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Tipping the Balance
    #5209731 -

Last night, Icelander and I were discussing the question of whether there is a balance of love and fear in the world.

I tend towards optimism, and my opinion was that there is a balance.  While fear has a restrictive effect on our experience of love, it does not eliminate love.

It seems evident to me that our attitudinal orientation influences the "balance" we experience day-to-day.  When my orientation was more pessimistic/negative, I sought out reinforcement for my beliefs.  Not only did I tend to notice the negative more readily than the positive, I also created more negative experiences through my mode of interaction with others.  "See, I'm right!"  :smirk:

Conversely, when I deliberately shifted my attitude towards optimism/positivity (taking on faith that there was good in the world, even though I was not perceiving it), I began to experience reinforcement for my new orientation.

Now, when I find myself tensing up and thinking negative thoughts, such as while waiting on a long line, my practice is to shift my thoughts, release control of the circumstances, and use my energy to lighten the mood of others who share my circumstance.  I usually make jokes or compliment someone on some aspect of their appearance.  (Trite, I know, but it works!)

I love feeling the mood shift, watching tense faces relax & glow again.  The anxious line of strangers becomes a little tribe for a few minutes.  :heart:

Love and laughter are the ultimate medicines to cure Hurry Disease and negativity.  Share them with a stranger today, if you can!  :sun:

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Re: Tipping the Balance *DELETED* [Re: Veritas]
    #5209780 -

Post deleted by dorkus

Reason for deletion: .

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: dorkus]
    #5209798 -

If I had to come up with a metaphor, I would say that we (embodied beings) are like garden hoses, and love is the flow of water through us.  Fear grasps the hose, constricting the flow of love to a mere trickle.  A lifetime of fear can create a knot in the hose, which constricts the flow even when we do not have something to fear in the moment.

The love never stops flowing from the source (the deep aquifer of Life :grin:), but our experience of that flow may be limited by our fears.

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Veritas]
    #5210419 -

Is love the opposite of fear?

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #5210437 -

No, to my way of thinking, acceptance is the opposite of fear.

Fear tenses and constricts, acceptance relaxes and expands.

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #5210441 -

The polar opposite. Love accepts. :wink:


--------------------
"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

Edited by Icelander (01/22/06 02:00 PM)

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Icelander]
    #5210447 -

If Love = Life Force, perhaps its' polar opposite is Death?

In another metaphor for the "flow" of love:

Love is pumped through us like blood. If you tie a tourniquet of fear around some aspect of your life, that aspect will first become numb, and then "die." While you are numbed, it will seem that life is flat and empty and meaningless. When the flow is restored, feeling will flood back into that aspect, and life will seem meaningful again.

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Icelander]
    #5210463 -

as i have said time and time again, perception creates reality

"perception creates the reality you experience, believe it or not, either way your right"
-forgot who said that

:laugh:

and veritas your hose metaphor was beautiful

i more or less look at it a bit more cut and dry, i seem to have such control over my emotions they hardly affect my consciousness unless i want them to, but every now and again laughter and comic relief get the best of me and i go all out for days on end being funny as i can, talking with everyone
(do that anyway)
its strange, the circumstance plays more a role in determining how i act than my emotions at the time

often i find myself in very bright spirits when around those my own age, and i aim for as good a time as i can
but i am also able to mold myself to be very imaginative when around people much younger
and visa-versa mold myself to be rather cut-and-dry and have a very intellectual sense of humor when around older people that seem to feed off that

i duno, just me ramblin again :laugh:


--------------------
"It is easier to teach a computer to play chess than to build a mudpie."Sherry Turkle Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"-Einstein
:mrt: I pity the fool who break traffic laws with $870,000 of drugs in the car.      -mo0nlite_sonata
Psythos

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: TheGus]
    #5210468 -

but i must also point out at the same time

every emotion ever to be experienced tends to be a form of encoded information, now the experience of that information may bring about different 'feelings' throughout, but the information i find is always very similar just beign transmitted or recieved in different manners in different energy frequencies or thought frequencies

sorry for 2 posts, my mind is split up into 3 parts and its hard for me to get all my thoughts out in one post


--------------------
"It is easier to teach a computer to play chess than to build a mudpie."Sherry Turkle Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"-Einstein
:mrt: I pity the fool who break traffic laws with $870,000 of drugs in the car.      -mo0nlite_sonata
Psythos

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Icelander]
    #5210491 -

All fear and negativity comes from self-cherishing, an exaggerated view of our own importance. All love and positivity comes from cherishing others, the view that realizes the equality and preciousness of the whole. Acceptance happens when we're able to relax our grip on ourself a little bit, and learn not to focus so strongly on what we want for our own self. Cherishing others is the supreme method for relaxing our grasping at self and opening our heart to the way things are, and thereby achieving a sense of completeness, happiness, joy, and the actual capacity to help others fulfil their wishes.


>> Now, when I find myself tensing up and thinking negative thoughts, such as while waiting on a long line, my practice is to shift my thoughts, release control of the circumstances, and use my energy to lighten the mood of others who share my circumstance. I usually make jokes or compliment someone on some aspect of their appearance. (Trite, I know, but it works!)

That isn't trite at all! It sounds perfect.

Anger happens when we allow our mind to focus too much on an object that's likely to stimulate anger. For example, when we're waiting in line at the grocery store, it's easy to let the mind focus on how slow things are moving, or how other people should move faster so that we can continue on with our supremely important business. This is why you often see people reading magazines while waiting to pay for their groceries. It distracts the mind from the wait and slows down the development of that inner tension.

But your method is far superior. You are facing your mind directly and taking responsibility for your experience. This is a kind of discipline that will, if the intention exists, help you to overcome anger altogether. Having taken control of your mind, you will no longer seek comfort in diverting your mind with various distractions, and as a result you will find yourself feeling more connected, aware, engaged, and happy.


--------------------


:poison: Dark Triangles - New Psychedelic Techno Single - Listen on Soundcloud :poison:
Gyroscope full album available SoundCloud or MySpace

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Ped]
    #5210533 -

Quote:
Ped said:
All fear and negativity comes from self-cherishing, an exaggerated view of our own importance.


I disagree.  If we truly cherished what is real about our self and our experiences, we would not fear.  Fear comes from rejecting what is real about our self and our experience.  The need to exaggerate our importance, and to take negative events in our lives as personal attacks, is a compensation for the belief that we are not acceptable.

Quote:
All love and positivity comes from cherishing others, the view that realizes the equality and preciousness of the whole.


Are we not part of the whole?  If we seek to cherish others to the exclusion of cherishing ourselves, we will soon "run dry," as we will not have eliminated the source of constriction: fear.

Quote:
Cherishing others * is the supreme method for relaxing our grasping at self and opening our heart to the way things are, and thereby achieving a sense of completeness, happiness, joy, and the actual capacity to help others * fulfil their wishes.


Add "and ourselves" at the *, and I would agree 100%!  :grin:

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Ped]
    #5210605 -

Add "and ourselves" at the *, and I would agree 100%!

This is all that I would add to your fine post Ped. I think because we often have so much trouble with ourselves we tend to forget that we are the same as others. If we cherish others we need to cherish ourselves to the same degree as we are one and deserving of the same love and care. This is often hard to do because we often feel like such a fuck up in the area of our own spiritual growth. We may think that if we cut our selves any slack we will become ego driven once again. Yet as Veritas pointed out, healthy self regard is not egotistical but loving.

Ped you have a wonderful insight. I enjoy these discussions with you. I feel we share the same path but from a diffenent experience and cultural perspective.


--------------------
"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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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Veritas]
    #5210624 -

>> If we truly cherished what is real about our self and our experiences, we would not fear. Fear comes from rejecting what is real about our self and our experience. The need to exaggerate our importance, and to take negative events in our lives as personal attacks, is a compensation for the belief that we are not acceptable.

Well, the kind of self-cherishing I'm talking about is not interested in what is real about ourself. In fact, because it is such a distorted view of one's own significance, the mind of self-cherishing I'm referring to is compeltely ignorant as to the true nature of self. We don't disagree in that fear comes from rejecting what is real about our self and our experience. It is the mind of self-cherishing which rejects what is real about ourself and our experience and believes it's own ideas to be superior. The mind that exaggerates it's own importance is what I'm referring to when I use the term self-cherishing.

By functioning to relax our grip on self, cherishing others opens our heart to what is real about our self and our experiences. It's through cherishing others that we uncover a profound sense of self-respect and self-confidence. Self-respect and self-confidence are not the same as the self-cherishing mind I'm describing. We can have respect for ourself and confidence in ourself without conceiving ourself as more significant than other phenomenon. The self-cherishing mind, in it's vast ignorance and self-importance, impels us in to many destructive actions which actually rob us of our self-respect and self-confidence. For example, the self-cherishing mind might impel us to cheat on our partner, something which damages our confidence self-respect severely. In this way self-cherishing and self-respect are two totally different things. One is very helpful while the other is only destructive.

And so you can see how we're speaking of essentially the same thing. The difference is that you've conceived of "self-cherishing" as being the same as self-respect and self-acceptance. While the term "self-cherishing" is in some contexts adequate in describing these good qualities, it's not what I meant when I used the term. When I use "self-cherishing", I am referring to the mind which, grasping at it's own ideas, conceives of itself as more important than other phenomenon. Since it's through cherishing others that we reverse this mental habit and uncover true confidence and self-respect, and since it's self-importance which blocks us from this freedom, in this context it's most appropriate to contrast the term "cherishing others" directly against the term "self-cherishing".



>> Are we not part of the whole? If we seek to cherish others to the exclusion of cherishing ourselves, we will soon "run dry," as we will not have eliminated the source of constriction: fear.

If we neglect our self in our practise of cherishing others, we neglect others indirectly, in that by allowing ourself to become drained we limit our ability to cherish and be of benefit to others. Just as an ambulance driver can take care of his vehicle without conceiving it as his own, so too we can take care of our own wellbeing without grasping at our own self-importance.

We would readily sacrifice one finger to save the other nine, and would see it as foolish to sacrifice nine fingers to save only one. This is because nine fingers are more important than one. In the same way, countless living beings are more important than only one, our self. Realistically speaking, it makes sense to cherish others ahead of ourself, and to always work for their wellbeing. This does not undermine our understanding of equality: just as all ten fingers are part of the hand, so too are countless living beings part of the great organism of life. There is no contradiction here: the same principles apply. It's through cherishing others as supreme that we stop self-cherishing, the mental habit conceiving of self as most important, and realize directly the equality of all beings.


--------------------


:poison: Dark Triangles - New Psychedelic Techno Single - Listen on Soundcloud :poison:
Gyroscope full album available SoundCloud or MySpace

Edited by Ped (01/22/06 03:21 PM)

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Veritas]
    #5213606 -

Young Highlander standing in a small boat with Ramirez paddling in a misty lake.
"So, what is it all to learn about ?"
Ramitez shakes the boat and sings
"b-a-l-a-n-c-e, balance young highlander"
"But I can not swim !"

And the Highlander slips overboard and learned, that he is able to breath under water.

[I love this scene]


--------------------
Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Veritas]
    #5213624 -

i am a hose


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: redgreenvines]
    #5213626 -

We're all hoses, dear.  Metaphorically speaking, that is. :wink:

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Veritas]
    #5213649 -

i am a worm


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: redgreenvines]
    #5213659 -

What does this mean to you?

Worm: lowly, slimy, underground.

Worm: transforming dead matter into compost to support new life.

Worm: beneath our feet, secretive, quiet, internalized.

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: Veritas]
    #5213722 -

sequence of tubular moments
or incarnations
happy in space and dirt
dependent on slime shine


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Tipping the Balance [Re: redgreenvines]
    #5213729 -

Quote:
dependent on slime shine



To protect? To smooth your travel? To allow remarks to slide off your back?

Me, too. But I'm more like a snail: carrying my home on my back, always on the move (though slowly, slowly), happy in the dirt, devouring the beauty of flowers, poking my eye stalks out to have a good look, then tucking them away when threatened. Pulling into my shell when the world is harsh and cold, but moving and gliding when the weather is fine.

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