited by MarkostheGnostic (05/28/17 01:28 AM)
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wolfiewolfie
Just wingin' it.
Registered: 06/16/15
Posts: 2,177
Loc: Australia
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Live each moment like it's your first.
-------------------- The only reason why T-rex's can't walk backwards is because they're extinct, which perfectly explains why there are no headaches in the rainforest; The parrots eat 'em all. My Drawings
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PhantomFrequency
Adventures of Ideas
Registered: 02/22/17
Posts: 203
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: I have faith, but I do not have 'beliefs,' which if you looked at my posts I endeavor to always write with apostrophes around the word. Beliefs are thoughts, composites built of words that convey an idea or a theme. Beliefs are illogical concepts constructed with the logic of syntax and grammar, but the ideas may themselves contradict logic or natural law. Beliefs can be deconstructed.
Faith is an attitude, a contemplative attitude. I can say that I have faith in God, in Ultimate Reality as being the Absolute Cause of everything (as in Aristotle), but having faith is not saying that I am confident that everything will be alright with me personally. Faith is a simple acknowledgement of The Eternal co-existing with every temporal moment. It is theologian Paul Tillich's "Ground of Being" in his book The Eternal Now, it is the message of BE HERE NOW, or of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, in modern literature. So Faith is an acknowledgement of Eternity. When Faith becomes more tangible, palpable, some Christian theology refers to it as assurance. I prefer to think of it as gnosis, a particular form of knowledge wherein the blindness of faith acquires the vision of Presence. The Intuitive Function develops to the degree that the Presence of Eternity is experienced.
you are a great writer and thinker. I really appreciate that definition of "faith as a contemplative attitude"
when I think of "truth" I think of "action", like "truth is an action" or "truth is a process", and I feel like your definition of faith would complement that.
-------------------- "Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play." -Heraclitus
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czech
baked like a casserole
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They need to nail me to a cross.
Dark world.
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TameMe
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: Jokeshopbeard] 1
#24357831 - 05/28/17 11:48 PM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Jokeshopbeard said: What do you think of this ethos? Is it possible or sustainable?
I feel that culture would dissuade us from such a mentality, for obvious reasons, and I suspect that parents amongst us would have other very personal reasons to not live this way.
I feel I'm at a tipping point, personally. I've been tip-toeing at the edge of the precipice of living this way for quite some time, and a decision will soon face me which will see me either plunging head first into it, or backing well away from it for a time.
As with so many conundrums I encounter, I put it to you wise and learned lot for your opinions, which would be most gratefully received..
i don't understand the merit in this...because my ambitions would be totally different on a day that i knew was my last...opposed to one that wasn't....like for instance...i wouldn't care about sustaining resources, or long term impacts on health....or repercussions to actions that may not realize those repercussions beyond a day....
i just don't find the utility in thinking this way at all. or maybe i'm over thinking it.
would it not be better to say...live each day with as much passion and appreciation as it was your last? i think that would be more appropriate to gain the best insight into this ethos.
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Nifflerz
Registered: 06/09/08
Posts: 48,472
Loc: Pudge County, TX
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: quoththesloth]
#24357906 - 05/29/17 12:37 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
quoththesloth said: Truly living each day as if you'd never see another would, for a majority I'd expect, lead to actions with the kind of consequences that are going to either limit your future freedoms or degrade your quality of life. I don't see acting with no regard for the future being sustainable at all, at least while maintaining the conditions most have grown accustomed to.
Yeah I think there's a fine line. I think one would ideally want to love everybody that you care about like it's your last -- because we never know how long any of us are going to be here. I also think there are instances when that mindset does come into play -- but it's a fine line, really.
You can't possibly take that to mean that literally when it comes to any and everything, though.
Like I used to know a guy who lived by this mantra, and he would blow every last cent he had on anything and everything that he wanted -- which was mainly pills. But yeah, his saying?
"Oh well, gotta live everyday like it's your last, right? Because I could be dead tomorrow ya know?"
Which of course led to him being constantly broke, and him hitting rock bottom seemingly every other week.
You still have to keep an eye on the future, folks.
-------------------- Aka Pudge (the real one, not the bitch ass fake one from 2020)
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RJ Tubs 202
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Re: Live each day as though it were your last. [Re: TameMe] 1
#24358612 - 05/29/17 10:26 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
TameMe said:
... my ambitions would be totally different on a day that i knew was my last...opposed to one that wasn't....like for instance...i wouldn't care about sustaining resources, or long term impacts on health....or repercussions to actions that may not realize those repercussions beyond a day....
There's a gold mine in your awareness of this perspective.
If today was your last, your values would change? Are your values dependent on your future?
If today was your last, you'd stop caring for the rest of humanity?!
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MarkostheGnostic
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Thanks for the kind words! I use the word Truth as a synonym for Reality. Other synonyms might be Wisdom, Compassion, Consciousness or Purity. Not my ideas, BE HERE NOW said this decades ago. THE Truth is synonymous with Ultimate Reality, for which many use the shorthand word 'God.' I give credit to "faith is a contemplative attitude" from something the I once read from the late priest and author Andrew Greeley, but I cannot find the source (just my own posts quoting the same).
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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